Page 89 of The Wedding Hoax

Could he really just pretend like I never existed?

I curled up against my mattress as thoughts ran through my head.

Of course, he could pretend like I never existed. He had enough money to erase me from his personal history, enough money to bury our marriage if he wanted to.

But did he want to?

He clearly didn’t want to have a child with me. And if he didn’t want a child with me, that meant that he didn’t really want to be part of our child’s life, either.

Or part of mine.

It didn’t matter that he was going to let my mom and me stay here throughout her recovery or throughout my pregnancy. That was him being kind enough to not be a complete asshole, but it didn’t mean that he was going to keep tabs on me once we were all moved out.

Outside of maybe sending money to make sure our kid wasn’t starving.

I closed my eyes as a painful image flashed in my brain, one where Harry was married to someone else in the future, where he had the family that he actually asked for, a beautiful woman on his arm and their children posed with them around their home.

He was the happiest he’d ever been. And I was just a distant memory.

God.

What if I accidentally ran into them in the street? Harry’s old life crashing right into his new one. Would he even acknowledge us as his old family?

I knew that I was never going to fall in love again, because I couldn’t handle getting hurt like this again. A person could only survive this kind of heartbreak so many times before she became completely hollow.

And I couldn’t be hollow. I needed to be strong for the baby growing inside of me. I needed to still be able to love and be loved, to experience warmth and joy and happiness. Even if Harry had the power to break me, I could never break.

Even if right now, I felt more broken than ever.

35

HARRY

“Harry? Are you in there?” My mother’s voice was on the other side of my hotel room door. “Harry!”

I cracked open an eye as I looked over at the door. I was surprised to hear my mom’s voice, especially considering that I hadn’t told her I was staying here.

“Harry! If you don’t let us in, we’ll get security from the lobby to do it!” My dad’s voice was coming through the door now, too. “Don’t make us turn this into a whole thing, son. Just open the door.”

I rolled out of bed, still confused by my parents showing up. I pulled open the door and saw concerned looks on both of their faces.

“Oh my God. We were so worried about you!” My mom pulled me in for a tight hug. “Don’t ever do that to us again!”

“What did I do to you?” I asked as I saw my father shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what you’ve done, son. You haven’t answered our calls in days.”

“Days?” I murmured. “It’s been days?”

I grimaced as the realization hit me. I hadn’t been keeping track of much of anything outside of work calls, work meetings and anything involving the magazine. In fact, I’d been so hyper-focused on work that everything else had fallen by the wayside. And when I wasn’t working, I spent the majority of my free time trying to avoid things that reminded me of Simone or anything that made me think of her.

Which meant that I’d been pretty much lost to the world, apparently for days.

“Sorry. I’ve just been working.” I shrugged. “Someone has to keep the lights on at LA Now, right?”

“Oh, please.” My mom rolled her eyes. “It’s more than working too much, Harry.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it was just work—”