“Hayden?” The feminine voice behind me made every muscle in my body tense.
I turned around and came face-to-face with Jacqueline Vance. She hadn’t changed much in the nearly seven years since I’d last seen her. Her shiny blond hair was pulled into some fancy updo. A red dress hugged her curves and showed off her fake tits. She was the picture of beauty standards, but it was lost on me. All I could see when I looked at her was a past full of pain and heartbreak.
“Itisyou,” she said with a wide smile on her painted lips.
“Jacqueline.” My voice sounded flat, almost robotic.
Her smile didn’t even waver. “It’s been too long.”
On the contrary, it hadn’t been nearly long enough. I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing her again after she’d swept in and out of my life, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.
Danielle stepped in front of me. “Hi, I’m Danielle Blake,” she said in a voice so sweet it almost made my teeth ache. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Hayden’s wife.”
Jacqueline’s eyes flew to mine before focusing onDanielle with the fakest smile I’d ever seen. “Jacqueline Vance. Hayden and I used to be very close.”
Key words:used to. Before I learned what kind of person she really was.
Danielle’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “Really? He’s never mentioned you.”
Jacqueline’s smile faltered. “Well, it has been a while. What’s it been now, Hayden? Seven years? It feels like just yesterday.” She pulled a phone from her handbag and shoved it in our faces. “It’s amazing how fast time goes by when you have kids. They grow up in the blink of an eye, I swear.”
I finally focused on the picture on her phone. A six-year-old boy sat on his mother’s lap. He looked just like her, the kind of kid she could have passed off as anyone’s.
I was going to be sick. I didn’t want to see her son, the one who was almost mine. I was so close to being his father before Jacqueline ruined that, before she’d ripped him away and left me more hollow than I could have imagined.
Danielle stiffened, and I could feel her eyes burning a hole in the side of my head, but I couldn’t look away from the damn picture. It was like I’d lost all control over my body. My muscles refused to obey my orders, to fucking move.
“He’s adorable,” Danielle said, her fingers wrapping around the phone and pulling it away from my face. “I have a nephew who’s about that age. They’re so much fun.”
Jacqueline laughed, high and slightly screechy. “It must be nice to be able to enjoy them and then sendthem home. No one tells you how much work it is to have kids.”
“Oh, believe me, my brothers tell me all the time.”
“Right.” She finally tucked her phone away. “Well, I should make my rounds. It was nice to see you again, Hayden.”
I nodded without a word. I wasn’t sure I could speak even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.
The rest of the night was awkward at best. I could feel the tension radiating off Danielle. It was subtle, but it was there in the way her back was perfectly straight and her smiles were dimmer than usual.
There was also the small issue of her pulling away from me every time I tried to touch her. She didn’t do it obviously, but she was definitely avoiding my touch. She even went as far as asking my brother to dance with her, though she did cast glances at me the whole time, so that was some consolation.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked when we slid into the car, finally able to leave the godforsaken party.
She didn’t even look at me, her gaze fixed on something on her phone.
“Sunday School—”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Unless you’re going to explain what happened in there, I don’t want to hear it.”
I shoved a hand through my hair. “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want an apology that we ran into an ex I’d rather have never seen again? I’msorry. She means nothing. I really haven’t seen her in years.”
She finally looked up, and I sort of wished she hadn’t. Her whisky eyes were filled with a mix of betrayal and disappointment I never wanted to see in them again. “I don’t care about you having exes. Do you have a son?”
NINETEEN
