My lips felt numb, and I absently touched them with my shaking hand. Why would Axel want dumpy old me and an infant when he could be living the life of an NFL star with a model he called Tiff? Jesus, I still loved him so fucking much. I wanted him to be happy, even if it was with another woman, as much as it killed me. It would only hurt him if I turned up with his child and put a strain on his new relationship with fancy-beautiful-model-Tiff.

I heard his voice on the phone then. “Hey, this is Ax,” his deep sexy voice said. God, that voice still gave me shivers from the entire opposite side of the country. I didn’t say anything, hoping he would speak again so that I could hear that beautiful sound once more. “Is anyone there? Hello?” Then he called out, “Hey, Tiff, who was on the phone?”

“Dunno. Just some girl.”

Just some girl. That was me.

Axel hung up the phone, and I whispered, “I love you, Ax.” I sat there staring at nothing until a nurse brought Carrie in for her feeding. I stroked my little girl’s soft head and whispered, “Good morning, sunshine. Don’t you ever be ‘just some girl’ for any man. You are too special for that.”

20. Blaire

Blaire

Present Day

It felt like time stopped after I dropped that bomb on Axel, the room so quiet I wasn’t even sure if either of us were breathing.

“What did you say?” Axel finally rasped on a heavy exhale that I could feel under my cheek.

“Evan is gay. Legally, we are married, but it’s an arrangement of convenience.” Axel pulled me around his body until I was sitting across his lap, and I explained the whole situation with Evan’s father and how I had agreed to marry my best friend to help him claim his birthright.

His eyes searched mine deeply, as if he were looking for all the secrets of the universe there.

“We’ve never been together like that. The only time he’s ever even kissed me on the lips was at our wedding, and that was because his father was there. His father is gone now, and Evan is the CEO, but we never divorced, even though this was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Neither of us has found anyone we want to be with, and we’re very comfortable together, so…”

Axel lifted my body and twisted me around until I was sitting astride him and asked, “So there’s no, uh, romantic involvement in your life?”

I took his face in my hands and whispered, “No one.”