“It’s okay. I know what you were going to say. Like me. Like the character in your book. A situation you misinterpreted. Those doctors, they were wrong. I just have a run-of-the-mill anxiety disorder, which, under the circumstances, no one could blame me for. I’ve done the research. I don’t have any of the issues they claimed I did. All the meds... I don’t need them.”

“So you’re totally sane, and I’ve been writing,” he blurted out. He looked so ashamed she actually laughed.

“That’s good, Ethan. I’m very happy to hear it.”

“It’s been pouring out of me. I don’t know what the hell happened, but when you left, I was so worried and so torn, and the dam broke.”

“Maybe you had a feeling about Ivy from the get-go, and she’s the one who inspired you. Maybe you’ve been writing about her, and not me, all this time.”

“Maybe. Sutton, there’s more.”

She breathed a small sigh. “I think I knew all along. Or at least suspected she was the one you slept with.”

He was dumbfounded. “How?”

“I’ve seen the way she looks at you. After you admitted your indiscretion, and we’d gotten things back on track, she started coming around more. You got tense every time she showed up, and she always had this private little smile for you.”

His mouth was open, his eyes shocked and wide. “If you knew it, why didn’t you say anything when I told you? And more, how could you stay friends with her?”

“Oh, Ethan. I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to believe you’d do that, or she would. And deep down, I knew whatever it was didn’t continue. Things were so messed up between us after Dashiell... I didn’t want it to be true, so I convinced myself that it wasn’t. I didn’t want to have everything in my life go to hell all at once.”

“I never wanted her, Sutton. I’ve never wanted anyone but you since the moment I saw you. I don’t even remember that night. Graham thinks Ivy drugged me. That it was all a setup for ‘Colin Wilde’ to use against me.”

“I think that’s very possible, considering. Looking back, Ivy always made little comments about you, asked inappropriate questions about us. How you made love, how we talked in bed. At the time it was just stupid girl talk after too much wine, but now I see it for what it was. She was wringing me for information, squeezing out every last drop. She loved you. She always has. I was in the way, and she couldn’t just kill me. So she set everything up, slept with you, thinking you’d continue the affair. When you didn’t, and confessed, it infuriated her. So she killed our baby to pay us back.”