by K. A. Linde
Katherine laughed in her face. “Why? For pointing out the truth? It’s amazing how often women are called bitches to shut them up. Call me a bitch, Fiona. I don’t give a fuck. But I’m not sitting down and shutting up when you show up pregnant.”
“Maybe you should just shut up,” Fiona said. “I don’t need to deal with this.”
Katherine ignored her and looked at me again, putting the full weight of her wrath into the heat in her eyes. “I fucking knew you were together on Halloween. It’s three months later, and look.” She gestured to Fiona’s stomach. “You lied to me.”
“I’m not a liar,” I told her with venom. “Fiona and I were not together on Halloween.”
“Fine. The day before, the day after,” she said. “Semantics. You knocked her up.”
“Why would you even care?” Fiona asked. “You were the one who watched us walk out together and did nothing.”
“I really don’t want to hear anything out of your insipid mouth.”
But that was what had happened. I had told Court that if Katherine cared, she would send Fiona away, out of her Halloween party. Instead, Katherine had done nothing. She’d turned her back on me when I went to see Fiona, and I’d gone to see her just to get a rise out of my wife. But I hadn’t. Apparently, it took Fiona being pregnant to finally get a rise out of Katherine Van Pelt. Who knew?
“Why do you care?” I asked.
“What the fuck does that mean?” she snarled.
“I haven’t seen you in weeks, and before Puerto Rico, we’d only been together for official engagements.”
She ignored Fiona entirely as she took a step toward me. Her gaze was withering. “Imagine for a second, Camden dear, that I showed up at your apartment, pregnant by another man.” She twirled her fingers. “Say Penn, for instance.”
My hands clenched into fists at my sides. The thought sent me into a quick death spiral. It made me want to charge out of this room and beat Kensington until his face was a patchwork of blood and bruises. I couldn’t even imagine stopping there. I’d kill him. I’d fucking kill him.
“Precisely,” Katherine said as if she could read the thoughts so evident in my body language. “You’d freak the fuck out. Just like you did on New Year’s! And I have every fucking right to tell you that I want you both dead for this.”
And she meant it.
Her eyes had always been a window to her emotions. She kept them so guarded. Sometimes, I didn’t even think that I could read her. But right now… right now, she meant death. Ruin. Obliteration. She’d leave me over this. Abolish our contract, walk away from me and my money and my obligations, and never, ever look back.
It was in my nature to say nothing. I had always prided myself on being the type of person who yielded results. My methods were unorthodox, but actions spoke louder than words. I didn’t have to explain myself. Not to fucking anyone. I’d lived like this for so long that, somehow, even Katherine believed that I’d knocked up Fiona.
Because I’d let her believe it. I’d let her think Fiona and I were together this whole time. That I preferred her to my wife. That I was every inch the bastard she painted me as.
I wasn’t a good person or the pinnacle of virtue, but I wasn’t the person she thought I was either. And I was tired of seeing that in her eyes. After Court and I had talked about the Ireland deal, I’d realized that I needed to make this right with Katherine. I’d tried calling her all week. I hadn’t been surprised that she was ignoring me. I’d been planning to track her down after this meeting with Fiona. But then… life had a funny way of throwing me under the bus.
I was done letting her believe the worst of me.
“We didn’t sleep together on Halloween, before or after,” I told her flatly. “And I didn’t knock her up. One, I am not that careless. And two, I would never do that to you.”
She paused at my words. The sincerity in them. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fiona,” I snarled. She jumped at my voice. The command in it. “Tell her.”
“Camden,” she whispered.
“Now,” I demanded. “Right now.”
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. “Personally, I’d be fine with letting you think that we’ve been sleeping together all this time and that it’s Camden’s baby.”
“But…” I ground out.
“But… it’s not,” she said in a huff. She lifted her gaze to mine. “Camden and I are just… friends.”
“Bullshit,” Katherine swore. “You’ve been sleeping together for years. You were sleeping together before we got together.”
“We did,” she said, withdrawing into herself. “Even up until… I don’t know, August?” She looked to me for confirmation, but I didn’t say or do anything. “We stopped when it was clear that he was only using me to get back at you.”
Katherine’s jaw dropped slightly at the words. She stared at Fiona as if she had sprouted a second head.
“So, now, we’re just friends,” Fiona said with bite in her voice. “Are you happy? You’ve taken everything from me. Just like you take everything from every other person you come in contact with. You’re a disease.”
“Fiona,” I growled.
“She is!” Fiona spat. “She ruins everyone’s life. Even yours, Camden. Especially yours. We had it good before you decided on this stupid arranged marriage.”
“That’s enough,” I said in a voice that silenced her completely. “If my life were perfect before, then why did I choose Katherine?”
Katherine looked back and forth between us, as if she, too, wanted the answer to that question. I’d never been forthright with why I’d picked her. We’d come to an agreement quickly, but it hadn’t been love between us. I still didn’t know what was between us. I just knew that I’d wanted Katherine, and when the opportunity had arisen for me to claim her, I hadn’t thought twice about the answer.
“I have no idea,” Fiona said. “Baffles me to this day.”
“Because she’s the one that I want.”
Tears pricked at Fiona’s eyes, and she looked away from me. “I know,” she whispered. “But I don’t understand it.”
Neither did I.
Neither did Katherine.
But it was the way it was.
I turned back to my wife. “I found out about Fiona’s pregnancy right after Thanksgiving. She has been out of the public eye since then. Both because she wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep the baby and because I assumed, as you did, that most people would think it was mine. And it is not.”
“Is that why you answered her call on New Year’s?” Katherine asked.
“Yes.”
Fiona looked between us in anger. “Just tell her I was going to get an abortion, Camden. She can’t think any less of me.”
“She obviously didn’t go through with it, but it was supposed to happen on New Year’s. That’s why she called. To tell me she couldn’t do it.”
Katherine’s eyes stayed on mine, as if she was trying to find the trick in my words. As if she couldn’t believe everything that I was telling her. That it all felt too far-fetched.
How could I expect her to forgive me? I’d blown up on her on her birthday for talking to Penn. I’d let her believe that Fiona and I were together for months after I stopped seeing her. I’d wanted to hurt her, to elicit a reaction out of my ice-princess wife.
Now that I was giving her the whole truth, I didn’t know if it was enough.
From her expression, it wasn’t enough.
And I was going to lose her for good.
24
Katherine
“Let’s say that I believe you,” I said in a way that meant that I really, really didn’t believe them. Because, right now, I had no idea what to believe. Fiona was pregnant, standing in Camden’s apartment. What was I supposed to think? “If it’s not your baby, whose is it?”
“That… is not my story to tell,” Camden said with a glance to Fiona.
“Don’t look at me
,” Fiona said. “She has no right to know anything. I didn’t even want her to know that I was pregnant.”
“She won’t believe me unless you tell her.”
Fiona shrugged. “That’s not my problem, Cam. I don’t owe her shit.”
I cringed at the nickname she’d used. Camden was not the kind of person who had a nickname. He was only ever Camden. Not Cam. I hated that she’d called him that. That it felt so unlike him, and he hadn’t even flinched.
“No, but you owe me,” he said evenly.
She gritted her teeth. “She has a huge fucking mouth. She’ll tell Harmony.”
“She will not,” he told her. “They don’t get along as it is.”
“Wait,” I said in confusion. “Wait… I know who Harmony is dating.”
Fiona’s eyes went wide. “Shit.”
“The father is Kurt Mitchell?”
“I did not say that,” Fiona said, backing up a step.
“Jesus Christ, that guy fucks every girl on the Upper East Side, doesn’t he?” I said with a shake of my head.
Harmony had claimed that Kurt was cleaned up and working for his father. I’d even joked and said bad boys were more fun. But I hadn’t meant this.
“Yes,” Camden replied, “he does.”
Fiona glared at him. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
“What? That you should have known better?” he asked with cool malice in his voice. “That you should have expected a guy like Kurt Mitchell to fuck you and leave you?”
“Someone needs to tell Harmony that he’s still a sleazeball,” I interjected. “Obviously, he had no qualms fucking you while he was with Harm.”
“I didn’t know they were dating when we met,” Fiona fumed.
“Oh, please, as if that would have stopped you,” I spat. “You clearly have a type—unavailable men.”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
“Whatever.”
She wasn’t wrong. Not exactly, which made it all the worse. It wasn’t that I’d had a thing for attached guys. It was that I’d always had a thing for Penn. Whether or not he was with someone didn’t matter much to me. But… that wasn’t reality anymore.
“The important thing here is that you believe that the baby isn’t mine,” Camden said. His eyes burned through me. He seemed adamant about this, which was so unlike him. It almost made me believe him. “Who the father is and all the rest… doesn’t really matter. Just that you believe me.”
Fiona huffed.
“So… say the baby is Kurt’s. Say you knew about this at Thanksgiving and she called you on New Year’s because she couldn’t go through with an abortion,” I said, laying out the facts. “What the fuck is she doing here now?”
I gestured to Fiona, who stood nearby, protectively hugging her stomach, as if she thought I might lunge at her or something. They were both silent for a minute. I watched them exchange a long look. One I didn’t particularly care for, but I could see they were having a conversation in that look. Deciding what to tell me.
“She’s here for me to deal with it,” he finally said.
I scrunched up my brows. “Huh?”
Fiona looked like she was going to explode. “Camden!”
“Just tell her, Fiona. I’m tired of this charade.”
Fiona turned away from us both, as if his words hurt so much that she couldn’t even look at him. “I don’t have to do this. I’m leaving. Just… take care of it.”
Then without another word, she disappeared, rushing toward the elevator. I didn’t move or demand she stay. I was so confused. I didn’t know whether or not to even believe anything that they’d said. I wanted to believe that they weren’t together and that the baby wasn’t his, but it felt too good to be true. I was willing to take them at their word.
“Kurt won’t take responsibility,” Camden told me. “He won’t help, and he’s calling her a liar. He called her a whore.”
I shrugged. “What are you going to do about it?”
“What I do best. I handle shit, Katherine.”
I couldn’t argue that. Camden did handle shit. I’d seen him do it on multiple occasions. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant here. Was he going to threaten Kurt? Did he have some kind of blackmail on the guy? How far would he take this for Fiona? And why?
But I didn’t ask any of those questions. Instead, I sank into a chair and put my head in my hands. “How did we get here, Camden?”
I waited for him to say some smart-ass response, but after a minute, he came and sat on the couch across from me. “Because we’re both strong-willed and stubborn.”
I choked on a laugh. “Understatement of the century.”
“And we both have pasts that we haven’t walked away from.”
I looked up at him. Those were words I’d never thought I’d hear him say. Usually, when we talked about our pasts, he just got pissed off that I’d even had one. And I couldn’t even stomach the thought of him with Fiona. Even when I was mad at him… even when I hated him, I still didn’t like it.
“Why did we think we could make this work?” I whispered.
He didn’t flinch from the question. “Because when we agreed, this was just an arrangement.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And what is it now?”
“A marriage.”
A breath escaped me. It was, wasn’t it? Somehow, it wasn’t what we’d agreed to anymore. We’d both crossed that line too many times. The line was blurry, brushed-over chalk.
“Would you like a drink?” Camden asked.
“No,” I said, reaching between us and taking his hand. His eyes widened slightly. “I want us to talk.”
He wavered for a minute, as if a drink would calm him, steady him. But he relented. “All right.”
I released his hand and sat back. He looked down at where I’d released him. “I don’t want us to argue. I just want the truth… from both of us. I’m tired of dodging and parrying here.”
“Katherine Van Pelt tired of emotionally fencing?” he asked with a smirk. “Now, I’ve heard everything.”
“Just with you,” I amended. “Or at least… just for now.”
“Ah, a truce?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that works. What happened in Puerto Rico only happened because we were ignoring the source of the problem.”
“I thought you quite liked what had happened in Puerto Rico,” he said, his voice laced with command that thrilled my body.
I cleared my throat. “Be that as it may… I still ended up alone in the sand.”
“On your birthday.”
“Yes.”
“Without a New Year’s kiss.”
“Yes,” I repeated, clenching my jaw.
“That should not have happened.”
“Is that an apology?”
“It’s a statement of fact. I was mad at the situation with Fiona, and then, when I saw you with Penn, I just lost it.”
“I noticed that,” I told him. “Can we go back to Fiona? You really haven’t been together?”
“Not since the raid on the gambling hall.”
My jaw dropped. “That was in August, Camden.”
“I’m aware.”
“But why?” I gasped out.
“I realized it was too easy to leave Fiona behind. My instinct was to protect you, which was what I did. Fiona was pissed at me for leaving her there that night. She had to find her own way. I decided that it was best to cut ties then.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me believe that you were together?”
“You never asked.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Should I have to ask if my husband is seeing his mistress?”
“I am accustomed to letting people think whatever they want of me. It serves me in business for my adversaries to believe that I’m ruthless and above the law. Whether or not that is true is another matter. One that doesn’t actually have any bearing on reality.”
“But this isn’t business,” I said, my voice ri
sing. I couldn’t keep it down. I’d said that I didn’t want to argue with him, and here I was. I tried to breathe and focus on the present. I bit my lip until it hurt before speaking again, “Don’t you think it would have been different if you’d just told me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“It would have been easier to believe you weren’t the father if you’d told me you hadn’t been sleeping together months ago,” I ground out.
“I had no idea that she would be foolish enough to get pregnant.”
I tipped my head up in exasperation. This was going nowhere. I had to take him on faith. Either he was or wasn’t the father to that baby in Fiona’s stomach. Fiona had all but said that it was Kurt’s baby. She’d seemed genuinely afraid underneath her bitchy veneer. If it were Camden’s, wouldn’t she have thrown it in my face? Wouldn’t she have shown up well before this to let me know?
In some way, her coming here to get Camden’s help actually… made sense. It was crazy to even consider, but Fiona and Camden were a bit like how I felt about me and Penn. Penn was my person. I’d known him since I was young. He’d always been there for me. The person I’d thought I’d always end up with.
And while Fiona and Camden hadn’t known each other that long, they’d been together before Camden and I had decided to try this thing out. She had taken the news that we were together about as well as I did when learning that Penn was with Natalie. Which was to say, terribly, burning the world to cinders terrible. When things went bad, I turned to Penn. When things went bad for Fiona, she turned to Camden.
How strange it was that a pregnancy was what made me realize the connection. Made me actually… understand Fiona. I didn’t like understanding her, but it didn’t stop the fact that I did.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“You’re Fiona’s Penn,” I said softly, knowing the words would draw backlash.
He frowned and withdrew like I’d hit him. “I don’t particularly like the comparison.” He gritted his teeth. “Though I do see what you mean.”
“If I were in Fiona’s position, the first person I would have turned to was Penn.”
Camden’s hands balled into fists. “I like that comparison even less.”