He Played Husband for Her Dare, So I Left Carrying His Baby novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: White Roses

Owen comes home with her wedding flowers and lies about tomorrow. Wren arrives at dawn and tells her to wear green.

Owen came home at ten to eleven with a bouquet of white roses.

They were the same flowers I had carried down the aisle at our wedding.

I was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

I had not turned on a lamp since I got home.

The sandwich bag with the three tests was in the drawer by my knee, under the takeout menus.

The socks were in my coat pocket.

"Hey, you," Owen said, and flipped the switch.

The light made me blink.

"Why are you sitting in the dark? Are you okay?"

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and kissed my forehead.

He smelled of whiskey and cold air.

"These are for you," he said, and laid the roses on the table. "Early for the anniversary."

"They're beautiful."

It came out steady, and I was glad.

I had practiced the whole drive home.

He pulled out the chair across from me and loosened his tie.

He was a handsome man, and he gave every woman in a room his full attention.

It had taken me years to see that he did it to everyone.

"How was the party?" I asked.

"Loud. Same people, same stories."

"Did anyone get a dare?"

His thumb stopped on his tie.

It was the smallest stop, and I would not have noticed it yesterday.

"Delia dared one of the accountants to sing the national anthem on a chair," he said. "It was awful."

He had not been wrong about a single word of it.

He had left out only one thing.

"What do you have tomorrow?" I said.

"Golf. Hank and I are driving up the coast for the night, then back Sunday before dinner."

He reached over and covered my hand.

"I'll be home in time. I'd never miss our fifth."

Hank had not picked up a golf club in the ten years I had known him.

He owned a boatyard, and he spent his Saturdays under a hull.

I knew that, and I knew that Owen knew I knew it.

He simply had not thought I would check.

I looked at his hand over mine and counted how many times he had said "Trust me" to me.

"Okay," I said.

"You've gone quiet." His voice went low and kind. "It's the anniversary, isn't it? Don't be sad, Libby. We're enough, remember?"

That was the sentence he said every time.

He said it after every negative test, and I had always said thank you.

"I know," I said.

"Good girl."

He took the roses to the sink and filled a vase, humming.

Upstairs he fell asleep within five minutes, on his back, one arm flung across my side of the bed.

I lay beside him with my hand flat on my stomach.

He slept deeply, and nothing in his face looked troubled.

At one in the morning I picked up my phone and typed to my sister.

You awake?

Wren worked nights in the ER and was always awake.

Three dots appeared at once.

What happened.

I carried the phone into the bathroom and shut the door.

I typed it out in one long message, with the invite pasted at the bottom.

I put the three words last: I'm pregnant, Wren.

The phone began to ring in my hand.

I did not pick up, because I could not have said any of it aloud without being heard through the wall.

She sent another text.

I'm outside your house in forty minutes. Don't wake him.

Wren's car was at the curb at five past two.

I let myself out the back, in my coat, with my shoes in my hand.

She was leaning on the hood with two coffee cups and a paper bag.

She took one look at me and put the cups on the roof.

Then she hugged me so hard my coat zipper bit into my collarbone.

"A baby," she said into my hair. "After all that."

"Don't cry," I said. "You'll start me."

"I'm crying."

"I know."

She held my face in both hands and looked at it.

Then her jaw set, and I saw the nurse and the big sister arrive together.

"Okay," Wren said. "Let me see the invite again."

I held out the phone.

She read it, her lips moving.

"Livestream to the whole group," she said. "She wants you to watch."

"I'm on his calendar by accident."

"Nothing about that woman is an accident." Wren scrolled up and down. "Where's the blood test?"

"Eight o'clock, at my doctor's office."

"I'm driving you."

"And then?"

"And then," Wren said, "you are not going to sit home in your pajamas and watch your husband get married on a screen."

She picked up one of the coffees and took a long swallow.

"Do you still have that green dress?" she said. "The one you wore to Dad's retirement?"

"Why?"

"Wear the green dress."

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