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My jaw unhinged. Since when was Neil a father? Was this somehow connected to Veronica’s baby? Wait. Was Veronica’s baby his baby?
Petra crowded up to Neil, practically fizzing. “Oh! Is that what the trip to Singapore was about? Did your partner give birth there? Wow, congratulations, sir!”
Neil stood motionless. Silence congealed in the space where denial should have been.
I must have the wrong end of the stick. There’s no way he’d keep something so monumental from me.
“Neil?” I managed in a strangled tone.
He seemed to register my presence again, his eyes flitting over to me. A heavy pause draped over us.
Please say something. Say it was someone’s idea of a cruel prank. Say there’s been a mistake…
Neil licked his lips, eyes drifting back to the bouquet. Each passing second of silence twisted the knife in my gut further. I swallowed through a constricted throat, the hot sting of unshed tears welling behind my lashes.
“Thank you,” Neil said. “I’ll take them to my office.” He reached for the bouquet and cradled the blooms against his shirt. Then he was off down the corridor.
Petra exchanged a confused look with me. I shrugged at her, keeping my tears held back.
If the baby was his, did that mean Veronica and Neil were a couple this whole time, and I was the other woman? Or was this all some kind of misunderstanding?
I trailed after Neil into his office, closing the door behind me with a snick.
Neil plunked the bouquet onto the coffee table. The teddy bear toppled over, grinning vacantly at us with its embroidered smile and glass bead eyes.
“Neil… What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer me. He searched the bouquet and teddy bear thoroughly, then shoved them inside a cabinet.
“Neil?” I asked again.
He dragged a hand over his face. “Someone’s just sent me a clear message that they know about Ben.”
“Are you… Are you Ben’s father?”
Neil hesitated, then replied bluntly, “Yes.”
The admission detonated inside me with the force of a bomb. I nearly lost my footing.
So, it’s true.
More questions shuddered past my quivering lips. “A-Are you two… together? Have we been having an affair this whole time?”
“No. I promise you. There are reasons for everything.”
I scoffed. “Like what?”
Neil took a step towards me. “Amelia, please…”
I shrank away, shaking my head vehemently. Tears spilled free at last, blazing paths down my cheeks.
“It’s not what you think. Allow me to explain.”
But what explanation could there possibly be? He had been messing around with me while the mother of his child fended for herself in Singapore. Whichever way you looked at it, that wasn’t good.
Neil said something, but I didn’t hear it over the blood rushing in my ears. Then the shrill ring of his phone cut through the room. He swore under his breath as he plucked the device from his suit jacket and squinted at the caller ID. “It’s Ruby,” he said.
A.k.a Veronica. The mother of his child.
