Billionaires Dollar Series

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that.” The furrow on his brow is killing me, making me feel like a personal failure. I haven’t helped smooth it out at all-I’ve only made it deeper.Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

We’ll be okay, I tell myself and the baby. Your daddy is a really good man. He’ll come around. But try as I may to crush the small kernel of doubt, a flicker of it remains.

“Bella…” Ethan says.

“There’s something moving in your car.”

“Oh!” I open the trunk and immediately start digging through my bags, and yes… there’s an annoyed hiss and then a gray head peeking out of one of my bags.

“Toast!”

The disgruntled cat lets me pick him up. “You’d been hiding in my packing, you rascal?”

He doesn’t confirm or deny, choosing silence instead-a clever move. “Oh, thank God,” I say. “Thank you, Ethan. I truly can’t thank you enough.”

He nods again. “Sure. Drive safe, Bella.”

“I will. Ethan?”

He pauses by the gate, big and solid and real and further out of my reach than he’d ever been before. His gaze is heavy. “Yeah?”

“I’m truly sorry about this situation. Whether you believe me or not regarding the rest, I hope you’ll believe that. I never wanted us to be like this.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “That,” he says finally, “I think I can accept.”

He disappears, out of my driveway and back to his own house, where his existence will continue as it was before I came into the picture.

Toast purrs contentedly as I carry him back up to his palatial house. I press a kiss to the soft, warm fur on top of his head. “Goodbye,” I murmur. “I’ll miss you so much.”

“Daddy,” Evie wails from her car seat. “Let’s gooo.”

“Just a second.” I stretch to my full height, peering above the hedge. I’m just barely able to make out the shape of a sleek, silver Jaguar on the driveway. The same car that’s always parked there when my neighbors are home.

No beat-up Honda Civic in sight.

“Daaaddy.”

“Yes, yes.” I close Evie’s door and settle into the driver’s seat. Haven is quiet in the backseat, playing with a doll she’s holding.

I see them when I back out of my driveway, right through the slats in their fence. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, walking down the familiar path toward their garage.

They see me. I raise a hand in hello, which is nothing we’ve ever done before. Why am I starting now?

My car crawls forward.

Mr. Gardner, his gray hair perfectly coiffed, raises a hand in a hesitant hello back. The car continues down the street. If I’d spoken to them more, I would have known Bella wasn’t the real deal.

Haven gives a dramatic sigh. “I don’t like our new neighbors.”

“They’re not new,” I correct. “They’ve lived there for years, you just haven’t noticed.”

She glares at me through the rearview mirror. “They are new,” she protests, “because Bella lived there before.”

My hand tightens around the wheel. Bella, my salvation, and Bella, my ruin.

“She was only living there temporarily.”

“Tem-po-rar-ily,” Haven pronounces, pouring as much disdain as is possible for a six-year-old into the word. It’s clear she doesn’t find my side of the argument very convincing.

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I don’t like them very much either.”

Not in comparison-not even now, knowing what I know, when Bella’s name turns to ash on my tongue and the memories feel like wounds.

Haven hoots in the backseat, content with her victory. Evie, having followed this conversation carefully, asks the one thing she’s picked up on.

“Bella is coming back?”

Haven saves me from responding. “No, silly,” she says. “Her and Daddy had a fight.”

“Bad Daddy,” Evie says, her voice one of deep reproach.

Sometimes I think parenthood is like being trapped in a madhouse for years, desperately trying to stay sane.

“We didn’t have a fight,” I lie, breaking one more of the rules I’d tried to live by for so long. Be honest with your kids.

“Then why are you so grumpy?” Haven asks, and after a millisecond’s pause, she exclaims, “Aha! See?” like she’s just received confirmation.

I shake my head, turning the car onto my mother’s street. Thank God she’s been a Greenwood Hills resident for as long as I have.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been grumpy,” I say, parking the car on the curb. “Bella and I were good friends, and then she had to move away.”

This, Evie understands. “Daddy’s sad?”

I exhale slowly. Daddy’s pissed, actually. Furious. Offended. Shocked. But I’m forced to lie again, because Bella has ensured she’ll be in their lives, now as the mother of their half-sibling.

“Yes,” I say. “Daddy’s sad.”

Haven reaches forward and puts her good hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be sad. You still have us.”

I put my hand on hers and feel like an indecisive balloon, caught between inflation and deflation. My anger dissipates like smoke in the wind. “And you two are all I’ll ever need, baby girl.”

Haven’s hand slips from underneath mine. “Grandma!”

A second later she’s unlatched her seat belt and struggles with her door, my mother laughing on the other side as she pulls it open.

“Hi there, honey!”

The girls wave cheery goodbyes to me as they bound up my mother’s driveway, hand in hand with her. I have everything I need, truly. I have a fantastic mother, two beautiful children, a company that’s thriving and a job that I love. I can handle another kid.