Smiling, I turned to my computer and got back to work, feeling . . . I don’t know. Strong? Confident. Badass. I felt like I imagined how Steph felt, and that was amazing.
The grin stayed on my face for several hours as I got caught up on email. It was getting close to four in the afternoon and the little Christmas tree I’d brought into the office twinkled and shimmered in the fading afternoon light. I was about to go raid the vending machine when there was a soft knock on my door.
I looked up and my breath stalled.
Kristen Morgan stood in the doorway of my office. I blinked, thinking I was hallucinating, but it was her. Dressed in dark denim jeans and a white turtleneck that hugged her upper body, she looked like she just walked off a Macy’s catalog.
Did she have the wrong office?
If she did, why in the hell was she here to see Brock?
“I know this is very unexpected, but I was hoping you had a moment,” she said, curling one manicured hand over the door knob. “Because I really need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I was absolutely dumbfounded.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “I need to talk to you about Brock. You deserve to know the truth.”
Chapter 32
“Deserve to know what truth?” I asked, having no idea what the hell she was talking about.
Kristen gestured at the chair. “May I?”
So polite.
I nodded and then, as she sat and placed her purse on the floor, I snapped out of the shock of seeing her here. “Wait a second.” I placed my hands on my desk, extremely wary of this. “What are you really doing here? We’ve maybe exchanged a handful of words our entire life and you’re suddenly here because you need to tell me the truth about something?”
“You have every right to be suspicious of my visit.” She crossed one impossibly long leg over the other. “If it was you coming to me, I’d feel the same way.” She smiled weakly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I know Brock isn’t here. That’s why I came down today.”
A chill settled over my skin. “How do you know that?”
“I was with him for years. We were engaged and we shared several mutual friends who work for your father,” she explained. “It came up in casual conversation that he was there.”
Casual conversation my ass. I did not like the idea that someone working there was keeping tabs on Brock and reporting back to Kristen. Instinct warned me that I needed this conversation to stop right now, before she could spew any “truths” at me. I didn’t know Kristen well. Brock never said anything bad about her, but I couldn’t fathom that there was some altruistic reasoning behind this visit.
“I’m actually really busy today,” I started. “So I’m not—”
“Did Brock tell you that I was pregnant?” she cut in.
I stopped—stopped talking and maybe stopped breathing. It took several moments for me to force out one word. “What?”
“I guess he didn’t. I’m not entirely surprised.” She tilted her head to the side. Icy blonde hair slipped over her shoulder. “You probably aren’t even that surprised. You’ve known him since you both were kids, so you know he’s not much of a talker.”
Brock was a talker—with me, at least. The room felt like it was spinning. “You were pregnant?”
Thick lashes lowered as she slowly nodded. “It was not too long after we got together. Maybe a little over two years into the relationship. I was on the pill, but I wasn’t exactly taking them regularly.” She laughed softly. “I wasn’t very responsible back then and . . .” She took a deep breath. “Since you’re with Brock now, you know how he is. He likes to . . . fuck.”
My stomach turned sour and a dozen mental roadblocks flew up.
“The pregnancy didn’t . . . it didn’t stick,” she went on before I could respond. “It really tore me up. I didn’t want to get pregnant back then, but once I found out that I was, I was happy, and he was happy. I wanted that baby, and I wanted Brock. I loved him, and when I lost the baby, I was a mess.”
I didn’t know what to say. Brock had never mentioned that Kristen had been pregnant and that seemed like something one would share. Then again. Brock rarely talked about Kristen.
“After I lost the baby, he proposed to me about three months later,” she said. “As you know, I said yes.”
I jerked in my seat. “I’m . . . I’m sorry to hear that you lost a baby. I didn’t know, but I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.” And why Brock had never mentioned it to me.
“I’m telling you because when Brock proposed to me, I knew why he had. I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t what I feared, but I was wrong.” Her gaze met mine, and there was a fine sheen to it, as if she was holding back tears. “I wanted to believe he wanted to marry because he loved me, but that wasn’t the case. Brock asked me to marry him because he felt guilty. He felt responsible for me losing the baby.”
“How . . . how did he feel responsible?”
“It was during a rough part of the relationship. He was traveling a lot, leaving me behind. I was stressed out. We were arguing a lot. It wasn’t his fault, but he blamed himself,” she said so sincerely that I wasn’t sure how to process it. “And that’s why he asked me to marry him. He wanted to make me happy again and he succeeded for a while, but I soon realized he was with me because he felt guilty. Not because he truly loved me. But that’s his MO.”