I called Greyson the next morning. Not because I wanted to. Not because I had any hope left. But because there was still a small, stupid part of me that believed he deserved to know.
The phone rang three times. Each ring felt like a countdown.
"Hadley." His voice was flat. Not warm. Not cold. Just... nothing.
"I'm pregnant," I said. No preamble. No softening. Just the truth.
Silence stretched between us like a chasm. I could hear him breathing. I could hear traffic in the background—he was probably already at the office, already back to his life as though nothing had happened. As though I hadn't collapsed in our living room less than twenty-four hours ago.
"How far along?" he asked finally.
"Eight weeks."
More silence. Then I heard it—a voice in the background. Low, deliberate, just loud enough for me to catch the words.
"It might not even be yours."
Poppy.
My hand tightened around the phone. My entire body went rigid.
Greyson cleared his throat. "Hadley," he said slowly, as though he was working through a difficult equation. "How do I know it's mine?"
The question landed like a physical blow. I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"What did you just say?"
"You heard me." His tone shifted—colder now, defensive. "We've barely been together in months. How do I know you haven't—"
"Stop."
But he didn't stop. "I'm just saying, Hadley, you can't expect me to take your word for it. Not after everything."
After everything. As though I was the one who had betrayed him. As though I was the one who had shattered seven years with a stranger in our bed.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't give him the satisfaction.
I hung up.
The phone slipped from my hand onto the hotel bed. I stared at it, waiting for it to ring again. Waiting for him to call back, to apologize, to say he didn't mean it.
It didn't ring.
I sat there in the sterile quiet of the hotel suite, my hand resting on my stomach. The fragile spark I'd been carrying since yesterday—the tiny, terrifying possibility that maybe this could be something good, something worth fighting for—extinguished completely.
There was nothing left to hope for.
---
Serena arrived twenty minutes after I texted her. I didn't ask her to come. I just sent three words: "I need you."
She walked in carrying two coffees and a paper bag that smelled like cinnamon rolls. She took one look at my face and set everything down on the table.
"What happened?"
I told her. The pregnancy. The phone call. Poppy's voice in the background. Greyson's accusation.
Serena didn't gasp or offer sympathy or tell me it would be okay. She just sat down beside me on the edge of the bed and said, "That motherfucker."
I laughed. It was a broken, hollow sound, but it was something.
"I don't know what to do," I whispered.
Serena handed me a coffee. "Yes, you do."
I looked at her.
"You're Hadley Spencer," she said quietly. "You've been pretending to be someone else for seven years. But you're not her anymore. You're done pretending."
I stared into my coffee. The steam rose in delicate spirals, disappearing into nothing.
"I don't know if I can do this," I said.
"You can." Serena's voice was firm. "And I'll be right here when you do."
For the next two hours, I cried. Ugly, silent, shaking sobs that I hadn't allowed myself since the hospital. Serena didn't try to fix it. She didn't tell me to stop. She just sat there, holding my hand, letting me break.
When I finally stopped, I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I looked at myself in the mirror—red eyes, pale skin, hair tangled from restless sleep. I looked like someone I didn't recognize.
I straightened my blazer. Smoothed my hair. Took a breath.
When I walked back into the suite, Serena was still there, waiting.
"I need a plan," I said.
Serena smiled. Not a happy smile. A fierce one.
"Then let's make one."
---
Poppy Vasquez was many things, but she wasn't stupid.
She knew the pregnancy was a problem. A tether. A complication that could pull Greyson back toward his wife, toward guilt, toward second thoughts she couldn't afford him to have.
So she escalated.
It started small. A fabricated call log on Greyson's phone showing repeated calls from Hadley's number to Poppy's personal line—calls Hadley had never made. Screenshots of threatening texts that had never been sent. A carefully constructed narrative of harassment, instability, danger.
Poppy played the victim with surgical precision.
"She's been calling me," Poppy whispered to Greyson one evening, her voice trembling just enough. "She says I ruined her life. She says she's going to make me pay."
Greyson frowned. "Hadley wouldn't—"
"Look at the call logs," Poppy interrupted, handing him her phone. "Look at the messages."
Greyson looked. And because he wanted to believe it—because it was easier to believe his wife was unhinged than to face what he had done—he accepted it without question.
"She's unstable," Poppy said softly. "I'm scared, Greyson. What if she does something?"
Greyson set the phone down. His jaw tightened.
"I'll handle it," he said.
Poppy smiled. Not the sweet, deferential smile she used in public. A different one. Sharper.
"I know you will."
