“Why don’t you take your shower? I’ll wait.”

I did need a few minutes to gather my thoughts. I’d planned to deliberate for at least a few days on how to tell him what I knew. Now I had only the time it took to take a shower. “If you don’t mind, that would be great. Thank you.” I motioned toward the couch. “Make yourself at home.”

In the shower, my head was a jumbled mess, and I felt a little lightheaded. But I didn’t have time for a complete meltdown, so I stood under the water, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths until it felt like the world had stopped spinning so fast.

There was no easy way to begin the conversation I needed to have, and I could no longer hide behind any doubts I’d fabricated about the information. Everything lined up. Even Fisher was convinced. So I guessed I’d just have to start from the beginning. Hudson already knew I read diaries, and I was pretty sure I’d told him about the one where the woman got married at the New York Public Library. So I suppose something like, I read this diary a while ago… is how I would start. But then what? Did I say, Hey, by the way, did you ever suspect your wife was having an affair? That made me hyperventilate.

What if I’m wrong?

What if I’m right?

What if telling him takes the most sacred thing in his life away?

Am I ruining a little girl’s life?

Would I want to know if my dad wasn’t really my dad?

Oh, God. That thought made my head spin even more. The way my parents slept around, it was entirely possible that my father wasn’t my father.

Oh, Lord. Who cares about my family? I wished it were me this was happening to, not Hudson and his beautiful little girl.

For the rest of my shower, random thoughts popped into my head, and I alternated between trying to keep up with them and trying to calm myself down with slow breathing. Would I die if I climbed out my bedroom window to escape? When my hands started to get pruney, I knew I had to pull my shit together.

So I turned off the water, dried off, brushed out my hair, and pulled on sweats and a T-shirt before wiping the steam from the mirror and giving myself a little internal pep talk.

Everything’s going to be fine. No matter what the outcome, eventually things will fall into place the way they’re supposed to be. It may be a bumpy road, but if a diary about a man I’m crazy about made its way into my hands before I met him—there’s a reason for it. Somehow God put this in my hands, and, in the end, everything will be right.

I took one last deep breath and whispered to myself, “It’s all in fate’s hands now.” Then I opened the bedroom door.

Only to find it wasn’t in fate’s hands.

It was in Hudson’s.

Because I’d left the diary on the coffee table, and he was currently reading it.

He looked up. “Why the hell do you have my ex-wife’s diary?”

CHAPTER 31

Hudson

“I don’t understand. Why would Lexi sell her diary on eBay, and how the hell did you wind up with it?”

Stella shook her head. “I didn’t buy that diary on eBay. Evelyn gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Evelyn? Evelyn Whitley?”

“Yes.”

“How did Evelyn get it?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“When did she give it to you?”

“For my birthday last year—so about eighteen months ago.”

I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but I knew Evelyn and Lexi didn’t speak anymore. I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I’d gone to pick up Charlie, and my ex-wife had been in a particularly bitchy mood. She’d asked me if I kept in touch with Evelyn. Of course, I didn’t. Evelyn was my sister’s friend, and not one I was too fond of to begin with.

“I just read the first page. It starts on the day we met.”

Stella looked pale. “I know.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling something between bamboozled and angry, but I tried to stay calm. “You just happened to receive my ex-wife’s diary? From the woman you were pretending to be the night we met?”

“It sounds far-fetched. I realize that. But, yes, that’s what happened. I had no idea it belonged to your ex-wife until the other night.”

“The other night? At my house when you said you had a headache and bolted?”

She nodded. “That’s when it all clicked together.”

I’d gone over that evening in my head a dozen times, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. One minute we were fine and laughing, and the next she was out the door. I shook my head. “I don’t understand, Stella.”

She sighed. “Do you think we can sit down to talk about this?”

I dragged a hand through my hair. “You sit. I need to stand.”

Hesitantly, she walked over to the chair and sat down. I started to pace in the living room. “What happened the other night at my house?”

Stella looked down and spoke to her hands. “Charlie said her full name, and I remembered it from a diary I’d read a while ago. Do you recall I told you I’d read the diary of a woman who got married at the library? That I used to go sit on the stairs and look for the people I’d read about?”

I was so confused. “You were looking for me and Lexi?”

Stella nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yeah…I guess I was.”

It seemed incredulous that my ex-wife’s diary could fall into my new girlfriend’s hands by coincidence. But even if that’s exactly what had happened, I still didn’t get why Stella got so freaked out the other day.

I held up the diary. “So this is why you’ve been avoiding me? Because you realized you’d read my ex-wife’s diary?”

She continued to avoid my eyes. “Yes.”

I paced a few times, trying to see the full puzzle, but I was missing a few pieces. “Why? If this was all some big coincidence, why not just tell me?”

Stella was quiet for a long time. That was freaking me out.

“Answer me, Stella.”

She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked completely distraught. I felt torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to scream at her for whatever the fuck craziness she had going on.

Unfortunately, the latter won out, and I barked, “Goddammit, Stella. Answer me!”

She jumped in her seat and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Because…there are things…in the diary entries.”

“What things?”

Lexi and I didn’t have a great relationship, especially at the end. But I wasn’t ever cruel to her. I hadn’t given her anything to write about that would freak Stella out.

Stella started to cry harder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I couldn’t take seeing her upset, so I walked over and kneeled in front of her. Pushing strands of wet hair from her face, I spoke quietly. “Relax. Stop crying. Nothing Lexi could have written in some diary is going to hurt me. This hurts me, seeing you so upset. What’s going on, sweetheart?”

Trying to calm her only seemed to trouble her more. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. So I pulled her in for a hug and held her until she calmed down a little. Once she did, I tilted her chin up so our eyes met. “Talk to me. What has you this upset?”

Her eyes jumped back and forth between mine, and it felt like I was watching her damn heart break.

“Lexi…” She sniffled. “She talks about having an affair.”

I blinked a few times. “Alright… Well, I didn’t know she had an affair. But I guess I can’t say I’m shocked. I caught her in lies about meaningless things over the years, and at one point I had suspected she might be seeing someone, although she always denied it. Lexi’s pretty selfish and did some shady shit, including hiding money and disappearing until late at night. Is that what’s been eating at you? You thought I’d be upset to find that out? It’s not pleasant to hear, but that part of my life is over.”

Stella closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s more.”

“Okay…what? What is it?”

“The man she was sleeping with, she wrote that he was your best friend.”

My face wrinkled. “Jack?”

“She never says his name, but she refers to him with the letter J... And...” Stella swallowed once more and took a deep breath. “Lexi doesn’t know who the father is.”

I had to be in some serious denial, because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. “Father of who? What do you mean?”

Stella’s lip trembled. “Charlie. She doesn’t know who Charlie’s father is. She was sleeping with both of you at the time she was conceived.”

***

Until a week ago, I’d felt like I had the world by the balls. I remember watching my little girl cook me dinner with the woman I was crazy about—the two of them laughing and smiling—and thinking how right everything finally felt after so long. And now…it felt like the world had me by the balls.