After Ten Years He Said I Was Too Old and Planned for Me to Raise His Son Chapter 1

On our tenth wedding anniversary, my husband and I were walking downtown when a girl stopped us.

Her eyes were bright, sparkling with a youthful shyness. She didn't dare look directly at Liam, turning instead to me.

"Ma'am," she said, her voice a nervous flutter, "I just think your son is super cute. Would you mind if I, like, got his number?"

It wasn't the first time a woman had hit on Liam. It was, however, the first time one had mistaken me for his mother.

Usually, Liam would lean in and kiss me, a performative display of affection. "Sorry," he'd say, "but my heart is already taken."

Today, he hesitated. Just for a beat. Then he said, "No, I'm with someone."

I froze, my hand still linked in his arm. He hadn't said that the someone he was with was me. Standing right beside him.

I looked at him, at the face that had somehow defied the last decade while mine had dutifully recorded every second of it, and for a sliver of a moment, a cold dread washed over me. Did I make a mistake? Was I wrong all those years ago, ignoring everyone who told me not to be with him?

He was nineteen when he loved me most. A nineteen-year-old with a thirty-one-year-old woman could, with some effort, earn a few reluctant blessings. But a twenty-nine-year-old man with a forty-one-year-old woman? It just sounded wrong, a mismatch of seasons. One was in his prime; the other, to put it bluntly, had one foot inching toward the grave.

And in the years we'd been together, he had gained everything. Not yet thirty, and already a titan in his field. There was a never-ending line of young, beautiful girls ready to throw themselves at him, their eyes full of adoration.

The only thing I had to hold onto was the fact that he loved me.

But that night, when a private investigator delivered the evidence of Liam's affair into my hands, I realized I was wrong.

The man who took my money thought I was Liam's mother, bowing his head obsequiously. "Ma'am, five million is a bargain for proof of your son's infidelity."

I opened the video file.

Liam's voice, laced with a dark, mocking humor, filled the car.

"Audrey's old. We walk down the street and people think she's my mother. In bed, she can't even keep up with me anymore."

"I was crazy in love with her back then, I'll admit it. But the family business needs an heir, and Sierra is young. When she has the baby, we'll let Audrey raise it."

"That's the least I can do for her, right?"

On the passenger seat, a pregnancy diagnosis lay still and white.

My hand went to my stomach as I dialed the number for the clinic.

* * *

I hung up the phone after scheduling the appointment.

The video was still playing on the tablet in my lap. A group of them, packed into the leather booth of some dark, expensive club, the air thick with smoke and liquor.

"Liam, my man," one of his friends slurred, "that old lady of yours... she's gotta be what, forty now? And you're not even thirty. It's just not right!"

Liam, holding court in the center of the sofa, let out a low chuckle and corrected him. "Forty-one."

"I threw her a fortieth birthday party last year," he continued, his voice smooth. "She's exactly twenty years older than Sierra."

Sierra, all sharp angles and coltish limbs, leaned against him to light his cigarette, her hand tracing a lazy circle on his chest. "Oh my god," she cooed. "Doesn't that mean she's getting, like, age spots? Liam, baby, how can you even stand to touch her?"

Liam exhaled a plume of smoke, his expression unreadable in the dim light. "She was a knockout back in the day, I'll give her that. But even a goddess gets old. The other night, I was in the mood for a second round. I took a shower, and by the time I came out, she was fast asleep."

"She can't keep up with me," he said, a note of finality in his tone. "And that's now. Imagine a few years from now, when my parents start getting sick. I'll be stuck taking care of three senior citizens."

The recording went silent for a second before the booth erupted in raucous laughter.

Another friend piped up. "But was Audrey ever really that hot? I mean, hotter than Sierra?"

Sierra looked at Liam, her eyes wide with expectation.

He casually lifted her chin, blowing a stream of smoke into her face. A strange, nostalgic look flickered across his own. "Our Sierra is... average, in most respects. Except for her eyes..."

He paused, his voice softening. "They're really beautiful."

Sierra turned her head, a shy smile playing on her lips. In that instant, I saw her face clearly. The eyes—a mix of defiance and pleading—were a five-out-of-ten copy of my own.

Or rather, a copy of my younger self.

"Just focus on a healthy pregnancy," Liam said, his tone uncharacteristically gentle as he gazed into those eyes. "As long as it's a boy, I'll take good care of you."

A blush crept across Sierra's young, pretty face. She touched her belly and nodded obediently.