Chapter 29

With my headphones on and music blasting through my ears, I feel like a prizefighter ready to get into the ring. Or in this case, the pool. My awesome uncle Greyson has an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, and because he loves me, he lets me come here whenever I want to do laps. One of the most important things for my pregnancy is staying fit, and since swimming is the jam to my toast, I've been upping my laps game by about three each session.

Channeling the mental game of Katie Ledecky—we have the same name even if it's spelled differently!—and Michael Phelps, I sing at the top of my lungs as I drop my old-school matching track pants and jacket poolside. My cap is clinging to my head, holding my wild locks at bay as I stare at the water, ready to make it my bitch and swim myself to pretend gold.

I never tried out for the Olympic team, nor did I swim competitively on that level. It was an extracurricular in high school, a full ride to college, and a passion that still holds my heart. But that doesn't mean I don't fantasize about that large gold coin or championship the way every athlete does, and I won't lie and say that I haven't begged Mason's mom—who won gold for figure skating—to let me wear her medal a time or fifty.

I roll my neck until it pops, swinging my elbows behind me to try and loosen up my shoulders, back, and arms. Then I remove my headphones and scream at the top of my freaking lungs when a shadowy figure moves straight in front of me. My fist comes up to strike, but Cayden's hands fly up in surrender, warding me off.

"Whoa. Slow your punch there, Ali. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. You didn't hear me call out to you."

"A chronic problem of mine," I manage, though I'm positive he can hear the wariness in my voice. "Then again, I'm supposed to be the only one here right now."

After everything that happened with Cricket yesterday—oh, hell. I never told Bennett what Cricket said about him or the bag he had her bring to him. I started to. I tried. But then he distracted me and I… I didn't think about it again for the rest of the night. And now he's here. Clearly having followed me.

"How did you get in here?"

"I watched you punch in the code. You really should be more careful about that."

My hands hit my hips, and my head twists in attitude. "Don't worry, I'll make sure it's changed before I leave here today. What do you want, Cayden?"

"To show you these. My little Cricket didn't do everything she was supposed to do last night."

Hm. "And how do you know that?"

"I was watching, of course. As I've been doing for a while now."

He slams a stack of paper into my chest, intentionally grazing my boobs, and I shove him back. But in doing so, the papers fall to the ground like snowflakes. And as they do, I catch glimpses of each one. Bennett on top of a woman. Bennett's hands interlocked with a woman's, her arms above her head. Bennett's head pulled back in the throes of passion and ecstasy.

Before I can stop myself, I bend and pick them up, noting the time stamp on the top corner. These were taken a week ago. Mentally, I do the math, thinking through dates and times. I remember that day. It was the first day I felt crummy from my pregnancy, and my stomach wasn't right. We had back-to-back traumas all day, and I remember forcing myself to eat because I was worried about my blood sugar getting too low again. I was working a shift that day, and Bennett was off.

I had texted him a picture of me eating a protein bar, and his response was, Good girl. I'll reward you when you get home tonight. He did. He had dinner waiting for me, and then we took a bath together. Nothing was off about him. Not one thing.

My phone rings in the pocket of my track pants, and I bend down, sliding it out. It's Bennett. Does he know about these pictures? He rarely, if ever, calls me when he's on a shift. I send his call to voicemail, only to have it ring again in my palm and do the same. I need a minute or twenty, and I'm not picking up the phone and talking to him right now.

Because I'm holding pictures of him fucking another woman and I'm trying—I'm trying so damn hard—to find the loophole in this, but I'm coming up short. My heart sinks to the bottom of my soul where it fractures into a million tiny pieces of obliterated flesh. I yank my swim cap off and chuck it across the room. My knees hit the hardscape, my eyes scouring each horrifying image that's played out before me.

"Sending him to voicemail. That's cold. Cricket must have given him the pictures. It'll be interesting to hear him try and talk his way out of this."

The only thing I have to cling to is that Bennett wouldn't do this. I couldn't say that about Zane. Zane cheating wasn't a farfetched notion for me—not to mention I caught him in the physical act. But Bennett? I just don't see it. I think about him that night. Him every night we're together. The things we've talked about and shared.

He wouldn't cheat.

It's not who he is.

More than that, I can't imagine him doing anything to risk this baby.

Me aside, that is why we started this undeniably convenient arrangement in the first place. But…

I swallow past the rock stuck in my trachea, stifling the majority of the air from my lungs. My palms turn into sheets of sweat, and the pages become rumpled middle fingers pointed directly at me. The images all blur together. Her body. His body. The dark hotel room. The silk gold curtains surrounding the window, the shades partially closed. I know that hotel. It's the Four Seasons in Boston. I've been to events there.

I look up at a supremely smug Cayden. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm sick and fucking tired of everyone always loving him."

My lips twist. "You mean like his ex-wife?" I give him mockingly sad eyes. "Aw, poor Cayden. No one loves you. Tell it Dr. Phil or someone who pretends to give a shit."

His eyes flare, and I know I'm onto something there.

"You love her, right? I mean, you were fucking her for a couple of years. But she obviously didn't want you the same way you want her, which I get. Why would anyone pick you when they could have him?"

I stand, leaving the photos on the ground. I'll deal with them in a minute.

"Or is it more than that? Are you so in love with him that you'd take any piece of him you could get? Are you trying to ruin his life because he'll never love you back and neither will his wife?"

"Fuck you," he snarls, and I laugh caustically because that's about all I have left right now.

"Never." I shrug. "Him on the other hand…"

Rage boils up his face, hardening his features and reddening his cheeks. I likely shouldn't be taunting him like this. I'm alone in this building with a man twice my size and I'm pregnant. His hatred of all things Bennett puts me at a greater risk because he knows I'm pregnant with Bennett's child. A child Bennett has wanted for a long time.

Provoking a hungry bear fresh from hibernation never turns out well for the unsuspecting tourist. Not to mention he said he's been watching me for a while. That's the creepiest thing ever. Every woman's worst nightmare. I need him to leave, and I need him to leave now. I can deal with him after that.

"When my father died," I tell him, "I watched from the back seat, stuck and unable to move. I saw the slow, agonizing pain of his death. I hope one day you feel something a million times worse than that."

He chokes, not having expected that from me, and I'm not sure how much I mean it. I'm not one to wish death and pain on others—I'm a freaking trauma surgeon—but I hate this man with unparalleled vitriol.

"You can go now. You've done your worst."

"Not yet, Katy. I'm not sure I've done my worst yet. I've always had a fondness for ruining all the things Bennett loves."

He touches my hair, running his fingers down a thick lock of it, and I shiver at the cold malice in his eyes.

I give him a good, hard shove toward the exit, pushing all my weight into it and making him stumble a few steps, but unfortunately, he catches himself before he falls. For a second, he looks like he's about to come at me, but I point to the cameras in the corner.

"I wouldn't try it," I warn, holding his gaze and refusing to flinch. "You lay a finger on me, and I'll have you in jail for the rest of your life. That's not a threat. It's a promise. If you've done your stalkerish research, then you know exactly who I am and the pull I have in this city."

For a moment, he blinks, stunned by that, and I wonder if he has or if he's been so toxically focused on Bennett that he has no clue. I hope he doesn't.

He gathers himself and turns away from me. He knows he doesn't have to touch me to hurt me. And thankfully, his threat dies there as he notes the cameras all around this place. The central square guys don't fuck around when it comes to security. Or their families.

He gathers himself, his swagger returning. "See you around, Katy. Sorry I had to be the one to ruin your day, but sometimes evils are necessary." He chuckles at that, thinking he's so very funny.

Cayden saunters like a prideful alley cat toward the exit, and the moment he's gone, the door slamming shut behind him, I collapse to the floor. Air tumbles past my lungs only to rush back in. Thank God he left. Thank God, he didn't touch me.

My gaze drops to the images spread out before me. The cold stone beneath my ass stiffens my muscles to the point of rigor. The pages shuffle through my hands one after the other in an endless cycle as I search for something—one fucking thing—that will tell me these are bullshit.

Only I can't see beyond Bennett on top of this woman.

Leaving them where they are, I dive into the pool, starting my laps at a brutal pace. My mind swirls and tears threaten, but I can't reconcile what I know of Bennett to those pictures. I need to call him. I need to speak with him and face this head-on. I finish my lap and pull myself up and out of the water, go for my towel, and wrap it around me. The photos are on the ground beside my phone, and as I reach for it, something in one of the images catches my attention.

It"s night in the photo. As in, the crack of an open shade reveals a dark window beyond. I was home by the time it was dark out, and he was there making dinner. Lifting the picture, I examine it. I realize it's not a full time stamp, just a date, but no actual time. I spread out the images one by one and scrutinize each one carefully.

His hands holding hers are weird. It's so subtle that if you didn't look closely, you might not see it. But her fingers look almost cut off and misaligned with his.

Interesting. Hope starts to shake in my chest like an earthquake, but I'm not yet ready to scream hallelujah. I need a few more details first.

I don't call Bennett. Not yet. Instead, I make a totally different type of call.

Vander's gravelly voice crackles through my ear. "Kit-Kat?"

I fold my legs, still wrapped in my towel. "How easy is it to alter pictures?"

"Depends," he says. "What do you mean by alter?"

"Remove a person and replace their body with someone else's."

"To make it look authentic, that can be pretty difficult unless the person who is doing this reenacts the original image precisely, but far from impossible if someone has the right software."

"These aren't even the actual photographs. They're photocopies of photographs."

"Even easier," he says. "You can alter an image and print it out to look like a photo. But again, the person doing all of this would have to make the body swap almost identical to the original. What's going on?"

A weird, demented, almost psychotically giddy laugh chokes out of me and now the tears do start coming. "I need a favor. It's a big one."

"Anything. You know that."

"It's asking you to do something you shouldn't."

"Just tell me, Kit-Kat, and I'll do it. Let me worry about the rest."

God, I love my family. "I need you to run absolutely everything on a Cayden Craw. I want you to go as deep and dark and dirty as you can. I don't care how you do it, and I won't ever ask. I want every speck of dirt on the motherfucker you can find. He's made what I think are bullshit photos of Bennett with another woman to hurt me. More than that, he threatened me, Van. He said he's been following me and if I hadn't pointed out the security cameras in the corner…" I trail off on a heavy gulp.

Vander is silent for a very long moment, and I fling my legs out in front of me, folding myself in half and pressing my forehead to my knees. I hate putting Vander in this position. His father never intended to teach him how to hack, but that didn't last long. But when Vander got arrested in college during a hacking war with another top school, Lenox made him swear he'd stop. To Vander, that meant only doing clean hacks, and this is anything but.

"Can you just do this for me, Van? I wouldn't ask if I didn't need it. I need to find a reason to get rid of this guy once and for all. I'll go to the police regardless, but I want more than just a threat to get him by. But if it's too risky?—"

The door to the pool area opens again and Bennett comes walking in, searching around for me, and when he sees me sitting on the ground, bent in half with the phone pressed to my ear and the pictures surrounding me, his expression crumples, all the color draining from his face, and his expression growing desperate.

"Katy, those aren't real," he says, running over to me and collapsing on his knees beside me. He takes my arm, squeezing it, almost as if he's afraid I'm going to shirk him off or run. "You have to listen to me," he implores, his voice shaky and his speech rapid. "Please hear my words. I never had sex with that woman. I swear. I've never seen her before in my life. Those images are fabricated."

"I know."

"No. You don't understand. Katy, please. I'm telling you. However these photos came to be, that isn't me. I mean, it's me, but it has to be photoshopped or something. I never in my life had sex with that woman. I don't even know who she is or where those pictures were taken, but they've been altered somehow to have me on them."

"Bennett, I know. I believe you. I realized that before you even got here."

He falls back on his haunches, staring at me as if he's never seen me before. His hand covers his heart, and then he falls forward, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tighter than he ever has. "Thank God." He pants out one breath after the other. "Thank you for believing me. Thank you for trusting me. God, Katy. I've been going out of my mind since I saw them and when you didn't call me back, I left work and ran straight here." He pulls back and cups my face, his eyes glassy. "I love you. I'd never cheat. It's what I told you last night. You're the only one I'll ever want."

I drag his lips to mine and kiss him. My phone clangs on the ground, and I jolt back. "Oh. Vander is on the phone."

Bennett's eyebrows fold in. "Why is Vander on the phone? You called him and not me?"

He looks impossibly hurt. "Uh. Well. Um."

"You can tell him, Katy," I hear Vander shout. "In fact, put me on speaker. I have some questions for both of you."

I put Vander on speakerphone, and Bennett tells him and me everything about his conversation with Liz, followed by his boss this morning. Vander asks him some questions, things I don't fully understand, until he says, "Okay, I'm in." In the background, I hear the click of the keys, and my insides shrink a bit. "I'll get back to you," he says and then disconnects the call.