Chapter 3 Isla's Pov
1746 Words
Three weeks after I slept with the man I hated most in the world, my period did not come.
At first, I blamed stress.
Stress could ruin sleep, appetite, memory, dignity. Stress could explain anything if I needed it badly enough.
So I ignored the first day.
Then the second.
Then the third.
On the fourth morning, Tessa stood in the doorway of her bathroom with a pharmacy bag in one hand and the expression of a woman about to detonate my life for my own good.
“Pee,” she said.
I sat on the closed toilet lid in one of her oversized sweatshirts, my laptop open on the sink with a half-finished job application for a clinic in Vancouver.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Tessa.”
“Isla.”
“I’m only late because my fiancé cheated on me with my half-sister while she was wearing my dead mother’s wedding veil, then I had a nervous breakdown and accidentally slept with Cade Harrington.”
Tessa did not blink at that. “Exactly. Pee.”
Ten minutes later, four pregnancy tests sat on the bathroom counter.
All positive.
The plastic sticks looked small and harmless.
Looking at them made me want to laugh.
They were not harmless.
They were bombs.
I stared until the pink lines blurred.
Tessa sat on the floor beside me without speaking and that frightened me more than anything. Tessa always had words. Warm words. Practical words. Words that could turn a disaster into a something else.
This time, she only placed her hand over mine.
There was a baby inside me.
A life.
A consequence.
A secret.
“It could be Marcus’s,” I whispered.
The words tasted like betrayal all over again.
One week before I found him with Vivian, Marcus had touched my face in the kitchen and told me he was sorry for being impossible. He had said he did not want the injury to turn him into someone I could not love. I had been tired. Lonely. Desperate to believe we were still us.
So I let him hold me.
Then came the other memory.
A hotel room.
A black mask.
Cade Harrington’s hands on my waist, his mouth at my throat, his voice in the dark saying something that sounded like I’m sorry while I clung to him as if one reckless night could burn Marcus out of my skin.
I pressed both hands over my face.
“f**k! I don’t know who the father is.”
Tessa released a careful breath. “Okay.”
“No.” I looked at her sharply. “Do not say okay like this is okay.”
“It is not okay. But this is a mess you cannot afford to start panicking for. You need to have a clear head.”
A laugh scraped out of me. “You sound like me.”
“That is because you are currently unavailable to be yourself. So I am here to do that.” She picked up one of the tests, glared at it, then placed it back down. “You need a doctor.”
“I know.”
“And eventually, you need to tell one of them. Or both.”
“No.”
“Isla.”
“No.” I stood too quickly and grabbed the sink when the room shifted. “Tell who exactly? Marcus, who faked half his helplessness while sleeping with my sister? Or Cade, who destroyed Marcus’s career and then slept with me because neither of us knew who the other was?”
Tessa’s face tightened. “Cade doesn’t know?”
“He does not know it was me. We were wearing masks.” My voice dropped. “I only know because he left his wallet behind.”
“And Marcus?”
“Marcus can rot in hell.”
“That is not a plan.”
“It is the only one I have.”
By noon, I had booked an appointment with my doctor.
By three, I was sitting in a private sports medicine clinic wearing sunglasses indoors like a criminal with nausea.
I realised too late it was a stupid place to come.
Half the athletes in Toronto used the clinic. Framed jerseys hung on the walls. Men in team jackets moved through the halls. Trainers spoke in low voices. Every sound reminded me of ice, blood, shouting, Marcus screaming, Cade looking back.
I filled out the intake form with a hand that barely shook.
Date of last period.
Symptoms.
Possible pregnancy.
I checked the box and folded the paper quickly, as if hiding it could make it less true.
“Isla Bennett?”
I stood at the mention of my name. Then I saw him.
Cade Harrington stepped out of the hallway in a black training shirt and dark athletic pants, broad shoulders taking up too much space, scar cutting through one eyebrow, grey eyes fixed on me like fate had a cruel sense of timing.
He was the face from the ice.
The face from the hotel.
The face from the mask.
The face from the ID.
His eyes moved over me. Surprise came first. Then recognition. Then something darker.
“You,” he said.
My body went cold.
“Wrong person.”
I tried to pass him. His hand closed around my wrist and I looked down at his hand, then back at him.
He released me immediately.
Smart man, I thought.
“You’re Marcus Vale’s girl.”
The words hit like an insult.
“Ex-girl,” I said.
His eyes sharpened. “I have been looking for you.”
“That is unfortunate for both of us.”
I stepped around him.
Cade did not touch me again but he did not need to. At six foot four, he could become a wall by breathing.
“Move,” I said.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we do not.”
“Yes, we do.”
“I came here for a doctor’s appointment, not whatever this is.”
His gaze dropped for one second to the folded intake form in my hand.
I pressed it against my body. Or did I do that too late, I thought with panic. Had he seen something?
His voice lowered as he spoke. “There is a video.”
My stomach dropped. “What video?”
The nurse glanced back from the end of the hall. Cade noticed, stepped closer and held out his phone.
“Not here,” he said.
“I am not going anywhere with you.”
“Then look.”
I should have walked away.
I should have called the nurse.
I should have done anything except stand in that hallway and watch my worst night come alive on his screen.
But I looked and it changed everything.
The footage was grainy but clear enough.
It was a hotel hallway.
Cade was pressed against the wall. My hands in his shirt. His mouth on mine.
His hands lifting me as the door opened behind us.
The timestamp glowed in the corner. It was the night after Marcus and Vivian destroyed me.
My skin went hot, then cold.
“Turn it off,” I whispered.
He locked the phone. “Someone got the hotel footage.”
My mouth dried. “How?”
“I am trying to find out.”
“Who has it?”
“A gossip site. They are threatening to publish it in three hours.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” My voice rose. “No, that cannot happen.”
His jaw tightened. “My agent thinks there is a way to control it.”
I stared at him. “Your agent?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.” I laughed and it came out sounding ugly. “Of course the man who shattered my life has a media strategy.”
His face hardened. “I did not shatter your life.”
“You crosschecked Marcus into the boards.”
His eyes went flat. “Marcus is not the victim you think he is.”
The words sliced through me. “What does that mean?”
Cade looked toward the nurse again, then back at me. “It means there are things you do not know.”
“I know enough.”
“No, Isla. You really do not.”
I didn't speak immediately while thinking how my name in his mouth was a mistake.
A memory moved between us just then. It was of the hotel room, his hands, his voice in the dark and the baby inside me.
I stepped back in a bid to shake off the memory. “Do not say my name.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Fine.”
“What is your agent’s brilliant plan?”
He hesitated and that was enough to make me hate the answer before I heard it.
“Fake dating,” he said.
For a moment, I forgot how to speak.
Then I laughed. It came out too loud.
The nurse looked over again.
“You are f*****g crazy!” I said.
He shook his head. “No.”
I looked at him with wide eyes. “You want me to fake date the man I swore to ruin?”
“I do not want anything. I only want the video buried.”
“And pretending we are together does that?”
“It turns a scandal into a story we control.”
“I am not your story.”
“No,” he said quietly. “But you are about to become theirs.”
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I pulled it out with numb fingers.
A text from my father lit the screen:
My office. Now. We need to discuss your recent INDISCRETIONS.
He knew, I thought. My father knew.
The walls closed in just then as the pregnancy test lines flashed through my mind.
The nurse called my name again while Cade watched me carefully.
For once, there was no coldness in his eyes.
Only calculation.
And maybe warning.
I thought of how I stood between a doctor’s room, a scandal, a pregnancy I could not explain and the man I had sworn to destroy.
For the first time in three weeks, I understood that hell was not a place.
It was a circle.
And somehow, I was standing in the middle of it.
- Writer
