The Wife He Divorced For A Lie

7. Ground Rules

Bella's POV

I hadn’t answered him that night. I’d left him standing by the car with his question still hanging in the October air, and driven off without a single glance in the rearview mirror.

It took me four days to decide what my answer actually was.

Four days of watching Kai build pumpkin towers on the kitchen floor, of Ronan asking careful, unpushy questions over dinner, of lying awake replaying the exact sound of Alexander’s voice cracking on the word father before I finally texted him one line: Coffee. Thursday. My terms.

He showed up at the coffee shop three blocks from my office wearing a suit like he thought this was a business meeting he could win.

"You're early," I said, sliding into the booth across from him.

"I didn't want to keep you waiting." Alexander pushed a cup toward me. "I got you the caramel one. I remembered you liked…"

"I don't drink caramel anymore." I moved the cup aside without touching it.

"Let's start there. If you're going to be around Kai, you don't get to assume you still know me."

His jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Fair."

"This isn't a negotiation, Alexander. I'm not here to discuss whether you get to see him. I'm here to tell you the conditions if I decide to allow it."

"Okay."

"No surprises." I counted it off on my fingers. "You don't show up unannounced. Not at his school, not at the park, not at my house. Every visit is scheduled, and every visit is supervised, at least for now."

"Supervised by who?"

"Me. Or Ronan."

Something flickered across his face at that name, quick and unpleasant, gone before he could hide it fully. "You want him to supervise my time with my own son?"

"I want someone there who's actually been present for the last four and a half years," I said. "That disqualifies you, not him."

He didn't argue. Small mercy.

"Second." I held up another finger. "No gifts. Not yet. You don't get to buy your way into his life with toys and trips to make up for the years you weren't there. If Kai starts liking you, it's going to be because of who you actually are with him, not because you showed up with a new bike."

“That seems…"

"Necessary," I finished. "You don't get to shortcut this."

"Fine." His voice had gone tight, controlled. "What else?"

"You don't undermine Ronan. Ever. Not in front of Kai, not to me, not through some backhanded comment about who his real father is or isn't." I leaned forward slightly. "Ronan has earned every bit of the place he holds in that boy's life. You haven't earned anything yet. If you try to compete with him instead of just being present, this ends immediately."

"He's not his father, Bella."

"He's been more of one than you have." I kept my voice even, refusing to let the old anger creep back in.

"That's not cruelty, Alexander. That's just true. You can either accept it and build something real with Kai anyway, or you can keep making this about you and lose him before you've even started."

He was quiet for a long moment, turning his own cup in slow circles the same way I used to turn mine at Sable's the night I first ran into Ronan. Habits traveled strangely between people who'd once shared a life.

"You're right," he said finally. "About all of it."

"I know I am."

"I just—" He exhaled, some of the composure cracking. "I missed four years of him, Bella. I missed him being born. I missed his first steps, probably his first word, every single milestone you and Ronan got to have, and I have to sit here and agree to conditions like a stranger applying for a background check."

"You are a stranger to him." I said it gently, but I didn't soften the truth of it. "That's not a punishment. That's just what happens when you choose someone else over your family and then don't find out you had one until five years later. The conditions aren't cruel, Alexander. They're what it takes to protect a four-year-old from a man he doesn't know yet."

"I understand."

"Do you?" I studied him. "Because the second you make this about your guilt instead of his wellbeing, I pull it all back. No warning, no second chances. I will not let you use my son to feel better about what you did to me."

"I hear you." He met my eyes, and for a moment I almost believed the sincerity sitting behind them. "I want to do this right, Bella. Whatever that takes."

“Good." I reached for my bag, ready to end this before it stretched any longer than necessary. "Then I'll have my lawyer draft a formal visitation schedule, and we'll start with one supervised afternoon a week. If that goes well—"

"Actually," he said, and something in his tone made me pause halfway out of the booth. "There's something I should tell you first."

"What."

"I already spoke to a family lawyer." He said it carefully, like he'd rehearsed the words and still couldn't make them sound less damning. "Before I came here today. Just to understand my options."

The air in the coffee shop seemed to thin. "Your options."

"My parental rights, Bella. What I'm entitled to, legally, as his father." He held up a hand quickly, like he could physically stop my reaction from arriving. "I'm not trying to fight you for custody. I just wanted to know where I stood before I sat across from you and agreed to whatever you asked."

"You went to a lawyer." My voice came out flatter than I expected, calm in the particular way that usually preceded something much less calm. "Before you even asked me if you could see him. You went to find out what you could take."

"That's not what I.."

"You just told me, five minutes ago, that you understood this wasn't about your guilt." I stood fully now, pulling my coat off the back of the booth. "And the entire time, you already had a lawyer on retainer figuring out how much of my son you could legally claim."

"Bella, please, let me explain"

"Send me the lawyer's name," I said, already walking toward the door. "Mine's going to want to know exactly who we're dealing with."