You Faked Your Death for Her？Great！I Had His Baby Chapter 08

You Faked Your Death for Her？Great！I Had His Baby Chapter 08

At some point, I stopped thinking about Ethan.

The man I’d once wanted to marry.

Then resented.

Then finally gave up on.

He thought I’d wait exactly where he’d left me.

He thought I couldn’t live without him.

He thought never moving on was the only choice I’d ever make.

For a while, I thought so too..

But once a heart goes cold, it finds somewhere else to get warm.

When I was seven months pregnant, I went back to my parents‘ place to take care of a few things.

That evening, the doorbell rang.

Mom went to answer it.

Then I heard a hoarse voice from the entryway.

“Mrs. Rhodes… I finally made it back. I can’t find Evile. Is she here?”

Mom froze.

“Ethan? Weren’t you… presumed dead in the remote backcountry?”

“Mrs. Rhodes, I got lucky.”

Ethan’s voice was fast and excited, as if he’d been holding the story in for an entire year.

“I got separated from my group on the Presidential Traverse and fell into a rock crevice. I broke my leg and couldn’t climb back out.”

“The place was so well hidden that even the SAR team couldn’t find me. I survived on water

seeping through the rock and whatever lichen I could find.”

a way out.”

“There was no cell service anywhere on the ridge. I was trapped out there for an entire year before

I finally made it back.”

He told the story with everything he had.

Mom opened her mouth, then glanced toward the ving room.

At that moment, Miles walked out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of soup.

The second Ethan saw him, his expression stiffened.

He looked Miles up and down for a long moment.

Something about him seemed familiar, but Ethan couldn’t place it.

“Are you one of Evelyn’s relatives?”

His voice held a trace of confusion.

“Have we met somewhere before?”

Miles didn’t answer.

He simply shifted slightly, blocking Ethan’s view into the house.

“Who are you looking for?”

“My fiancée. Evelyn.”

Ethan tried to look past his shoulder into the living room.

Miles raised a hand and rested it lightly against the door.

Ethan’s expression sharpened.

“What are you doing?”

Miles looked at him.

“That’s what I should be asking you.”

“Evie!”

His voice rose through the house.

“Did you hear me? It’s me, Ethan! I’m alive!”

“I came back and found out you’d moved. Was it because you couldn’t stand living in that house

anymore? Because everything there reminded you of me?”

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“I’m back.”

“I came to take you home.”

I paused, then slowly got up from the couch and made my way to the entryway with one hand at my lower back.

Ethan had lost a lot of weight.

It looked like taking care of Sophie had drained more out of him than he’d expected.

I counted the days.

It wasn’t time for his planned “return” yet.

Why had he come back early?

My eyes moved over his technical shell.

It was torn in several places.

He really did look like he’d crawled out of the mud.

“Evie!”

The moment he saw me, his eyes reddened.

“I finally found my way back!”

“I made it through the Presidential Traverse. I survived!”

He rushed forward a step.

He stopped.

The joy on his face turned to confusion.

Then disbelief.

“You…”

His voice shook.

His first thought was obvious.

The baby was his.

But no.

He knew better.

Every time we’d slept together, Ethan had been obsessive about contraception.

There had never been an accident.

Not once.

Slowly, he turned toward Miles.

As if confirming exactly what Ethan had just realized, Miles deliberately rested one hand at the

small of my back.

The gesture was completely natural.

Ethan looked at Miles again.

And suddenly, that nagging sense of recognition had an answer.

The licensed civil wedding chapel.

That day, while Sophie had been coaxing him inside to get legally married in a civil ceremony…

The man and woman he’d seen walking away.

And the champagne–gold wedding favor box they’d left for the staff.

It was the design I’d spent forever choosing.

Months earlier, I’d held up the sample and asked him excitedly,

“Do you like the champagne gold?”

He hadn’t even looked up.

“Whatever you want.”

That was all he’d said.

He’d never cared much about the wedding.

Because he’d always believed I’d never move on.

To him, I was the woman who would wait forever.

The woman who only needed a few sweet words before falling right back in line.

But that day, while he walked into the licensed civil wedding chapel with another woman…

I had walked into the same chapel holding another man’s hand.

And ended our nine–year relationship for good.