You Faked Your Death for Her？Great！I Had His Baby Chapter 02

You Faked Your Death for Her？Great！I Had His Baby Chapter 02

xThat night, after Ethan fell asleep, the phone beside him suddenly lit up.

I reached over to turn off the screen and saw the message.

[Ethan, I threw up again today. When are you coming to take care of me? The baby and I miss you so much!]

The contact name was Bambi.

My hand stopped in midair for two seconds.

Then I picked up his phone and opened their message thread.

There was only one message.

The one she’d just sent.

So Ethan had been “cleaning up” after himself every day.

I hesitated, then tapped into her Instagram profile.

Her latest post showed two photos of positive pregnancy tests.

The caption read:

[Two pink lines. The sweetest surprise.]

It had been posted at three that afternoon.

The exact day Ethan and I had finally set our wedding date.

That same day, another woman had been celebrating the news that Ethan was going to be a father.

Same day.

Different future.

I put the phone down, went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and slowly drank the whole thing.

By the time I came back, Ethan had rolled onto his side, one arm resting lazily across his eyes.

“Evie…”

His voice was thick with sleep.

I didn’t move.

His brow furrowed slightly, as if he were dreaming.

“I just dreamed…”

His voice was soft and slightly nasal with sleep.

“I went missing, and you didn’t even wait for me. You turned around and married someone else.”

He sounded shaken and instinctively shifted closer to me.

The old me would’ve thrown my arms around him immediately.

I would’ve said something embarrassingly earnest about how we’d never leave each other.

Tonight, I gave a small, humorless laugh.

“Go back to sleep.”

He cracked his eyes open and gave me a drowsy look, as if my answer hadn’t satisfied him.

I had no energy left to deal with his mood.

I turned over and went to sleep.

The doorbell rang early the next morning.

Ethan’s three hiking buddies crowded into the apartment with fully loaded hiking packs.

“Ethan, I printed out the Presidential Traverse trail map. Look, we’ll enter at Appalachia Trailhead, pass Lakes of the Clouds Hut, then stop at Madison Spring Hut the first night to rest…”

They spread the map across the table and started planning, all talking at once.

I leaned against the kitchen doorway with my coffee.

I didn’t say a word.

After a while, Ethan picked up the map and brought it over to me.

“Evie, look. We’ve worked out how many miles we’ll cover each day. We’ve got a plan, and we know what we’re doing.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I took another sip of coffee.

He seemed a little uneasy and looked like he wanted to say more, but then his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and stepped onto the balcony before answering.

He was too far away for me to make out the words.

But every so often, I caught the soft, playful lilt at the end of a woman’s sentences through the glass.

Her voice was sweet and full of laughter.

Ethan’s three hiking buddies exchanged looks.

Then all three bent over the trail map and pretended to keep planning.

Two minutes later, Ethan hung up and came back inside.

“Someone from the company,” he said casually. “A new hire had a question about work.”

He looked at me, as if waiting for me to ask:

Which employee?

What happened?

I gave him nothing.

Instead, I thought about Bambi.

His company had recently hired several college graduates as management trainees.

One of them was Sophie Kendall.

I’d seen her once outside the building when I’d gone to meet Ethan on the day of her interview.

Ponytail.

Two dimples when she smiled.

And the second she saw Ethan, her eyes lit up.

She kept saying his name.

Ethan this.

Ethan that.

I’d even told him afterward, “That girl’s sharp.”

Ethan had smiled.

“Yeah. Her major’s a good fit too.”

Looking back, her major wasn’t the only thing that fit.

“Evie?”

Ethan suddenly called my name, a tentative note in his voice.

“Aren’t you going to ask what she needed?”

“I don’t know anything about your company.”

I wiped my hands and picked up my bag.

“I’m going to the grocery store. You guys keep planning.”

I reached the door when my phone buzzed.

A message flashed across the screen.

[Booked for Thanksgiving Day.]

I typed back one word.

[Okay.]

Before I could lock the screen, Ethan snatched the phone out of my hand.

“Thanksgiving Day? What for?”

He frowned at the unfamiliar profile picture and the message thread, which contained only two messages.

“Who is this?”