“Look at you,” I murmured. “Nobody is going to believe you’re with someone like me. My ex-husband will laugh in my face. He’ll know.”
“What do you do for a living?” Clark asked.
The question caught me completely off guard.
“I raised four children while he built his career. I ran the household. I kept everything together while he cheated on me for a year.”
Clark nodded thoughtfully.
“So you kept an entire family standing while a grown man lied to you every day. That’s not weakness. That’s the kind of person anyone would want to stand beside.”
Heat rushed into my face.
I stared down at the ruined napkin.
“You’re being paid to say things like that.”
“I’m being paid to play your boyfriend for one afternoon,” he replied. “I’m saying that now, on my own time.”
A quiet laugh escaped me.
It was the first genuine laugh I’d had in weeks.
“He’s going to bring his mistress, Clark. Percy. She’s ten years younger than me and looks like she stepped off a runway. And he sent me a text saying she’s part of his family now.”
“And what did that feel like when you read it?”
“Like he was trying to erase me.”
Clark carefully placed his coffee on the table.
“You don’t have to disappear.”
I met his eyes.
There was nothing rehearsed about the way he said it.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he answered. “Just stand next to me. Smile at your children. Enjoy your son’s birthday. I’ll handle the rest.”
I thought about Ethan watching me that morning.
