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I could endure it.

I had to.

“Want to go meet your father, Lainey?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Zoe

It wasn’t a long drive back to Miami.

But I swear each mile I drove had my stomach twisting tighter and tighter until it was just one big knot with no hope of untangling.

I tried to keep my mind on the current moment. But it wasn’t long before I was the woman I had been just two years ago.

So young.

So inexperienced.

So hopeful.

And wholly, indisputably, unbearably freaking naive.

I could see how I’d been tapping on the steering wheel, belting out some pop song I would quickly grow to hate. How I would keep checking my reflection in the mirror at red lights, fixing any flyaway hairs or smudged makeup, wanting to make my best possible first impression.

Growing up with a single mom who’d just barely been getting by, all I knew were the lower-class suburbs of my hometown.

So as the navigation had me turning onto a street of mini-mansions, I’d been full of wonder.

So wide-eyed.

So easily impressed.

Too starstruck not to know it was all smoke and mirrors, that everything was an illusion, a carefully curated image.

This time, driving down that same road, all I felt was a sick sort of disgust. For all the time I’d spent there, for running myself ragged for someone else, for allowing someone to whittle me down until I was the exact shape they wanted.

Then the second I could no longer fit that picture-perfect image, I was useless. As easily discarded as last week’s trash.

Even if the man throwing me away was the father of the damn baby growing in my stomach.

“God, I hate this place,” I told Lainey as I turned into the driveway.

I hated that as I drove over them, I knew the pavers that made up the horseshoe drive cost fifty thousand dollars. That the gardener who kept all the hedges shaped and the weeds at bay received a wad of cash each week from Travis while he refused to send a dime my way.

I hated the lush green lawn.

The bright spotlights, so people could admire the grandeur even at night.

The crystal-clear pool out back.

The endless hours of my life I would never get back, standing near that pool, getting screamed at by the man who was supposed to care about me.

I shook those thoughts away.

I choked back the sick feeling in my throat.

I squashed my pride.