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I’m quiet the whole way home. I’m not sure what to say. I know I need to tell him what happened in the bathroom, but he’s clearly going through a lot right now, so I let him sit in his own thoughts as he contemplates how the press conference went.

We can talk later. I can’t seem to bring myself to address it right now, and certainly not when he’s driving home, flipping his coin at stoplights like he always does.

When we get home, Harper is angry.

“Why are you ruining our family?” she demands as soon as we walk in the door. She’s addressing her father, not me.

“What are you talking about?” Travis asks wearily.

Harper folds her arms over her chest. “Is it true you got married because of me ?”

Travis shakes his head. “No! Why would you think that?”

“Because I saw the press conference and I heard what that woman asked.”

Travis glares over at his parents.

“You didn’t answer the question when the reporter asked about why you got married, Travis .” The way she says his name so pointedly tells me she’s back to using his first name instead of Dad , and my chest feels heavy because of it.

I feel like this is my fault.

It is my fault.

First he got my ball back, and now this.

I’m pretty sure the “reporter” who asked the question was the woman in the bathroom. It had to be. We haven’t told anyone else.

And now Harper is mad at him because of it…what a mess.

“We got married because we love each other, and we also wanted to provide a stable home for our favorite girl.” Travis wraps an arm around her shoulder, but she darts out of his grasp.

“Well my real dad would never have broken into somebody’s home to steal something out of it!” She screams the words at Travis before she runs from the room.

The heavy words bite in the silence she leaves behind.

Travis looks both helpless and heartbroken, and he turns to his parents, clearly ready to place the blame elsewhere. “Why the fuck did you let her watch the press conference?”

“She wanted to see her father on television,” my mother answers.

Travis blows out a breath.

“Want me to go talk to her?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I’ll handle it. She needs a little bit of time to cool down.”

“Can I talk to you about something?” My eyes dart over to his parents where they sit on the couch. “Privately?”

He nods, and he sort of looks like he can’t take one more thing stacked on top of this shit sundae, but he needs to know what happened. He needs to know that someone knows everything because of my mistake.

We head over to my casita and shut the door, and I pace nervously in front of him.

“What’s going on?” he asks. He leans against the backside of my couch and perches on the top of it.

“That woman who asked about our wedding…” I clear my throat nervously, and then I blurt it out. “I was in the bathroom, and I called Mandy because she’s been calling me all day. I told her everything. How you got the ball back, how we got Owen to wait to have you arrested until we got back from the Bahamas, about the family trying to take Harper from you…about why we got married. The woman was in there, and I didn’t know. I thought it was empty. I didn’t hear anyone when I walked in. And she heard it all.”

“Fuck,” he says, and he hits the back of the couch a little with his palm. “What was she even doing there?”

“She’s dating Cory now.”

“Fuck!” he yells louder.

“I’m so, so sorry.” My voice trembles as tears spring to my eyes.

“You can’t just blab about our personal shit in a public restroom, Hartley!” He’s yelling at me. “That’s common sense!”

“I know,” I nod even as my head is hung down with shame. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Un-fucking-believable,” he yells as he starts pacing behind my couch. It’s not enough space for him. He looks like a caged tiger. “You’re supposed to be on my side here, not making things worse.”

“I feel terrible. This is a whole new world to me, and I just needed to lean on a friend.”

He presses his lips together and nods. “Right. Right. I’m not enough to lean on, so you blabbed to someone else.”

“That’s not it at all! You’re everything to me, but this has repercussions for me, too. We haven’t even talked about what it was like for me to walk out of the airport to the taunts and jeers and paparazzi taking pictures while I was trying to shield your daughter from all of it. We haven’t addressed what this is going to look like going forward.”

He runs his hand through his hair, and the ends stick up. “If there’s still a forward place for it to go.” His voice is quiet, and it’s a threat. I don’t like it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean I’m starting to wonder whether you think this was all a big mistake.” His tone is icy and pointed as he aims it toward me.

Do I?

Maybe.

But that’s not what he needs to hear right now. This feels like more of a diffusing situation than an honesty one.

“It’s not. I love you, and we both saw where this was going anyway. We just changed the timeline. But you have to understand that I had no idea what I was getting into.” My tone is soft, and there’s definitely a begging quality in there.

He blows out a breath and instead of responding, he says, “I need to go check on Harper.”

He storms out of my casita and slams the door behind him, and I take the prompt opportunity to break down in tears.

I cry out of guilt. I cry because I’m scared. I cry because I feel alone in this mess.

But most of all, I cry because he didn’t say I love you back.