Page 4 of Mate Matched: Xavier & Brady
With a sigh, I waited for them next to a bench. Whatever had happened between me and Gio wasn’t all Candice’s fault. She was carrying two babies who were perfectly innocent in all this.
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly as she slumped onto the bench. Her pretty face was flushed pink with exertion.
“Just tell me what you want,” I demanded when Gio caught my arm.
“For all of us to do this together.” He let me go once he realized I was waiting for an explanation. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My world was crumbling around me.
“You can’t be serious! You cheat on me, make babies with someone else, now you want me to play happy families. Are you out of your mind?” How did he think any of this was okay?
Gio’s face cycled through a few emotions before landing on bitterness. “I need this. My parents want grandchildren, and it’s not like you can give them any.”
The knife twisted in my gut. I glanced at my torso, fully expecting a wound there, with how badly I hurt over his words. “We could have had them with Brady. You didn’t have to go and have an affair.”
“My family wants a female omega. I know how you feel about them. You were only with Candice because it was my turn to pick someone.”
On the bench, Candice looked horrified. “Are you serious right now?” She shook her head. “What is this? Do you even love me, Gio? All those promises, do they mean nothing to you?”
I felt nothing but pity for her. She was pregnant and vulnerable right now. She needed Gio’s pheromones to help with the pregnancy.
“Of course, baby!” Gio went to his knees on the sidewalk and brushed her brunette hair out of her face. “I love you and Xavier so much. The babies too. That first night with you sealed the deal for me.”
“Then who’s Brady? Were you with him too?”
Gio’s sweetness fell away. “Yeah, but you knew I was in an open marriage.”
“I didn’t think that meant you were still seeing other people, not once we found out I was pregnant.”
“Just Brady,” I cut in. “We were only with Brady. I chose him because he’s everything I like in an omega. No offense.”
Candice gave a bitter laugh. “You’re not the one who’s been saying all these things to me for the last five months. I thought you knew about me and we were going to raise the babies together.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Not sure that’s in the cards for me.”
“Legally, these babies are yours just as much as they are mine,” Gio said, getting to his feet.
“Okay, so why not tell me sooner? Why let me be with Brady the last three months? You knew about the babies before we met up with Brady.”
“That’s on me,” Candice said. “I wasn’t sure I was keeping them until our twelve-week scan. I was so sick I lost my job. Me and Gio were barely dating at that point. He’d taken me through my heat and we’d met up a couple of times after. It was just in the last two months that things got serious with us.”
“Right. So why do you need me? You two are in love or whatever. Why bring me into this? Why not leave?”
Gio stepped closer and cupped my cheeks. “Because I still love you. I want to give you the family you’ve always wanted.”
“I—I’m not sure.” My hands reached up to his, gently pulling them away from my face. A chime came from Candice’s phone. “I need some time to think about what this means for me.”
“Gio, we’ve got our appointment at the clinic.”
My husband took my hand. “Will you come? See what you can be a part of?”
Later, I would wonder why I followed them. Why I let them pretend we were just one big happy family. Gio begged me outside the clinic to act as if we were in a throuple. He didn’t want to embarrass Candice in front of her midwife with our drama.
The appointment took a while. I sat there, my mind spinning, while Candice was poked and prodded. She took it with a good-natured smile. When the babies’ images were shown on thescreen, I tried not to feel anything for the little innocent lives inside my husband’s affair partner. It wasn’t their fault she didn’t check that I knew.
Not that the blame really landed on Candice. For all that I knew, Gio had been lying to us both this entire time. I kept my distance from my husband, which is why I ended up letting Candice take my hand after the scan. I plastered on a smile as if I didn’t have a care in the world, even though it felt as if everything was cracking under me, like my foundation had shifted and I now hung above an abyss.
Everything, even that tiny ledge I perched on, vanished when we exited the exam room to find Brady standing there with his best friend.
Three
