Chapter 4 The best version of me you'll ever see is the one eating ice cream. -Creole's secret thoughts CREOLE Two Years Ago I sat in a hospital room, dressed fully in my flight attendant get-up, and stared at the doctors that'd just given us the news. Laney was dead. Dead. Dead. What had I done to deserve this? What had Audric? Who had we pissed off in a past life? "Fuck." "You can go visit your daughter in the neonatal intensive care unit." The words sent a crack through my soul. Fuck. His daughter. The little girl that Laney had been carrying wasn't his anything. Laney had gone and slept with another man, getting pregnant through a one-night stand. Audric hadn't even flinched when she'd told him. I had. Their marriage may be a sham, but that didn't change the fact that she had cheated on him. That she'd gotten pregnant out of wedlock with a man she had no intentions of staying with. That man had no clue that he'd fathered a child. Hell, I didn't even think that man knew who he'd slept with. If he had, he certainly wouldn't have slept with Laney. Laney was no innocent in any of this. But what would knowing it now matter? Should I tell him who the baby's father actually was? Or should I leave it alone? But when the baby's father came into the room looking wrecked for his fellow Truth Teller, I knew that nothing good could come from any of this. This little secret of Laney's would go to the grave with me. I couldn't tell him. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever. Unless there was a need, I would take the secret that Laney slept with Paden Nobleman to my grave. "Fuck, man," Cakes, a.k.a. Paden, said as he drew his friend into his arms. "Detroit, are you okay?" "Don't call me Detroit." Audric swallowed. "I never want to hear that name again."