Page 102 of Single Dad's Fake Bride
When she finally slept, curled into my chest, I stared up at the ceiling. The case still hung over us. The board. My sisters. But this—her, us—wasn’t in question anymore. It was real. And I would prove it. To the judge. To the board. Even to Margot and Caroline.
30
SADIE
The conference room was crammed with paralegals, recorders, and enough cold water bottles to supply a small army. I sat across from Margot's attorney, a sharp-faced man with silver hair who looked at me as if I were a specimen under glass.
My hands were folded in my lap, fingers interlaced to keep them from shaking. The morning sickness had been relentless for days, and the dry toast I'd forced down this morning felt precarious in my stomach.
The questions started immediately. My finances before the marriage. My mother's alcoholism. My job loss at Hawthorne. Each answer felt pulled from my chest, exposing parts of my life I'd never wanted strangers to examine. Harrison's hand on my back steadied me through it, but I was upset that his sisters were doing this to us.
"Us…" The word itself steadied me now, no longer two individuals with an agreement, but a couple, one very much in love.
The attorney leaned forward, his voice cutting. "So you were struggling financially when Mr. Vale proposed?"
"Yes." The word came out small but not without heart. I doubted any average woman in the city in my position would've been more well-off. Harrison was steady on his own before he met me, but not rich. They acted like I was a gold digger.
My heart hammered as he pressed deeper. Had Harrison offered financial incentives? Did I know about the inheritance? Wasn't this marriage the most financially advantageous thing that had ever happened to me?
Each question felt like a scalpel, dissecting my motivations, my history, my worth as a person. Heat crawled up my neck as he painted a picture of a desperate woman who'd latched onto a desperate man.
"I married Harrison because his daughter needed stability," I said, my voice stronger now. "And because I cared about both of them."
"You cared about a man you'd known for how long?"
"Several weeks when we married. But I'd known Eloise for months."
The attorney's eyes sharpened. "Your position at Hawthorne. The position you lost. And yet here you are, married to that same headmaster."
My stomach rolled violently. The room tilted, and sweat broke out across my forehead. I pressed my lips together, fighting the nausea that was climbing my throat.
"Isn't it convenient that your relationship began precisely when he needed a wife, precisely when you needed financial rescue?"
The words hit me while my body was already betraying me. Convenient. As if loving Harrison was calculated. As if Eloise's trust was a transaction. As if the nights I'd held my mother's hair while she was sick were just stepping stones to this moment. It didn't matter to me how we met or how we found our way here. What mattered was that we loved each other. This was real.
My mouth filled with saliva. The room tilted dangerously, and panic flooded my chest—not from the nausea, but from the humiliation of what was about to happen.
I lurched from the table, my chair scraping loudly. Every eye in the room followed me as I stumbled toward the trash can, my pride crumbling with each desperate step.
The retching was violent and loud in the silent room. My hair fell forward as I gripped the rim, my body choosing the worst possible moment to fall apart. All those carefully constructed answers, all my attempts to appear composed and credible—destroyed in seconds.
"Sadie." Harrison was there instantly, talking softly to me as I threw up. His hands gathered my hair gently, his palm steady against my back as I heaved again. The tenderness in his touch made my chest ache even as my stomach rebelled. This was him—the man who held me through morning sickness, who brought me crackers at three a.m., who never made me feel fragile even when I was falling apart.
"Here." Tissues appeared in my shaking hands. "Water?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice. His solid, protective arm circled me as he guided me back to the chair while I sipped water and tried to disappear.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Margot's voice sliced through the quiet, dripping with revulsion. "This is completely inappropriate."
Her hateful tone made me cringe. As if being pregnant was a performance. As if my body's rebellion was a calculated move. I couldn’t believe Harrison had come from the same womb as that woman.
Harrison's voice was deadly quiet. "She's pregnant, you heartless?—"
"Harrison." Caroline sounded equally disgusted as she stopped him from insulting Margot.
"This is clearly a performance," Margot said until Harrison had enough.
"Enough." The word cracked through the room. Harrison turned toward his sisters, and I felt the fury radiating from him. "Both of you need to get in line or stay out of this room. She's my wife, and she's carrying my child, and if you can't show basic human decency, then leave."
