the wedding. Don’t do the reality show. You said it yourself—your reputation isn’t everything. You don’t need to do any of that stuff. Do what you want.”
He stared at her for a moment, but she refused to make eye contact because she didn’t know if she could handle it. One searing look from Marcus Warren might break her resolve. So she kept her gaze locked on the windshield.
He started the car and began to drive without answering.
“Please take me back to the office. I’ll finish the work I didn’t get done earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He sounded distant.
She fought the urge to apologize, to backpedal—to take it all back. She wanted to go back to the way things had been a week ago, when he’d tease her during the run and she earned his respect by being invaluable to his business, when she didn’t offer opinions on his personal life and she didn’t run the risk of letting the facts of her life slip out at every turn.
But then, that’d mean not finding William—not knowing that he was alive and healthy and cared for. And she couldn’t imagine that. She’d seen that baby for a total of an hour and a half and she couldn’t imagine life without him.
You two should consider applying for adoption. Liberty would be lying to herself if Hazel’s idea didn’t sound like a dream come true. She’d long fantasized about Marcus. He was gorgeous, one of the richest men in the city, and she liked him. She hated running but she liked running with him. She liked his jokes and how he treated her and how he’d put that shower in the ladies’ room so she could change without going all the way back to her apartment in Logan Square.
And she’d liked the way he looked holding that baby and smiling down at him as if he really did care. It hadn’t mattered that he’d had on a suit that probably cost thousands or that William was one burp away from ruining that suit. Marcus had smiled and cooed and held his hand anyway. William was important to Marcus because William was important to her.
She’d spent her entire adolescence and adulthood trying so hard to overcome her abandonment. Her life was built around making sure no one could forget about her again. She worked harder than anyone else. She never stopped working. In college, she’d held down two jobs and carried a full class load and never done anything fun like party or date. Never. She’d passed as white because she could and because it meant she was that much further away from Jackie Reese’s life, because passing meant that she had to work only twice as hard to get ahead, not four times as hard.
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