Bryce sat across the table from me scrolling his phone, relaxed as a man who’d just closed a routine deal.

He hadn’t even capped his pen before he was dialing a number.

Chapter 2 — His Little Champ

“It’s all done, babe,” he said into the phone, turning half away from me.

“Leaving the office now, coming straight to you.

We’re still on for eleven?”

I didn’t need to ask who he was talking to.

Camila.

The woman Bryce had spent the past year introducing at company functions as a key logistics consultant for his construction firm — a phrase that had fooled no one at those functions, least of all me.

He smiled into the phone in a way I had not seen him smile at me in years.

“Tell my little champ his dad’s on the way.”

Then he hung up and finally looked at me, and there was a satisfaction in his face that I can only describe as childish.

“I assume you’ve heard.

Camila’s having a boy.” He let that sit a moment.