Chapter 2 - The Call Trevor Never Should Have Answered
I let him cry for a few seconds before I said anything. Calm. Even.
"Trevor. We're at Disney World."
Dead silence on the other end.
"You took them to Disney World." His voice had gone flat, disbelieving.
"I took us to Disney World," I corrected. "The kids are having the best week of their lives."
Another pause, longer this time. And when he spoke again, something had shifted in his voice. The panic was gone. Something colder and harder had taken its place.
"Rachel, I swear to God, when I get back—"
"When you get back," I said, cutting him off, "we'll talk. But right now I'm watching our daughter meet Cinderella for the first time, and I am not going to miss it because you're upset."
I hung up before he could answer.
My phone lit up again almost instantly. Not Trevor this time.
Danny.
I stared at his name on the screen, genuinely thrown. In six years, Danny Reyes had never once called my personal cell phone. Not for a birthday, not for a group text, not for anything. I almost let it go to voicemail.
I answered anyway.
"Rachel." His voice was low, almost a whisper, like he didn't want to be overheard by anyone around him. "I need to tell you something. About why Trevor really wanted these three days."
My stomach dropped before he even finished the sentence.
"Danny—"
"It wasn't golf, Rachel."
Behind me, Nolan shrieked with laughter, spinning in circles with his arms thrown wide, chasing a bubble someone had blown near the churro cart. Emma was laughing at him. The whole park smelled like sugar and sunscreen.
And I was standing frozen in the middle of it, phone pressed to my ear, feeling the ground shift under my feet.
"Then what was it?" I whispered.
Danny didn't answer right away.
May you like
And in that silence — that long, heavy, unbearable silence — something in me already knew I wasn't ready for whatever he was about to say.
---
