“We are not doing this in front of people.”
Olivia looked past him at the ballroom where he and Khloe had spent the evening being photographed together.
“You were comfortable doing everything else in front of people.”
Khloe finally spoke.
“Liam, maybe we should go.”
He turned sharply.
“Not now.”
Khloe’s face changed.
It was small, but Olivia saw it.
For months Khloe had been photographed beside a man who seemed utterly certain of every choice he had made.
Now she was watching him ignore her because the woman he claimed to have outgrown had walked back into the room carrying his unborn twins.
Liam turned to Olivia again.
“Are they mine?”
Silence spread through the corridor.
Olivia stared at him.
He had already asked once, but now there were witnesses.
Now the ugliness of the question had nowhere to hide.
She slowly placed the scan on top of the signed papers.
“The timeline is clear, Liam.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you deserve after asking me that in a hallway full of cameras.”
His face hardened.
“You expect me to just accept this?”
“No.
I expect you to speak through the proper channels about anything involving the children.
That is why everything is documented.”
The word documented made his eyes return to the folder.
For the first time, he seemed to notice how organized it was.
Dates.
Copies.
Signed pages.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing improvised.
Olivia had not come armed with rage.
She had come armed with a record.
That frightened him more.
He picked up the scan but did not touch the image itself, holding only its edge.
His expression shifted as he stared at the two tiny shapes.
“They’re really mine?”
The question sounded different this time.
Smaller.
Olivia’s anger loosened by one degree.
“Yes.”
Liam sat again.
Khloe looked away.
For several seconds nobody spoke.
Then Liam whispered, “I would have wanted to know.”
Olivia felt the old instinct rise in her—the instinct to comfort him, translate his feelings for him, make the impossible conversation easier so Liam could remain functional.
She had done that for years.
She refused to do it now.
“You would have known,” she said, “when I was ready to tell you safely and clearly.
Tonight was supposed to be about finishing paperwork.
You turned it into this when you followed me.”
Liam looked toward the cameras.
For once, he seemed to understand that no publicist could erase the sequence everyone had witnessed.
He had dropped a glass at the sight of her pregnancy.
