Chapter 1: The Poolside Charade
The afternoon sun glittered across the surface of the backyard pool, reflecting off the colorful balloons and banners I had hung since dawn for our son Toby’s fifteenth birthday.
In the center of the patio stood Clark.
In his crisp linen shirt and tailored sunglasses, he looked like he had stepped straight off a movie poster. When the acting agency sent him over, I had nearly panicked and locked my front door. After four kids, twenty years of marriage, and months of sleepless nights nursing a six-month-old baby through a brutal divorce, I felt like a shadow of a woman.
"I can't do this," I had whispered to Clark fifteen minutes before guests arrived, my hands shaking around a tray of sodas. "He's going to see right through me. Why would someone like you be with someone like me?"
Clark had taken the tray from my hands, set it down on the table, and looked me in the eye with a warmth that felt entirely too real for a hired professional.
"Don't you want him to see how happy you are without him?" Clark asked softly. "You spent twenty years building a family, Maya. That makes you incredible. Stand tall today."
Before I could answer, the side gate of the backyard swung open.
The laughter around the barbecue grill instantly died down.
Jordan walked in first, wearing a tight designer polo shirt that screamed mid-life crisis, his arm draped possessively over Percy’s shoulders. Percy was twenty-four, tall, and wearing a tiny designer swimsuit beneath a sheer cover-up—a calculated choice meant to humiliate the mother of his four children at her own son's party.
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Jordan scanned the yard with a smug, condescending grin, expecting to see me overwhelmed, exhausted, and miserable.
Instead, his eyes landed on me—and then locked onto Clark, whose arm was draped comfortably around my waist.
