Even Tyler and Haley had appeared. They stared at me, shocked, as Danielle was busy trying to pull them away from the scene we were causing in the living room. My mom was speechlessly shaking her head, both at me and at the strange woman who had barged into her house with a toddler. My dad was averting his eyes. Ian was pacing around the kitchen, trying to decide whether or not to intervene.
I pulled the sheet more closely around my shoulders. Underneath, I was wearing nothing. I had no choice but to gather up my clothes and hurry away to the bathroom, horrified at what had I'd done.
After I washed up and dressed, I sat on the front porch steps.
I couldn't face anyone.
Not yet anyway. I'd never felt so mortified.
I'd lost control of myself with Bryce, my entire family knew I was cheating on my husband, and now I couldn't even be sure whether I was infected because I had no way of testing myself—Chris and Ian had used their last test applicator on Morgan.
Someone opened the front door behind me. The screen door banged shut.
I still wasn't ready to see anyone. I was slightly hoping the person approaching would turn out to be Ian, but I wasn't sure if I felt like speaking even to him. I was so embarrassed.
"Your mom wanted me to give you this."
It wasn't Ian. It was the last person I expected it to be. It was Bryce's wife.
Lindsay sat beside me and handed me a cup of coffee. I took it tentatively.
"Look," she said. "I'm sorry I barged in on all you guys."
She was really strikingly attractive. Dark blue eyes, dark hair, sharp features, a perfect body. Perfect everything. Why would Bryce have shown any interest in me, with a wife like this?
"You're apologizing to me?" I asked.
I was ready for the woman to tear me to pieces, now that she had me alone, but she didn't even seem angry. She actually sounded like she felt sorry for me.
"Well, yeah," she said. She didn't have her son with her. My mom must have had him inside. "I just came into a house full of total strangers, screaming and yelling like that. I'm lucky I didn't get shot."
"I'm sorry," I said. I imagined what Lindsay must have seen through the window: her husband sprawled out with a strange girl. "I'm so, so sorry. Bryce didn't say anything about being married."
"He never does."
Lindsay blew on her steaming coffee, wrapping her hands around the mug. It was a cold morning.
"This isn't exactly the first time," she said. "I can only blame myself for staying with him as long as I have. After I got pregnant, his last girlfriend tried to warn me about him. I didn't listen, but she was right. He's just an egotistical asshole. He always will be."
The thing was, though, Bryce didn't seem like an asshole. It was true that he didn't tell me about his wife and son, which, I had to admit, was an extremely asshole-ish thing to do. But he seemed so kind. He hadn't ever come off as egocentric. He was charming, but in a really sweet way. Was it because of the pathogen that he'd behaved so irresistibly charmingly? If so, that meant he'd been infected even before sleeping with Morgan. Had he been in stage one when I'd first met him . . . ?
Someone else came out onto the porch. The screen door slammed shut.
It was Bryce.
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