The Fake Heart Made of Gold (The love that lied)

Chapter 4

Lauren's hand was still resting on top of his, warm and soft, her eyes full of that gentle look she always used when she wanted him to fold.

Jason pulled his hand away.

"I'm not apologizing." His voice was low but steady. "And I'm not going home with you."

Lauren's tender expression cracked just enough to show the frustration underneath.

"Jason, stop being stubborn. You got drunk, you said things you didn't mean, and now you're embarrassing both of us. Just come home and we'll talk about this properly."

"There's nothing to talk about." Jason looked her straight in the eyes without blinking. "I ran the test three times at three different labs. Every single result said the same thing. Nina is not my daughter."

"You ran those tests without telling me." Lauren's voice tightened, and the softness evaporated from her face like steam off hot pavement. "You went behind my back and tested our daughter's DNA like some paranoid detective, and you didn't think I deserved to know about it?"

Jason almost laughed at that.

Our daughter. She's still calling her our daughter. Even with the proof sitting right there in pieces on the table.

"You're trying to flip this around on me, Lauren. That's not going to work. Not this time."

"I'm not flipping anything." Lauren pressed both palms flat on the table and leaned forward, her jaw set hard. "You violated my trust. You violated Nina's privacy. You did all of this in secret, and now you're throwing around accusations based on some lab report that could easily be wrong."

"Three labs don't all make the same mistake." Jason's voice didn't waver. "If Nina is not my biological child, then you slept with another man. And if you slept with another man, then this marriage is already dead."

"Keep your voice down!" Lauren hissed through her teeth, her eyes darting toward the closed door of the private room. Her entire posture changed in an instant, spine rigid, shoulders pulled back, chin lifted. "Do you have any idea what happens if someone outside this room hears what you're saying? One leaked rumor and it's on every entertainment blog in the country by tomorrow morning."

There it is. That's what she really cares about. Not me. Not our marriage. Her reputation.

"I don't care who hears it." Jason's voice stayed exactly where it was.

"Well I do!" Lauren's nostrils flared and color rushed up her neck. "Stop this nonsense right now and come home with me. We'll discuss everything calmly once we're behind closed doors."

"That house is yours, Lauren. It was bought with your money, it's in your name, and every piece of furniture in it was picked by your decorator." Jason leaned back in his chair and looked at her with tired eyes. "It stopped feeling like my home a long time ago."

Something flickered across Lauren's face that might have been hurt if Jason didn't know better.

"Fine." Her voice went cold enough to frost the windows. "If you don't want to come home, then don't. Ever."

She picked up her purse, straightened her back, and walked out of the room without looking at him once.

The door clicked shut behind her.

Jason sat there until the silence became unbearable, then he paid the bill and left.

He found a small hotel two blocks from the restaurant. Nothing fancy. Just a clean bed and four walls that didn't belong to Lauren Chase. He checked in, closed the curtains, and was asleep before his head fully hit the pillow.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was dark and his phone said 7:43 PM.

He had slept for almost six hours straight, and his body still felt like it had been filled with wet sand.

Jason sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, turning his phone over and over in his hands. No messages from Lauren. No missed calls. Nothing.

She really meant it. Don't come back, ever.

He pushed the thought aside and stood up. There was something he needed to take care of first.

The bar from last night.

According to the hotel front desk that morning, a woman with short blonde hair had brought him in, booked the room under his name, and paid the bill plus deposit in cash. That meant some stranger had spent a good amount of money on a drunk man she didn't even know.

Jason needed to find out who she was and pay her back.

The bar looked completely different in the early evening light. Quieter, calmer, with soft music playing instead of the loud mess he vaguely remembered from the night before. He walked toward the entrance and was about to step inside when a familiar face stopped him cold.

Dr. Marcus Webb was walking out of the bar with a young woman glued to his side.

Marcus had been Jason's classmate in medical school and was now his colleague at Eastport General. He was forty two, married with two kids, and the girl hanging off his arm looked like she was barely twenty five. Her dress was tight enough to be a second skin, and her fingers were laced through Marcus's like they had been doing this for a while.

Marcus saw Jason at the exact same moment Jason saw him.

Their eyes met for half a second.

Then Marcus looked away, turned his head toward the girl, and whispered something in her ear that made her giggle. The two of them walked right past Jason as if he were a lamp post.

So that's how it is. You're not even going to pretend to say hello.

Jason watched them disappear around the corner and felt nothing but a dull, familiar disgust. Another married man sneaking around with a woman half his age. Another wife sitting at home with no idea what her husband was doing on a Tuesday night.

Is every marriage in this city built on lies?

He shook his head and walked inside.

The bartender recognized him right away.

"You're the guy from last night. The one who drank enough bourbon to fill a swimming pool." The young man behind the counter grinned. "You feeling okay?"

"I'll live." Jason sat down on a stool. "Listen, I need to ask you something. The woman who took me out of here last night, do you know who she is?"

"Short blonde hair? Yeah, she's actually the owner of this place."

"The owner?" Jason frowned. "Is she here tonight?"

"She comes and goes. Haven't seen her yet this evening."

Jason nodded and sat there for a moment, processing everything.

A woman I've never met picked me up off a bar floor, drove me to some apartment, and then somehow got me to a hotel. She booked the room under my name, paid cash, and disappeared.

The more he thought about it, the colder his blood ran.

I was blackout drunk. I couldn't walk, couldn't think, couldn't even open my eyes properly. If that woman had wanted to set me up, she could have done anything. Taken photos, staged a scene, planted evidence. One phone call to a tabloid and the headline writes itself: celebrity Lauren Chase's husband caught cheating in hotel room with mystery blonde.

His medical career would have been finished. Lauren's lawyers would have torn him apart in the divorce. He would have walked away with nothing, not even his dignity.

And I just climbed into her car like a trusting puppy.

A chill crawled up his spine.

But something else doesn't add up either.

He thought about the underground parking garage. The apartment he had stumbled through. The hands that had undressed him on the living room floor.

Lauren had shown up at the hotel and claimed they spent the night together. She had been flushed, satisfied, glowing like a woman who had been thoroughly taken care of.

But the hotel staff said the woman who checked him in had short blonde hair.

Lauren has long dark hair.

Someone else brought me to that hotel. Someone else was in that room before Lauren arrived.

The woman from the bar and the woman in the hotel room are the same person.

And she is not my wife.

Jason's fingers tightened around the edge of the counter as the full weight of that realization settled into his bones.

He didn't notice the pair of eyes watching him from a booth in the far corner of the bar.

A woman with short blonde hair sat alone with a glass of red wine, her legs crossed, her gaze resting on Jason with quiet interest. 

The faintest smile played across her lips as she brought the glass to her mouth and took a slow, unhurried sip.