CHAPTER THREE

Three Months Ago

Hendrix and Zara sat on the floor of her room, getting dressed. Hendrix stole a glance across at her. "Are you okay? I mean, you didn't actually say you wanted to do that…"

Zara gave an awkward laugh. "Don't worry…that was definitely consensual."

"So I guess we need to talk about what happens now?"

Zara did her best to keep her tone light. "Well, I'm guessing you're not about to leave Mackenzie for me?"

Hendrix didn't quite seem able to meet her gaze. "No."

"I get it, okay? I've read enough blogs by people oversharing. It was a comfort thing, right?"

"Right." Hendrix looked at her hopefully. "For both of us, maybe?"

Zara gave a nervous smile. "Well, I guess I do feel better now than when you came in here."

Hendrix sighed. "I know I'm going to sound like an absolute heel for saying this but…can we not tell Mackenzie? I mean, not now anyway. She's got too much to deal with already. Maybe…maybe after the surgery, if everything's all right, then…"

Zara put him out of his misery. "Hey, I'm a vault, okay?"

Hendrix got up. "I'd better get going. I was here longer than I meant to be. I'll take the camera but I've left the videos on a stick. You still okay to look after it?"

Zara got up as well. "Do you mind if I get a hug before you go?"

Hendrix held her for a moment, in a way that she tried to think of as platonic, and then he was gone.

Now

Zara had seen Hendrix again the following day, when they'd run into each other in the coffee shop. "I just wanted to check you're okay after what we did yesterday,"he noted.

"I can't believe you trusted me with it,"she'd said.

"Remember your promise though, yeah?"

And then she hadn't seen him again. She'd delivered his video messages as promised. And she'd tried to keep her other promise. She'd have taken the secret of their afternoon fumble to the grave, like he had, except she'd been left with a permanent reminder.

"Everyone's going to hate me now,"she told Amy. "The teen temptress seducing a married man in his vulnerable moment."

"We'll make sure they know what happened,"Amy assured her, then looked uncertain. "You have told me everything that happened?"

Zara rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mum. No-one forced or tricked or pressured anyone into doing anything. We just both got…caught up in the moment."

"Okay. Well, I get that these things happen. And everyone in this household is on your side."

Zara heard the front door bang. "You sure about that?"

Yashvi came in and fixed Zara with a look that tried to be as neutral as possible. "You've been to see Mackenzie then?"

Zara nodded. "She was…upset."

"No surprise there. Is she on her own?"

"No, Freya got home as I was leaving."

"Okay, I'll wait until later to check on her."

Zara wasn't sure what to say to that. "I'll go do something in my room,"she announced, quickly exiting.

Yashvi collapsed into the chair Zara had vacated. "Thanks for not being too hard on her,"Amy attempted.

"I'm trying,"Yashvi replied. "And hey, you're carrying my little brother or sister, makes you officially family now."

It was probably meant kindly, but it felt like another sore point between them. "You know that's nothing to do with your parents splitting up?"Amy checked. "I think your dad made the offer because he felt bad at the way things ended between us…"

"Yeah, I know. Sometimes, a relationship falls apart, you can't fix it no matter how hard you try. Which is what happened with me and Ned, and why I'm back here. But at the moment, I'm really worried about Mackenzie"

Mackenzie had sat down and poured out the sorry tale to Freya, who sat across from her and shook her head in disbelief. "I can't believe she just turned up here and told you that."

Mackenzie managed an ironic smile. "Would it have been better if she'd kept it to herself?"

"I guess not,"Freya conceded. "I guess the problem is her sleeping with Hendrix in the first place."

Mackenzie sighed wistfully. "You know, I told Hendrix I was transgender the night we first met. The night he gave me my first kiss. It never made any difference to him. He never saw me as anything other than a girl, no qualifications, nothing. He saw me. We never spoke about it, but I thought sometimes about what would happen if we ever decided to have children. How I'd probably have to watch another woman carrying his child. Doing what I couldn't." She screwed her face up in pain. "And now it's happening. Zara's the one carrying his child, not me."

Freya leaned forward in concern. "Mackenzie…"

Mackenzie looked at her with controlled fury. "I should hate him, shouldn't I? I should really really hate him. We were married for less than a week and he still managed to cheat on me." Then the anger seemed to drain out of her, replaced with that same wistful sadness. "But instead…I still just really wish that he was here. So that I could yell at him, and ask him how he could do this to me. And maybe hate him, just for a bit, just until I forgave him. And so that he could be a father, because I think he'd have been really, really good at it, better than he thought he would, he was always good with children. I just keep thinking about those last few weeks, how scared he was, knowing he'd only have a short time without a transplant, knowing the transplant might not work. How brave he was, how he was always strong for the rest of us. And if…if sleeping with Zara helped him be that, can I really hold it against them?"

"Mackenzie, you don't have to justify this,"Freya told her. "You don't have to make excuse for them."

"I do, though,"Mackenzie replied seriously. "Because if I don't, then I'm saying that this kind, sweet boy who loved me never existed."

"Hendrix adored you,"Freya admitted. "Everyone knew that."

Mackenzie nodded. "I really wish he was here. I really wish he hadn't left me to handle this on my own."