She Belonged to the Wrong Brother

Kamea’s POV

Pretty called me twice before I picked up.

“You’re coming today, right?” she asked, before I’d even said hello. “My cousin’s baby shower. I told her you’d be there.”

“I forgot it was today.” I glanced at the clock. “Jaxon said he had a meeting this afternoon, so I’m free anyway. What time?”

“Two. Wear something nice, there’s a photographer.”

I almost didn’t go. I’d had a headache since morning, and baby showers had never been my favorite kind of afternoon, not with the questions people always found a way to ask eventually. But Pretty was the closest thing I had to a real friend inside the Hudson family’s orbit, and turning her down felt like giving up one more small thing I still had.

I picked out the soft blue dress Jaxon once said he liked. The irony almost made me laugh, standing there in front of the mirror, choosing something for a man who apparently hadn’t thought about me at all while making plans of his own. I bought a small gift on the way, some outfit for a baby I assumed belonged to a cousin I’d never met, wrapped in yellow paper because the shop didn’t have anything else left.

I got there a little after two, gift bag in hand, expecting balloons, pastel cake, and polite small talk with people I barely knew.

I didn’t expect to see Jaxon.

He was sitting beside a woman I didn’t recognize at first, her hand resting on a stomach that left no question about how far along she was. It took me a second to place her — Daniella, from a company dinner months ago, someone Jaxon had introduced as a business contact’s daughter and nothing more.

The photographer crouched in front of them, adjusting his lens. “Jaxon, come stand a little closer to Daniella. We need a picture of the baby’s parents.”

The baby’s parents.

I stood in the doorway, waiting for someone to laugh, to correct him, to say there’d been some mix-up. Nobody did. Jaxon shifted closer to her without hesitation, resting his hand against the small of her back like he’d done it a hundred times before, and the photographer’s camera clicked twice before I’d even found my voice.

Mrs. Hudson sat close by, adjusting a cushion behind Daniella’s back. Rose was recording the whole thing on her phone, smiling.

“Kamea.” Pretty appeared at my elbow, her own smile gone the moment she saw my face. “I didn’t know you were — I thought you knew—”

“Knew what, exactly?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

I walked straight toward them, gift bag still in my hand, aware of every head in the room slowly turning to watch me do it.

“You told me you had a meeting,” I said to Jaxon.

He looked up at me, already annoyed. “Kamea, this isn’t the time.”

“You’re right. It’s the time for you to explain why my husband is standing here posing as the father of another woman’s child.”

Jaxon exhaled like I was the one creating an unnecessary problem. “You’re making a scene in front of everyone. Sit down or leave. Those are your options.”

“How long?” I asked, looking around the room, at faces that had smiled at me a hundred times over the years, none of them saying a single word in my defense now. “How long has everyone known except me?”

“Long enough,” he said flatly. “I was going to tell you. You just decided to show up where you weren’t invited.”

Pretty stood frozen near the drinks table, phone still in her hand, looking like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. She hadn’t known either, I realized. She’d been used just as much as I had, just in a smaller, crueler way.

Nobody else answered. That silence told me everything the words wouldn’t.

“What did you expect, Kamea?” Jaxon said, standing up slowly, straightening his jacket. “That I’d spend the rest of my life pretending this marriage was working?”

“You could have told me the truth instead of letting me find out like this.”

“Then maybe you should have been paying attention.” His voice stayed flat, almost bored. “This isn’t the place for this conversation.”

“You made it the place the moment you sat here posing for baby photos and let your entire family celebrate a child you didn’t have the decency to tell your wife about.”

I picked the gift bag back up off the floor where I’d nearly dropped it and set it down hard on the table in front of them.

“I bought this for your cousin’s baby,” I said to Pretty, though my eyes stayed on Jaxon. Then I looked at Daniella. “I didn’t realize I was buying a gift for my husband’s child.”

Daniella’s hand moved protectively over her stomach.

“This is exactly the kind of scene we were trying to avoid,” Mrs. Hudson said, glancing at the guests like my presence was the disruption instead of everything her son had done. “Kamea, please. For everyone’s sake.”

“For everyone’s sake.” I laughed, sharp and humorless. “Everyone’s sake has apparently included mine being the last one considered, for months, maybe longer.”

I looked at Jaxon one final time, waiting for something that would make this feel like less of a public execution. He gave me nothing. He just stood there, arms crossed, waiting for me to finish so the party could go back to celebrating without me in it.

I didn’t cry. I refused to give the room that satisfaction.

“Enjoy your baby shower,” I said, turning for the door. “I hope the baby inherits your lies.”

I walked out past faces that avoided my eyes, past Pretty who reached for my arm and said my name so quietly I barely heard it, past the photographer who lowered his camera as I passed, like even he understood there was nothing left worth capturing except my back walking away.

Outside, the afternoon air hit me. I finally let my hands shake, standing on the sidewalk with nowhere left to go and no one left to call.

Kamea’s POV

The house was already cold by the time I got back, and not because of the weather.

Mrs. Hudson was in the sitting room when I walked in, a cup of tea in her hands, not even bothering to look up. Rose sat across from her, scrolling through her phone with the particular stillness of someone pretending not to notice me at all. Neither of them said a word. That silence felt louder than anything they could have said out loud.

I went up to my room and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, still in the blue dress, staring at nothing in particular. My hands had finally stopped shaking somewhere on the drive home, but the rest of me hadn’t caught up yet.

I thought about calling Pretty, then didn’t. I thought about calling my own mother, who lived three hours away and would have plenty to say about how I should have seen this coming, none of it useful. In the end I just sat there, replaying the photographer’s