Chapter 6 - BROOKE'S INVENTED LIFE
Brooke’s lies were bigger than her father’s death.
She told Dylan she attended boarding school.
She attended public school.
She said her mother inherited rental properties.
Her mother cleaned office buildings at night after Jacob’s career collapsed.
She said the family sold a lake house.
There was never a lake house.
Why invent so much?
Not because Dylan asked for pedigree.
Because Brooke believed he would eventually.
She met him at a hospitality-brand launch.
He wore a Mercer watch.
Everyone knew his surname.
Brooke decided before he even asked that her real childhood would make her small.
So she built one.
Then the affair began.
Dylan loved that Brooke seemed uncomplicated.
No family obligations.
No difficult in-laws.
No history.
That ease was fake.
He did not investigate.
He enjoyed it.
Then Chloe asked Brooke:
“Did he ever tell you I grew up wealthy too?”
Brooke looked surprised.
Chloe’s father owned a regional packaging company before selling it.
Not Mercer wealthy.
Comfortable.
Chloe had never cared much about status.
Brooke assumed she was a social climber because that fit the triangle better.
Then Jacob said something Brooke hated.
“You spent twenty years escaping shame and ended up choosing a man who needed you to be ashamed of his wife.”
Brooke stood.
“Stop psychoanalyzing me.”
Jacob did not raise his voice.
“You hid me because I embarrassed you.”
“Yes!”
Every table outside the private room went silent again.
Brooke’s eyes filled.
“Yes. I was embarrassed.”
Then:
“You came to school in work boots after everyone knew we’d lost the house.”
Jacob closed his eyes.
“You argued with principals about lunch debt.”
He nodded.
“You made every struggle public because you refused to pretend.”
Brooke’s voice broke.
“I wanted one life where nobody knew.”
There.
Not greed alone.
Exhaustion from being visibly poor.
Then Chloe said:
“So you chose mine.”
Brooke looked at her.
May you like
“You chose a life where nobody knew you were poor by stepping into my marriage.”
Brooke had no answer.
