The Wife in the Shadows

CHAPTER ONE

AUbrEE

The pregnancy test sat on the marble counter like a tiny grenade, and I couldn't stop staring at it.

Two pink lines. Two perfect, undeniable, life-altering pink lines.

Oakleigh's pregnancy test. Oakleigh's body. But my embryo. My husband's embryo. Our last frozen chance at becoming parents, finally nestled into someone else's womb because mine had proven itself a graveyard too many times to count.

"It's positive," Oakleigh said, her voice soft with wonder. She pressed her hand against her still-flat stomach and looked up at us with tears glistening in her blue eyes. "You guys are going to be parents."

The sound that came out of me wasn't human. It was somewhere between a sob and a scream, this raw, guttural thing that had been building in my chest for four years of needles and hormones and blood draws and ultrasounds that showed nothing but empty spaces where heartbeats should have been.

Tristen caught me before my knees gave out.

His arms wrapped around me from behind, solid and warm, and I felt his chest shudder against my back as he buried his face in my hair.

He was crying too. My husband, this six-foot-two billionaire who ran a mental health empire and never let anyone see him crack, was crying into my dark hair in the middle of a fertility clinic bathroom.

"We did it," he whispered against my ear. "Baby, we did it."

I turned in his arms and grabbed his face with both hands, pulling him down to kiss me.

His lips tasted like salt and coffee and something that felt dangerously close to hope.

I'd forgotten what hope tasted like. I'd trained myself to stop expecting it years ago, somewhere between the third miscarriage and the fourth failed transfer.

But here it was, bright and terrifying and real, in the form of two pink lines on a plastic stick held by a woman I'd met three months ago.

"Thank you," I said to Oakleigh, pulling back from Tristen just enough to reach for her hand. "God, thank you so much."

She squeezed my fingers and smiled, and I noticed again how beautiful she was.

Tall and willowy, with this effortless grace that made me feel like a stuffed sausage in comparison.

Her dark hair fell in perfect waves past her shoulders, and her skin had that dewy glow that I used to have before the hormones bloated me and the grief aged me.

I pushed the thought away. This wasn't the moment for my insecurities to hijack the narrative.

"I'm so happy I could do this for you both," Oakleigh said. "You deserve this."

Tristen released me to pull Oakleigh into a hug, and I watched his hand pat her back with brotherly warmth. "We can't ever repay you for this."

"You don't have to repay me," she said. "Just let me be part of bringing this baby safely into the world."

Something flickered in my stomach. Not jealousy, exactly. More like awareness. The way her body softened against his for just a beat too long. The way her hand lingered on his arm when they pulled apart.

I blinked, and it was gone.

Stop it, I told myself. She's literally growing your child. Be grateful, not paranoid.

"We should celebrate," I said, forcing brightness into my voice. "Lunch? My treat?"

Oakleigh checked her phone and made an apologetic face. "I actually have to get back to work. But maybe dinner this weekend? I'd love to hear all about your nursery plans."

"Absolutely," Tristen said. "I'll have my assistant make reservations somewhere nice."

They exchanged numbers to coordinate schedules, and I stood there holding a positive pregnancy test that didn't belong to me, feeling like an observer in my own miracle.

Three weeks later, the blood test confirmed what the pink lines had promised. Oakleigh was officially pregnant with our baby.

I sat on the edge of our bed in the sprawling penthouse Tristen had bought when his company went public, and I let myself cry for twenty minutes straight. Happy tears, ugly tears, the kind that left mascara streaks on my cheeks and snot running down my upper lip.

Tristen found me like that when he came home from work. He dropped his briefcase in the doorway and crossed the room in three strides, kneeling in front of me and taking my hands.

"What's wrong? Is it the baby? Did something happen?"

"Nothing's wrong." I laughed through the tears, probably looking like a complete disaster. "Everything's right. That's why I'm crying."

His shoulders sagged with relief. "Jesus, Aubree. You scared the hell out of me."

"Sorry." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "I just got the call from the clinic confirming her HCG levels. They're perfect. The pregnancy is progressing exactly the way it should."

Tristen's face transformed. That guarded expression he always wore, the one that made him look so untouchable in boardrooms and press interviews, melted away completely.

In its place was the man I'd fallen in love with eight years ago.

The one who told terrible jokes and sang off-key in the shower and looked at me like I hung the moon even when I was covered in hormone-induced acne and twenty pounds heavier than our wedding day.

"We're going to be parents," he said, testing the words like they might shatter if he spoke them too loudly.

"We're going to be parents."

He leaned forward and kissed me, slow and deep, his hands sliding up to cradle my face. I melted into him the way I always did, my body responding to his touch like muscle memory. His thumb traced my cheekbone, wiping away a tear I'd missed, and I felt my heart crack open in the best possible way.

"I love you," he murmured against my lips. "I love you so fucking much."

"I love you too."

He pulled back just enough to look at me, really look at me, and I saw the same fear I'd been carrying reflected in his hazel eyes. The fear that this was too good to be true. That something would go wrong, like it always did. That we'd get our hopes up only to have them crushed again.

"It's going to work this time," he said, and I couldn't tell if he was reassuring me or himself. "I can feel it."

"Yeah?" I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him so badly my teeth ached with it.

"Yeah." He kissed me again, harder this time, and I fisted the front of his dress shirt to pull him closer. "And when our baby gets here, we're going to be amazing parents. You're going to be an amazing mother, Aubree. You already are, in every way that matters."

The tears started again, but I didn't care. I let him hold me while I cried, let him whisper promises into my hair about the life we were going to build, the family we were finally going to have.

For the first time in years, I let myself believe him.

"What about Penelope for a girl?"

Tristen wrinkled his nose. "Too formal. She'd spend her whole life correcting people who called her Penny."

"What's wrong with Penny? Penny's cute."

"Penny is a dog's name."

I threw a decorative pillow at his head. He caught it easily, laughing, and tossed it back at me. It landed on my stomach with a soft thump, and I clutched it against my chest as I stretched out on our sectional.

We'd been doing this for an hour, trading baby names back and forth like a tennis match. The TV played some cooking show on mute in the background, and the remains of our Thai takeout sat cooling on the coffee table. It was the most normal evening we'd had in months. Maybe years.

"Okay, what about something classic?" I said. "Elizabeth. Charlotte. Catherine."

"We're not naming our daughter after a British monarch."

"Why not? Royalty is a solid life aspiration."

Tristen rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.

That smile still did something to me, even after eight years of marriage.

It softened the sharp lines of his face and made him look younger, less like the polished CEO the world saw and more like the grad student I'd met at a coffee shop back when neither of us had any money.

"What about Olivia?" he said. "Or Emma?"

"Every child born in the last decade is named Olivia or Emma. I want something that stands out without being ridiculous."

"Says the woman who suggested Penelope."

"Penelope is a beautiful name! She was one of the most patient women in Greek mythology."

"She was also married to a man who spent ten years sleeping with goddesses while she sat at home weaving."

I paused. "Okay, fair point. Penelope is out."

Tristen shifted on the couch until he could pull my feet into his lap. His fingers found the arch of my right foot and started kneading, and I let out a groan that probably sounded pornographic.

"That feels so good," I mumbled, my eyes fluttering closed. "You have no idea how much my feet hurt."

"Rough day at work?"

"The Katz project is killing me. They changed the color scheme for the fourth time, and now they want everything in this specific shade of sage green that literally doesn't exist in any fabric I can find."

"Tell them no."

"I can't tell them no. They're paying me an obscene amount of money to design their lake house."

"So charge them extra for the obscene amount of hassle."

I cracked one eye open to look at him. "Not everyone can throw money at their problems like you can, rich boy."

"I'm not throwing money at problems. I'm strategically allocating resources."

"Fancy way of saying the same thing."

He grinned and dug his thumb into a particularly tight knot. I moaned again and let my head fall back against the armrest.

This was what I'd missed. These easy, comfortable moments where we could just exist together without the shadow of fertility treatments hanging over us.

For four years, our lives had revolved around cycles and appointments and waiting rooms. We'd scheduled sex around ovulation windows instead of desire.

We'd stopped going on dates because every restaurant reminded us of the couples with strollers and high chairs that we weren't.

But now, for the first time in forever, I felt like we might be emerging from that tunnel.

"What about for a boy?" Tristen asked.

"A boy? We haven't even established the girl names yet."