Chapter 1 #3
"Tell Vincent. He worried more about the dress than some husbands worry about their wives."
Kyle faltered for a fraction of a second.
"Mr. Mercer is already aboard. He asked me to tell you he'll join you later. He has a brief meeting."
"Of course. Mr. Mercer always has a brief meeting in place of a long marriage."
He pretended not to hear. Smart boy.
I climbed the gangway. The wood answered dully beneath my heels.
Inside, the yacht was luxurious to the point of nausea: white roses, golden light, glass, music, servers with smiles that seemed glued to their faces.
People greeted me. I smiled. Nodded. Accepted compliments.
Said, "So lovely to see you," though I was seeing half of them for the first time and would have preferred never to see the other half again.
And all the while, my fingers squeezed the clutch.
The little box inside seemed to pulse.
I had almost reached the main ballroom when I heard laughter.
A woman's.
Low, lazy, far too pleased.
It came from a side corridor where the private offices were located.
I do not know why I stopped. I truly do not.
Maybe pregnancy turns a woman into an animal that feels danger through her skin.
Maybe the truth had lived somewhere inside me for a long time, and I simply had not wanted to open the door to it.
"Ade, you're impossible," a woman said.
Ade.
Not even I called him that.
I stepped closer.
The office door was not completely closed.
A narrow strip of warm light fell through the gap.
I should have walked away. I should have cleared my throat, called his name, preserved the remnants of the dignity I still wore that evening along with my dress.
But I stood there as if chained, and watched.
Adrian was inside.
No jacket. White shirt, sleeves rolled up.
So beautiful the sight of him made my bones ache, because my treacherous body remembered everything: the way those hands had held me, the way that voice deepened against my ear, the way I once believed that being desired by a man like him meant I was protected from the entire world.
A woman in a gold dress sat before him.
On the edge of his desk.
Her fingers played with his tie.
And there was a watch on her wrist.
My watch.
The one I had given Adrian on our anniversary after selling my mother's antique earrings, the only thing I had left from my past. He had kissed my temple and said, "Silly girl. You shouldn't have." But he wore it for a week. One whole week. I had been deliriously happy.
Now the watch gleamed on another woman's wrist.
"Is she here yet?" the woman asked.
"Yes," Adrian answered.
"And?"
"Nothing. She'll smile."
The woman laughed.
"Poor Lana. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for her."
Adrian said nothing.
I waited. God, how I waited for him to say something, anything. "Don't you dare." "She's my wife." "Don't speak about her that way." A crumb. A shard. A bone tossed from the banquet table of my own love.
He said:
"No scenes tonight, Nikki. I need a clean evening."
Nikki.
The name struck like a slap.
She hopped off the desk, moved closer, and laid her palm against his chest.
"A clean evening? With your wife sitting beside you while you introduce me?"
"You'll get everything you want. But on my terms."
"What if I want it now?"
He caught her wrist. The one wearing my watch. Squeezed it. Not painfully. Possessively.
"Nikki."
She rose onto her toes and kissed him.
My husband did not push her away.
Not at first.
At first, his hand settled on her waist.
And that was when something inside me did not break. No. Glasses break. Mirrors. Cheap hopes. Something in me plunged straight to the very bottom, into a black depth where no one screamed because there was no air.
I stepped back.
My heel clicked softly against the floor.
Adrian looked up.
Our eyes met through the narrow gap in the door.
One second.
Only one.
His face barely changed.
Almost not at all.
Only his eyes turned colder.
Not guilty. Not frightened. Cold.
As though I had not caught him with another woman.
As though I had disrupted the event schedule.
I turned and walked away. I did not run. I did not stagger. I did not scream. In this house, in this marriage, in this life, I had been taught far too well how to make a graceful exit even while my organs were being torn out without anesthesia.
I reached the ladies' room, shut the door behind me, and only then gripped the sink.
In the mirror, a woman in a midnight-blue dress stared back at me.
Very pale.
Very quiet.
Very pregnant.
I took the box from my clutch, opened it, and looked at the test.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, and my voice broke so horribly it sounded as though the words had passed through shattered glass. "I wanted to give you a father."
Someone laughed outside the door. The music in the ballroom grew louder. The emcee was testing the microphone, cheerfully pronouncing other people's names. The Evening of Hope was beginning.
And as I stood over the sink, I understood: tonight, for the first time, my child would hear the sound of its mother's heart breaking.
And this was only the beginning.