Chapter 3

When she came in, she still carried the chill of the night on her.

Her hair had come loose, her makeup was smeared, and there was a fresh scratch on the back of her hand.

I sat at the dining table with the divorce papers in front of me.

When she saw those few pages, she stopped short.

"You didn't sleep all night?"

"So you know it was all night."

Her lips had gone pale. She tried to come closer.

I raised a hand. "Say it from there."

She stayed where she was.

A few seconds later, she said quietly, "Last night wasn't what you think."

I laughed. "Then what was it? On our wedding night you wouldn't let me touch you, then you turned around and went to Cole. Vivian, you tell me. What am I supposed to think?"

Her eyes reddened, but her voice stayed soft. "I really did have my reasons."

"Your reasons are always about Cole. Never about me."

"That's not true."

"Not true?"

I pushed the papers across the table.

"Sign them."

She stared at the words, and her face suddenly changed. Even her breathing went ragged.

"Ethan, just hear me out first."

"I've been hearing you out for two years."

"This time is different."

"You say that every time."

Vivian gripped the back of a chair, her knuckles white.

She slowly pulled a neatly folded sheet of paper from her pocket, hesitated for a moment, then handed it to me:

"Take a look at this, Ethan."

I took it, suspicious. The questions I wanted to throw at her stuck in my throat once I saw how pale she was, and in the end I swallowed them.

I slowly unfolded the paper. The moment I read the first line, my mind went blank.

It was an exam report from a women's hospital, right there in black and white.

She looked at me and spoke in a hoarse voice. "Ethan, I'm pregnant."

I froze.

She said it again. "Yesterday afternoon I went back to the hospital for a follow-up. The doctor said the embryo isn't in a good position and there are signs of a threatened miscarriage. I was told I absolutely can't overexert myself, can't have sex, and need complete rest."

It felt like something had slammed into my head.

"What did you say?"

"I was going to tell you once the wedding was over."

Her tears spilled over.

"But last night Cole suddenly called. He said he had something, and if I didn't come, he'd send it to you, to your parents, and to the wedding group chat."

"What something?"

She bit her lip. For the first time, I saw a kind of fear in her eyes that I had never seen before.

"I couldn't talk about it over the phone. I didn't go last night to comfort him. I went to get it back."

My palms went numb.

The anger was still there, but the panic was just as real.

Pregnant.

Threatened miscarriage.

For an entire night, she had dragged herself, in that condition, to go see another man.

I shot to my feet. "Did you bleed last night? Does your stomach hurt? What did the doctor say?"

My questions caught Vivian off guard, and her tears came even harder.

She shook her head. "It hurt a little on the way back. It's okay now."

Nothing else mattered. I grabbed my car keys. "We're going to the hospital."

"Not yet."

"At a time like this, you're still—"

"Ethan."

Her voice trembled.

"I have to finish saying this first. If I don't say it now, I'm afraid it'll only get harder to explain later."

I stared at her.

Holding on to the chair, she slowly sat down, as if all her strength had drained out at once.

"Cole isn't just an ordinary male best friend."

"I figured that much out."

"My senior year of high school, my mom fell at the farmers' market. She had a brain bleed, and the emergency treatment cost money. My dad had already run off with another woman by then. It was just me and my mom."

She drew a breath, her voice strained.

"Cole's mom lent us fifty thousand dollars. That money saved my mom's life."

"And then?"

"Later his mom passed away. On her deathbed she held my hand and asked me to look out for Cole. She said he'd always had a difficult temper, and she was afraid no one would keep him in line."

I frowned hard. "And you just agreed?"

"I was seventeen."

She looked up at me, her eyes empty.

"I thought looking out for him meant checking in on the holidays and lending a hand if something happened. But later I realized he'd taken those words to mean I owed him for the rest of my life."

I said nothing.

She kept going.

"In college I dated someone once. When Cole found out, he made a scene outside the guy's dorm, saying he was two-timing me. The guy decided I was too much trouble and broke up with me."

"After I started working and switched departments, Cole showed up outside my office building with flowers, deliberately making everyone think we were a couple."

"When I got angry, he brought up the fifty thousand dollars from back then. He said if it weren't for his mom, my mom would be long gone."

"I paid the money back, with interest. Over a hundred thousand dollars."

"But he didn't want it. He said what he wanted was never the money."

When that last sentence landed, a chill ran down my spine.