Chapter 2

At twenty-two, I slipped back into the country to have some fun.

At a friend's party, I fell for Victor Vance at first sight, and I went after him.

At first he thought I was too young.

Later it was me chasing without a shred of shame, carrying my whole heart out and holding it up to him.

Flowers, jewelry. I was the one who proposed.

People laughed at me, said a girl shouldn't throw away her dignity like that.

But I didn't care. When you love someone, isn't that exactly how brave you're supposed to be?

In the end, we got together.

Dated a year, then married.

Four years of marriage, and every single day, I was the one walking on eggshells, the one giving.

He'd respond, just a little, every now and then, and to me it felt like the sky had lit up.

It wasn't until I got pregnant that I noticed he turned happier, that he even gave me more of himself than usual.

And yet something inside me went uneasy.

I kept clinging to him, asking whether he loved me.

He never said the word "love," but he answered gently enough: "I'll come home early."

It wasn't until this time, when the private phone even I wasn't allowed to touch got picked up by someone who fired off message after message,

that I finally understood.

From beginning to end, he'd never held me in his heart at all.

But it was fine. It was over.

I didn't have any love left to give either.

Seeing me stay silent, he must have thought I'd softened. He came to my side, bent down, reached to hold me.

"All right, stop overthinking it. I had the housekeeper make you some soup. Drink a little and turn in early. Tomorrow's the weekend, I'll take you out…"

"I got rid of the baby."

I said it softly.

His whole body locked up.

His arm stayed where it was, half-raised, frozen mid-reach.

The living room went so quiet I could hear the clock ticking on the wall.

One. Two. Three.

Then he straightened, looking down at me, as if it hadn't registered.

"What did you say?"

I lifted my head, met his eyes, and said it word by word:

"I said, the baby's gone."

"After you finished sending those messages, I went to the hospital and had the procedure. The miscarriage."

The color drained from Victor's face, inch by inch.

Five years of knowing him, and I'd almost never seen him lose his composure.

In front of everyone, he was always perfectly in control, his emotions steady as a precision instrument.

But in that moment, the instrument jammed.

For some reason I found it novel, and I kept watching him.

"You didn't talk to me about it. You just got rid of the baby?"

My lips were still curved. "Yes."

"Valerie." He said my name, his voice shaking. "That was my baby too."

I gave an indifferent shrug.

"I know."

"You know?" His voice shot up, his eyes flooding red in an instant. "You knew, and you still went to the hospital alone and got rid of the baby, without so much as a word to me!"

"Valerie! In your eyes, do I even count as your husband?"

He'd never raised his voice at me like that.

Before, when we'd argue now and then, the worst he'd do was go cold and silent and wait for me to bow my head first.

In that moment, I suddenly started to laugh. "Victor, so you do get angry? So your eyes do go red? So you're capable of losing your composure after all? And here I thought all you'd ever do was freeze me out."

Victor went blank for a second, then his hand clamped around my chin, fire in his eyes.

"Valerie! What the hell are you pulling? I already told you, those texts weren't from me. Why won't you believe me!"

"And that wasn't just your baby, it was mine too. What gave you the right to go and get rid of him on your own?"

"Since you've got the nerve to abort my baby all by yourself, then you'll give me a new one!"