Bertram stood by the window. I blinked, momentarily stunned.
"You're up. How do you feel?"
He crossed the room when he saw my eyes open, pressing the back of his hand gently to my forehead.
My heart leapt into my throat.
The warmth of his touch was so real it made everything inside me twist tighter.
"If you're feeling alright, get up and pick a dress. I need you at an event with me."
His voice landed somewhere deep in my chest and sent a tremor through me.
A row of dresses in different styles already hung along one side of the room.
I pressed my lips together, suddenly greedy for this moment. For the illusion of it.
Everything felt the way it used to. He was still him, the man who bent the world to his will and no one else's.
But when his car pulled up in front of a prenatal school, I froze.
Wasn't he taking me to an event?
Bertram said nothing. He strode inside without a word.
The receptionist at the front desk hurried over, practically bowing.
"Mr. Delgado, everything you requested has been arranged. Your wife is inside, in class."
Wife? Class?
I looked at Bertram, frowning.
He didn't offer a single word of explanation. Not until I saw her through the glass partition: Alexis Pruitt, sitting attentively in a parenting class.
The air left my lungs.
Three pregnancies. Three times I had asked him to come to parenting classes with me.
And every time, the same answer: "Prue, I just took over the company. All my energy needs to go into the projects."
To make things easier for him, I had swapped out the parenting classes for massage techniques and cooking courses instead. Every day I stayed home like a good wife, waiting for him to walk through the door so I could cook for him, knead the tension from his shoulders.
Ten years. Ten years I kept that up.
I couldn't stop myself from looking at him, and the dull ache in my chest deepened into something unbearable.
Bertram's gaze was locked on Alexis. The faint smile curving his lips, the tenderness spilling from his eyes, was so thick it was almost obscene.
I suddenly felt ridiculous. Pathetic, even, for daring to hope he might come back to me.
"Hey, doesn't that dress she's wearing look familiar?"
Two receptionists whispered behind me.
"I knew something was off about her the second she walked in. Now it makes sense."
"That's hilarious. Trying to copy Mrs. Delgado's style to seduce Mr. Delgado, and he won't even look at her."