I remembered, suddenly, what Clint had said at our wedding. "In sickness and in health, I will love you, cherish you, and be faithful to you. Forever."
Turns out his forever lasted four years.
His promises were just bubbles—the slightest pressure and they burst.
My vision blurred before I even realized it.
The girl's voice was bright with mockery. "If you'd managed to give him a baby, this bag would be yours. Shame you couldn't, isn't it?"
She was saying it to my face: I was infertile, and I couldn't hold on to Clint.
No part of me was willing to stand there and take it.
But I knew slapping her would only feel good for a second and change absolutely nothing.
I looked past her. Locked my eyes on Clint. Kept my voice steady. "Are you even sure the baby she's carrying is yours?"
I didn't expect what came next. He turned on me without a shred of mercy, voice raised for her sake: "Rowena's still a student—she's pure-hearted. She'd never have the kind of filthy mind you do.
"Don't think a few clever words are going to wreck what we have and drag me back to you.
"I stopped wanting a useless woman like you a long time ago."
A chill shot through me.
Looking at him, at the finality in every line of his face, the last light I'd kept burning for him went out.
That same day, the whole thing spread online like wildfire. As if the spectacle weren't big enough, Clint made a public announcement: Rowena Rodriguez was carrying his child. He'd bought her a mansion. He would be by her side day and night.
When my mother found out, she said she would find me a man who was better than him in every way.
True to her word—I'd barely walked out of the divorce office before she had someone lined up.
I hadn't even seen my blind date's face. I'd just sat down at the café when the hospital called—urgent, come back now.
A newborn with albinism had been stolen from the maternity ward. Every available staff member was searching. Nothing.
No leads on that end, and on the other, the mother was losing it.
She insisted her son was perfectly healthy and accused the hospital of secretly swapping her baby—taking her big, healthy boy and palming her off with a child with albinism.
The screaming and thrashing during her postpartum observation triggered a massive hemorrhage. Her condition turned critical.