I always wanted a baby with Zane.
For years, I wanted it.
We tried our best together.
But it never happened.
And now…
now he’d done it with another woman on the first try.
In our bed.
During the week he destroyed our life.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
I cried hard, ugly tears.
I didn’t care that Vance was watching.
I just couldn’t stop.
When I finally looked up, my face was wet and my nose was running.
Vance was still standing there.
He hadn’t moved.
He hadn’t offered me a tissue or comfort.
He just watched me fall apart with his cold gaze.
I saw his hand.
It was clenched into a fist at his side.
His jaw was tight.
He looked…
annoyed.
Like my crying was a problem he didn’t know how to solve.
At that moment I understood why Jovi always complained about her husband being a cold man who can’t empathize with her.
He watched me cry, his own throat tightening.
He looked away, angry—not at me, but at the situation, at his own helplessness. New chapters come out on g.com first.
It was the same furious impotence he’d felt at twelve, watching his mother’s careful, meticulous itinerary for his father’s birthday disintegrate in the rain.
All the right reservations, the perfect gift, undone by a force of nature.
He’d learned then that control was an illusion.
He’d spent a lifetime building better illusions.
But grief was like the weather.
You couldn’t merger or acquire it.
You could only wait for it to pass, and hope the landscape wasn’t too altered when it did.
His stillness made me cry harder for a second.
Then it made me felt angry.
“Say something,” I choked out.
“What do you want me to say? Stop crying?” but his voice was rough, not cold.
“Tears won’t change the facts. This changes nothing about our situation. It just gives them a better story to tell.”
He hated how cold it sounded even for his self.
He wanted to help, to offer some comfort.
But his life had been built on logic and strategy, not on emotional damage control.
And he didn’t know how, d*mn it, to treat me better in this situation than presenting a cold logic, practical solution.
“A better story?” I wiped my face with my sleeve.
“It’s not a story!
It’s a baby!
It’s a whole life!”
”A life they’ll have to explain,” he said.
He picked up the test and the report and put them back in the bag.
“Secrets like this are heavy. They’ll start to feel the weight soon. We just have to wait.”
He walked to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.
He handed it to me.
“Drink this. Then clean yourself up.”
I stared on the glass and took a shuddering breath, then another.
“This changes everything,” I whispered.
I drank the water.
My hands were still shaking.
“What do I do now?” I asked, my voice small.
“You go home.
You act normal.
Let them sit with their secret.
Let it make them nervous.”
”And what if I can’t pretend?”
”Then you lose,” he said simply.
“If you break now, they win.
The story becomes about the happy new parents and the crazy ex-wife.
Is that what you want?”
”No.”
”Then pretend.”
He walked me to the elevator.
Before I stepped in, he said one last thing.
“This is the hardest part. Knowing something that changes everything, and acting like nothing has changed.”
The doors closed.
I went back to the house.
Zane still wasn’t home.
I went to the guest room and sat on the floor.
I didn’t cry anymore.
I just felt empty.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Zane.
Zane: Where are you?
Are you okay?
I looked at the message for a long time.
I thought about the two blue lines.
I thought about the baby.
I thought about everything I’d just lost forever.
Then I typed back.
I remembered Vance’s word about pretending.
Neri: I’m home.
I’m fine.
I put the phone down.
The pretending had started.