Chapter 1 - THE DAY HE THREW ME OUT
The slap came before I understood what Rowan believed.
One second I was standing in the entrance hallway of our house, still holding the envelope I had found tucked beneath a stack of mail. The next, Rowan grabbed my arm, yanked me toward the front door, and struck me hard across the face.
“You cheated on me!”
I staggered sideways.
For a moment I could only stare at him.
Rowan had always been intense, quick to anger when frightened, but never like this. His blue-gray eyes looked almost unrecognizable.
“What are you talking about?”
He snatched the envelope from my hand.
Inside were photographs.
Not photographs of an affair.
Photographs made to look like one.
Me leaving a fertility clinic with Dr. Adrian Cole, my reproductive endocrinologist.
Me getting into the passenger side of his car during a rainstorm.
Me hugging him outside a hospital conference center after he told me that one of my embryos had finally passed genetic screening.
The images were cropped tightly enough to erase context.
Rowan’s hands shook.
“There are messages too.”
He threw printed pages at me.
My name.
Adrian’s name.
Lines from email conversations.
Thank you for keeping this between us.
Rowan cannot know until I am sure.
I need to see you alone.
The sentences were real.
Their order was not.
They had been cut from conversations about fertility treatment, a surprise pregnancy plan, and a family medical history Rowan had begged me to stop discussing because it reminded him of his father’s early death.
“Rowan, these are edited.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Of course they are.”
“I never slept with Adrian.”
“Then why were you hiding things from me?”
“Because I was trying to protect you from another disappointment.”
We had lost two pregnancies in three years.
Rowan had stopped wanting updates until there was something certain.
That choice, made out of grief, had become the knife someone used against us.
He ripped open the front door, grabbed my suitcase from beside the staircase—the one I had packed for a work conference—and threw it onto the porch.
“I never betrayed you!”
His face stayed cold.
“Get out of my life.”
The door slammed.
I stood outside, one hand pressed to the wood, too stunned to cry.
By nightfall, Rowan had blocked my number.
By morning, his attorney sent separation papers.
And three days later, the fertility clinic called me with news I had spent years praying for.
My bloodwork confirmed I was pregnant.
The nurse paused, then added:
“Your hormone levels are unusually high. We may be looking at multiples.”
I sat alone in a hotel room, touching my still-flat stomach.
Then my phone buzzed from an unknown number.
May you like
A single message appeared.
If you tell Rowan about the babies, I will make sure he thinks they belong to Adrian too.
