Novels by BIM

The Lie I Believed.Lucas’s POV“Is he mine?”The question hung between us.Ava stopped walking but didn’t turn around.For several seconds, she stood completely still, one hand resting on Ethan’s shoulder. Then she slowly looked over her shoulder. Her expression was calm. Too calm.“That is none of your business.”My jaw tightened. “Ava, he’s five.”“And so?”“And we were married five years ago.”Her eyes hardened. “Exactly. We were married.”I took a step toward her, but she immediately took a step backward. “I’m not having this conversation with you. Not now. Not ever.”“Why? I deserve to know if he’s my child. Ava…”“I said no.”She turned away again, but this time I didn’t stop her. I watched her walk toward the exit with Ethan, his little face tired and confused by everything that was happening.I wanted to follow them and demand answers, but something stopped me.Maybe it was the way she looked at me, like I was nothing more than a stranger standing in her way. There was no rec

The Question I Wasn’t Ready ForAva’s POVFor several seconds, I forgot there were hundreds of people in the room. The cameras, lights, executives, and presentation my team had spent eight months preparing faded into the background. All of a sudden everything felt so small. There was only one person I could see.Lucas.My fingers tightened around the podium. And judging by his stare, there was only one person he was intensely looking at…. Ethan.Lucas was very composed as always, but I knew him too well to miss the tension in his jaw, the curl of his fingers against the armrest, or the unnatural stillness of his body. He was the man who made everyone else unsettled. Yet now at this moment he looked like a man facing a question he was never prepared to answer.His gaze moved over Ethan’s face as though he Was searching for answers. A shallow breath caught in his chest before he slowly released it. My son tugged his little fingers in my hand, unaware of the attention around him.“Mom

Five Years LaterAva’s POVFive years is long enough to build an entirely different life out of the ashes of an old one. I know, because I did it.I don’t think about that night as often as I used to. The candles, the roses, the envelope on the table, for years those memories used to ambush me at the strangest moments, in elevators, in the middle of meetings, in the quiet seconds before falling asleep. Now they mostly stay where I’ve put them: in the past, filed away, useful only as a reminder of how far I’ve come.My grandfather’s company had been a modest textile manufacturer when Richard Bennett first handed me the paperwork in his downtown office, my hands still trembling from a night I hadn’t finished processing yet. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t even particularly profitable. But it was mine, entirely and completely mine, and something about that ownership lit a fire in me I hadn’t known I had.I threw myself into it the way only someone with nothing left to lose can. I worked e

Starting OverAva’s POVThe hospital lights felt too bright when I walked back in, like the whole building was staring at me, waiting to see what else could possibly go wrong tonight.Dr. Whitfield met me in a small consultation room instead of the waiting area, which told me before he said a single word that this wasn’t going to be a quick conversation. He had a folder open in front of him, his expression careful in the way doctors get when they’re choosing their words with more precision than usual.“First,” he said, “I want you to know the baby is safe. The pregnancy itself is progressing normally.”I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Okay. Okay, that’s good.”“But we ran a broader panel on your bloodwork given some of the markers we saw, and I want to talk to you about what came back.” He turned the folder slightly toward me, pointing to a section I didn’t fully understand. “There’s an indication of a rare inherited condition, one that can affect fetal developmen

Leaving Without Looking BackAva’s POVI didn’t cry while I packed. I think I’d used up whatever tears I had left on the stairs, in that one dizzy moment when the world tilted sideways and I nearly lost the only proof I had left that any of this mattered.I moved through the bedroom slowly, pulling open drawers I’d once arranged with so much hope, back when I still believed this house was going to become a home instead of a waiting room. I didn’t take much. A year of marriage had filled these closets with expensive things, dresses Lucas’s assistant had picked out for events, jewelry that came in boxes heavier than the gifts themselves and none of it belonged to me in any way that mattered. I left it all hanging exactly where it was.What I did take fit into a single suitcase.A framed photograph of my parents, taken the summer before my mother got sick, both of them laughing at something just out of frame. My father’s old wristwatch, stopped at some hour I’d never bothered to fix bec

The End of My MarriageAva’s POVMy hands were shaking so badly it took me two tries to open the envelope.Part of me had already built a small, foolish story to explain it away. A business trip he wanted to surprise me with. Papers from his grandmother’s estate. Anything but what it actually was.I pulled out the stack of documents and stared at the words printed across the top page in plain, merciless black letters.PETITION FOR DIVORCE.For a moment I genuinely thought I had misread it. I blinked and looked again, waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves into something that made sense. They didn’t.“Lucas.” My voice came out smaller than I intended. “Is this some kind of joke?”He didn’t sit down. He stood on the other side of the table, arms crossed, watching me the way he might watch a stranger deliver bad news in a meeting l, calm, composed, already three steps ahead of my reaction.“It isn’t a joke, Ava. I want to end this marriage.”I laughed, a short, disbelieving soun