CHAPTER 2 Already Done

(Sabrina’s POV)

I didn’t remember climbing the stairs.

I remembered the ultrasound in my fist. I remembered my own heartbeat in my ears. I remembered thinking: he already did it. He already did it. He already did it, as I opened the door.

Nate looked up from the desk. His hand was on a fresh glass of whisky.

He saw the ultrasound in my fist. He did not even flinch.

“So you found it,” he said.

That was all.

So you found it.

Three years of marriage, and that was all he had to say.

“Six weeks,” I whispered. “Six weeks, Nate! You sat across from me at breakfast. You ate the food I cooked. You let me iron your shirts. You let me call your grandmother on Sundays and lie to her about how happy we were. And the whole time—”

“It’s done, Sabrina.” He closed his laptop. “So sit down.”

“I will not sit down!” He shot up an eyebrow. “You were never going to ask me. You came home tonight and pretended to ask me, and the whole time—”

“It’s already done.” He stood up. He looked tired, not sorry. “Asking you was a formality. Grandma wanted me to ask, so I did. You said no. It doesn’t change anything.”

My knees buckled. I caught the edge of his desk.

“But nothing has to change, Sabrina. Not really. We can work this out.”

“Work this out,” I repeated. I could not believe the words coming out of his mouth.

“I’ll increase your allowance. Double it. We’ll draw up a new agreement. Better terms. You’ll have your own account. Your own money. Things you should have had from the start.” He waved his hand like he was offering a corner office. “All I need from you is a little understanding.”

“Understanding.”

“Alexis is dying. This is her last wish. You don’t have to like it. You just have to accept it. You don’t even have to see her. I’ll keep things separate. Nothing in your life has to change.”

“Nothing in my life has to change?” I stared at him. “Your mistress is pregnant with your child. Everything has changed!”

“It doesn’t have to.” He leaned forward. “Sabrina. Think. I like coming home to this house. I like our arrangement. I’m not asking you to leave. I’m asking you to stay.”

Had he lost his mind?

“You want to keep me here,” I said slowly, “while she carries your baby somewhere else. You want both of us. You just want us in separate rooms.”

His jaw twitched. He didn’t deny it.

I gave a high-pitched laugh. “You had this planned—”

“Yes.”

“You had this planned when you sat down at that table an hour ago and asked me to be kind.”

“Yes.” His jaw twitched. “Don’t make this longer than it has to be.”

“I want a divorce.”

Nate’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t be dramatic, Sabrina.”

“You heard me, Nate.”

“And then what?” His voice hardened. Just a degree. Just enough. “Your uncle is still at St. Catherine’s. Those bills don’t pay themselves. Your aunt’s apartment doesn’t have room for a housefly, let alone—”

He stopped himself, but not soon enough.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m reminding you.” He looked at me evenly. “Of the arrangement. Of what you signed up for. I have taken care of you and your family for three years. All I am asking is that you let me take care of someone else, too. You can hate me for it. That’s fine. But don’t blow up your own life out of spite.”

The doorbell rang.

Nate’s head snapped toward the sound. His jaw went tight.

“Who the hell—”

He knew. I could see it in the way his hand closed around the glass. He knew before the heels hit the marble.

Alexis.

She walked into the study like she already owned it. Cream coat. Diamond earrings I’d helped him pick out last Christmas, thinking they were for his mother. And under the coat, when she opened it slowly, theatrically, with one hand spread flat over her belly—a small, perfect bump.

“Oh,” she said, looking at me. “Sabrina. You’re still here!”

She didn’t sound surprised. She sounded annoyed. My eyes narrowed.

“Nate, baby, you said she’d be gone by tonight.”

Baby. She called him baby, in my study, in front of me! My blood roared.

I looked at Nate. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Alexis, I told you I would handle this.”

She waved one hand like she was brushing away a fly. “You were taking too long, darling. I got bored in the car.”

I looked at Nate. His jaw was clenched. Alexis had walked into the one conversation he wanted to control and blown it wide open.

She glided closer. She smelled like the perfume I had found on his collar a hundred times.

“You’re being so brave about this, Sabrina,” she said softly. “Truly. Some women would make a scene. Some women would beg. But you’re going to be reasonable, aren’t you? Because you know what you are.”

“What am I?”

“You’re the placeholder.”

She tilted her head and looked at me like she was admiring a painting in a museum she was about to buy.

“Don’t look so sad, sweetie. You did your job. You kept the seat warm. You walked his grandmother to the bathroom. You were a perfectly nice little stand-in, and now the real wife is home. You should thank me, honestly. If my brothers had known Nate had a wife on the side, you’d have been out years ago!”

“Alexis,” Nate said from behind his desk. She ignored him.

A folded sheaf of paper in her coat pocket crinkled as she moved. She drew it out and set it on the desk.

“Oh, and these. You’re the legal wife, sweetie, so we needed your name on the consent form. Such an annoying little hoop, isn’t it? Nate did such a good job of your signature, I almost thought it was yours.”

The room went small.

There, on the bottom line of a Crestwood Fertility consent form dated nine weeks ago: Sabrina Cooper. The little loop on the S exactly mine.

He had forged my hand. He had practiced. For weeks, probably, on scrap paper in his study with the door closed, while I sat downstairs heating his dinner.

“Sweetie,” Alexis said softly, “breathe.”

She reached out and touched a strand of my hair, almost tenderly. I jerked back so fast my shoulder hit the bookcase. Her smile widened.

“Oh,” she breathed. “You still loved him. Even after all of this. You poor little thing.”

My hand drifted, just for a second, to my own stomach. To the secret growing there.

Her eyes followed.

For one breath, I thought she saw it.

Then she just smiled.

She reached into her coat pocket again and produced a fresh form.

Crestwood Fertility Clinic, it said. Spousal Consent for Donor Procedure. Alexis’s name was already printed in the patient field. Mine was blank on the signature line, waiting.

“Now. Since the forgery was a teensy bit illegal—” she laughed like this was the funniest thing “—we need your real signature. Proper and legal. Just sign, sweetie, and we can all move on with our lives. Nate keeps his wife. You keep your allowance. I keep my baby. Everybody wins.”

She set a pen on top of the form and pushed them both toward me.

“Sign the form, Sabrina. Be a good girl. We’ve done so much for you. Pay us back. You owe us!” She leaned in a little, lowering her lashes. “Nobody says no to an Atwood. You’ll learn that soon enough.”