Chapter Three

Bella sat alone in the kitchen, staring at the cup of tea in front of her that had long gone cold, listening to Jason and Natalie laugh together in the dining room. 

Their voices drifted toward her through the doorway, intimate and warm and completely unbothered by her existence, and she wrapped both hands around the cold cup just to have something to hold onto.

One more day. Just one more day and she would be free.

Tomorrow the contract would officially expire and she could walk out of this house and never look back, and all she had to do was survive today without falling apart. 

Her hand moved unconsciously to her stomach as she thought about it, pressing gently against the secret that only she knew, the only good thing that had come from any of this.

"Bella!"

Jason's voice cut through her thoughts and she closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. "Yes?"

"Bring some wine."

Of course. She took a slow breath, opened the freezer, and pulled out the chilled bottle of white wine. Just one more day, she told herself, and she grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and arranged everything carefully on a silver tray.

She was three steps into the dining room when the cramping started, sharp and sudden, like something twisting deep inside her abdomen, and the shock of it made her gasp. The tray tilted in her hands and the wine glasses clinked dangerously against each other and the room began to blur at the edges.

The tray slipped from her fingers.

She heard the crash of glass shattering against the floor and felt something cold and wet splash against her legs, but it all seemed very far away because the pain was spreading through her lower belly like fire and her knees were giving out beneath her.

Strong arms caught her before she hit the ground.

"Bella! Bella, can you hear me?" Jason's voice came from somewhere above her and she tried to focus on his face but black spots were dancing across her vision and the pain was too much to speak through. 

Her hand found her stomach on instinct, pressing there, and she thought please, please let them be okay, before everything went dark.

When she opened her eyes she was lying on the living room sofa and Jason was kneeling beside her with his hand on her forehead and his face pale and his eyes wide with something that looked very much like fear.

"Bella? Can you hear me?"

She blinked slowly, piecing together what had happened, and her hand went immediately to her stomach. She felt Jason's eyes follow the movement and his brow furrow, and she quickly shifted her hand away.

She tried to sit up and her legs felt like water beneath her, Jason pressed her back down gently.

 "Don't move yet," he said softly, his voice had that old tenderness in it, the one she hadn't heard in days, and it broke something open in her chest that she immediately tried to close again.

"You could have told me you weren't feeling well." His thumb brushed across her cheek and she realized there were tears there that she hadn't known she was crying. "What's wrong with you? Have you been sick?"

She turned her face away from his touch because she could not let him be gentle with her right now, not when she was already so close to the edge of everything.

"We should go to the hospital," he said, his voice firming up. "You've been looking weak for days. This isn't normal."

Panic shot through her like electricity. "No."

"Bella—"

"I said no." She pushed his hand away and forced herself upright, ignoring the way the room tilted slightly around her.

Jason stared at her with an expression she had never seen him turn on her before, startled and a little hurt, because he had always known her to be gentle and accommodating and she had never once raised her voice at him or pushed him away. 

She could see the confusion on his face, the slight furrow of his brow as he tried to understand what was happening to her, she felt a grim and hollow satisfaction at being someone he could no longer read so easily.

She couldn't go to the hospital. If she did they would run tests and they would find out about the pregnancy and if Jason found out he would never let her leave. She would spend the rest of her life inside this house, watching him love someone else, raising their children in the shadow of a marriage that had meant everything to her and nothing to him. She would rather walk out of here with nothing than live like that.

"Bella, please—"

"Jason, is she alright?" Natalie appeared in the doorway with her pretty face creased with concern, moving immediately to Jason's side and placing her hand gently on his arm. "Should I call someone?"

Bella felt something cold and clear settle inside her as she looked at the two of them standing there together, so natural, so effortless, like she was the intruder in her own home. 

She straightened her spine and ignored the lingering ache in her abdomen and looked at neither of them directly.

"I'm fine," she said. "I just need to rest."

She walked out of the room with careful, measured steps, and she did not stumble and she did not look back, and behind her she heard Natalie murmur something to Jason in a low and sympathetic voice that Bella did not stay to hear.

The next morning Bella sat in Jason's study with her back straight and her hands folded neatly in her lap, dressed in a simple black dress with her hair pulled back and makeup covering the dark circles she had earned from a night of barely sleeping. 

She had taken care with how she looked this morning because she needed to appear composed and certain, like a woman who had made a clean decision and was simply here to finalize it, like leaving him meant nothing to her.

Jason sat across from her behind his large mahogany desk with the divorce papers spread out between them. He stared at the documents for a long moment without speaking, his jaw tight, before finally picking them up.