Chapter Two

The word hit her like a slap across the face.

 She thought about every single time he had said I love you against her hair in the dark before they fell asleep, and how completely and utterly she had believed him.

All of it had just been part of a contract.

"You knew about Natalie from the start," he continued, his voice rising now and filling the room. "I told you everything about her, how much she meant to me and how much I cherished her, and now she is finally back. You want me to push her away because of you? Because of something that was going to end anyway?"

Bella was quiet for a long moment, and then she lifted her chin and looked at him steadily. "I don't care about Natalie," she said, and her voice came out calmer and steadier than she felt, which surprised even her.

Jason blinked. He had clearly been expecting tears, or pleading, or both, and the absence of either seemed to catch him off guard.

Before he could respond, his phone beeped and he pulled it out, the moment he read the screen his entire face changed. The tension in his jaw released and his eyes softened and he became, in an instant, a completely different person, the warm and gentle person Bella used to believe belonged to her.

He turned toward the door, then stopped without looking back at her. "Prepare the room," he said.

Bella stared at his back. "What?"

"Natalie just got back from traveling and she needs to settle in properly, so prepare the room for her." His tone was flat and casual, as though he had not just dismantled everything she had believed about her own marriage.

The room was very still.

"You want me to prepare her room," Bella said slowly, making sure she had heard him correctly.

Jason turned and looked at her with an unreadable face. "Is there a problem?"

She held his gaze for a long moment and saw nothing behind his eyes that suggested he understood the cruelty of what he was asking. He genuinely did not see it, and somehow that was worse than if he had asked it to hurt her on purpose.

"No," she said finally, and walked past him into the hallway without looking back.

She heard him exhale behind her, and then his footsteps went the other way, back toward the sound of Natalie's voice drifting up from downstairs.

Bella kept walking, and pressed her hand gently against her stomach as she went, feeling the warmth of her own skin and thinking about the two small lives growing quietly inside her that he would never know about.

She was going to be okay. She had to be.

Two days. She only needed to survive two more days.

The next morning, bright sunlight was streaming through the curtains when Bella opened her eyes and looked at the clock on the nightstand.

Noon.

She lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling, thinking about how before all of this, Jason would never have let her sleep this late. 

He would come back upstairs and kiss her forehead, then her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, laughing softly when she pulled the blanket over her face and pretended she wanted to keep sleeping.

She pressed her palms against her eyes and told herself to stop.

She sat up, reached for the pregnancy report on the nightstand, read it one more time, and then folded it carefully and tucked it into the inside pocket of her bag. 

Today she would make calls and find work and begin building the life that she and her babies were going to need, somewhere far away from this house and everything in it.

She got dressed and went downstairs. The front door opened just as she reached the bottom step.

Jason walked in with his arm around Natalie’s waist. They were laughing, looking at each other the way people do when the world has quietly fallen away around them, unnoticed.

Bella gripped the railing.

Natalie noticed her first and her laughter softened into something sweet and practiced. 

"Oh, Bella, good morning, or good afternoon I suppose," she said with a small giggle, pulling herself a little closer into Jason's side. "We didn't wake you, did we? Jason mentioned you've been sleeping so much lately and that he's been worried about you."

Bella looked at Jason, and Jason looked back at her with an expression that held nothing resembling worry.

"We just came back from brunch," Natalie continued in the easy, warm voice of a woman who had never once doubted her place in any room. "Jason took me to the most wonderful place downtown. I used to dream about their pancakes when I was abroad." She looked up at him with soft, adoring eyes. "You remembered."

"Of course I remembered," Jason said quietly, and smiled down at her.

Bella's grip on the railing tightened until her knuckles went white.

 She had spent three years learning everything about this man, She had memorized him completely and loved every detail of him, and last night he had looked her in the eye and called it a contract.

She let go of the railing and smoothed her expression into something calm and unreadable. "I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said politely, and walked past them both toward the kitchen without waiting for a response.