Divorced With His Heir In My Belly

[Sarah's POV]I had spent all afternoon on my hands and knees, planning the surprise. Two thousand dollars worth of deep red rose petals were scattered across our big bed in a perfect heart shape. A hundred vanilla-scented candles burned from every available surface. I wanted it to be perfect. I needed it to be perfect.I picked up my phone as it rang. It was Lucy. "Are you wearing the gold thong? Tell me you're wearing it, Sarah.” She screamed into my ears. “If you don't show off that body tonight, I’m coming over there to slap some sense into you myself."I laughed, a shaky, nervous sound that caught in my throat. I looked at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. The gold piece was something the old, plain Sarah would never have worn. But tonight was supposed to be the reset button for my marriage. After four years of cold silence and the pain of three miscarriages, tonight was meant to be special."Yes, I'm wearing the gold thing, Lucy.”"The gold *thong*," she corrected, a

[Sarah’s POV]"That’ll be eighteen dollars and forty-two cents,"The cashier said. Her name tag read Priya. She didn't look up, her fingers poised over the register.I look at the three items on the counter: a carton of milk, a crate of eggs, a loaf of generic white bread, and a bottle of prenatal vitamins I’d found on the clearance rack. It was the bare minimum required to keep the life inside me going.I brought out my primary debit card, the one linked to the joint account Tyler and I had shared for seven years, and held it out to her. I stare at the floor while she ran my card the first time, the way you fixed your eyes on something when the rest of the world was threatening to come apart. The store was too bright. It was always too bright in places like this, with nowhere to hide. The machine beeped. Priya looked at the screen the way people looked at things they didn't want to have to say out loud. "It's declined." "I'm sorry?" "Your card." She turned the reader toward me. "I

[Sarah’s POV]The first thing I saw was white. White ceiling. White walls. White coat. I stared at the man leaning over me and said the only thing that made sense. "God?" I croaked. My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of dry sand. "Am I dead? Is this heaven?" The man laughed softly, and shook his head. "You’re in the hospital. You were brought in last night." I lay there for a moment absorbing that information. Not heaven... Hospital. Somehow both disappointing and a relief at the same time. He helped me sit up, a young doctor with calm hands and the unbothered energy of someone who had seen far worse than me on a Tuesday night. He checked my blood pressure, shone a light in my eyes, asked me to follow his finger. I followed his finger and tried to remember last night. The bar. The women. The television screen with Tyler's hand on Lucy's waist. The door with the blind pulled down. Walking backwards in the dark— My hand flew to my stomach before the thought even finishe

Norman almost left me behind.I had one leg in the truck and one still on the pavement when he started the engine, and the look he gave me in the rear-view mirror when I finally yanked the door shut was the look of a man who had already decided I'd exceeded his patience and we hadn't even left the city yet.Two hours. Not a single word. "Do you talk?" I finally asked, somewhere past the first hour.His eyes didn't move from the road. "When there's something worth saying."I turned back to the window. "Wonderful," I said quietly. "An entire year of this."I folded my hands in my lap and watched New York dissolve into highway and highway dissolve into greener and older and unfamiliar lands.I hadn't prepared myself for the beautiful view that caught my eye three hours later. My chest had already cracked open before I could stop it.Norman pulled up on the gravel, killed the engine, and had my bags out of the boot before I reached the back of the truck. Two cases and a holdall — everyth

[Tyler’s POV]For three years, entering this front door had felt like stepping into a tomb—a quiet prison where Sarah would be waiting with that look of expectation on her face."How was your day, Darling?" she would ask, her voice a soft, dull hum that made my skin crawl.Now, the air smelled like expensive Oud and Lucy’s French perfume. It smelled like life.I poured myself a glass of aged scotch, the amber liquid catching the morning sun. I felt ten years younger. It was as if a heavy, rusted anchor had finally been cut from my neck, allowing me to float. No more walking on eggshells around Sarah’s fragile "feelings." No more lying in bed next to a log of wood that stared at the ceiling as if sex were a chore she was barely enduring.I thought back to the other night. Lucy was fire and spice. She didn't just lie there like Sarah did, Lucy made me feel like a man who actually had blood in his veins. The sex had been so explosive, so transformative, that I’d already scheduled an imp