Chapter 1

Three Lines and a Lie He Doesn't Know He's Telling

Virelle's POV

Three tests. Three lines. I set them side by side on the bathroom counter and stared at them like they might change their minds if I looked at them long enough.

"I'm pregnant." I said it out loud, just to hear how it sounded. My hand was still pressed against my mouth from the first time I'd said it, back when I wasn't sure I believed it.

Four years of hoping. Four years of watching a single line show up every month and telling myself it didn't matter. It mattered anyways. It had always mattered to me…

I thought about Kael's face when I told him. I let myself imagine it the way I used to imagine things when I was younger and had less practice being disappointed, him lifting me off the ground, laughing, his hand flat against my stomach like he couldn't quite believe it.

I grabbed my coat before I'd even decided to leave. I wanted something small to hold in my hands when I told him, something that would say it before I had the chance to get the words wrong.

Two blocks from the penthouse there was a boutique with a pair of knitted baby shoes in the window, white with pale blue ribbons. I didn't check the price. I carried the little paper bag home against my chest like it might break.

By the time I got back, I'd already planned the whole evening in my head, step by step, the way I planned most things when it came to him. Candles. The wine he always ordered and never remembered the name of. Roasted chicken with rosemary potatoes, the recipe his mother used to make before she died — he'd mentioned it once, years ago, almost by accident, and I'd never forgotten it even if he had. I wanted the night to feel like something out of a memory he'd never actually had.

I put the shoes on the mantel where he'd see them the second he walked in, then moved them to the table instead, then back to the mantel again, unable to decide which version of the reveal I wanted more.

That was when I checked the calendar on the kitchen wall and remembered what day it was.

Our anniversary. Four years since he'd put a ring on my finger in front of two hundred people who cared more about his money than about either of us.

He hadn't said a word about it that morning.

I told myself it was fine. Kael ran a company that didn't leave room for anniversaries some weeks, and I'd gotten good at not keeping score, because keeping score only ever led to me being disappointed on purpose.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Kael: Running late. Don't wait up.

Five words with no reason, Not even an apology. I read it twice and then did what I always did, built him an excuse in my head before he could ask for one. He's closing the merger. He told me last week it was almost done. He's probably sitting in some boardroom with his tie loosened, and the last thing on his mind is a dinner his wife spent three hours on.

I set the table anyway. Two plates, two glasses, the baby shoes propped in the center like a secret waiting to be found. I lit the candles at seven.

By eight the wax had melted halfway down and the chicken had gone cold under its foil. By nine I'd eaten alone across from an empty chair, telling myself stories about a man who kept promising to fight for us and instead just kept disappearing a little more each year.

I wasn't angry. I want to be honest about that, because looking back, anger probably would have saved me some grief. What I felt that night was hope, stupid, stubborn hope that wouldn't quit even when everything else in my life was telling it to.

I cleared the table around ten and put the chicken in the fridge, in case he came home hungry.

I sat on the couch with my phone in my hand, still holding on to the picture I'd built that morning. Kael walking through the door. Kael seeing the shoes. Kael pulling me in and finally saying the thing I'd been waiting four years to hear.

My phone buzzed again, not him this time around. A number I didn't recognize. No name. Just ten digits and a small paperclip icon. I opened it before I let myself think about why my hand had gone cold.

Kael, in the navy suit he'd worn that morning, standing under the gold lights outside the Windermere, the kind of hotel people went to for exactly two reasons. Business. Or things they didn't want their spouse to find out about.

His hand rested on the small of a woman's back as he walked her through the entrance. I zoomed in, already knowing and still hoping I was wrong.

Selene Arkwright. The woman who'd been at his side since they were children, who touched his arm a beat too long at every dinner party, who laughed too easily at every one of his flat, distracted jokes. Half the city already whispered that she was the one he'd have married, if his father hadn't decided someone more useful to the business made better sense.

Someone like me. I set the phone down on the couch cushion beside me, very carefully, the way you set something down when you don't trust your own hands not to throw it. The photo was still glowing on the screen, small and bright in the dark room, Kael's hand on Selene's back frozen mid-step. I didn't look at it again. I didn't need to. I'd already memorized it.

I sat there with the baby shoes still on the table, catching the last of the candlelight before the wax finally gave out and the room went dark.