Chapter 1

Estelle’s POV

“How long have you been fucking my friend Michael!?” My husband, Harrison, slapped the birthday cake into my face just as I was wishing him a happy birthday and about to tell him that I was pregnant.

I wiped the frosting from my face and asked, “Honey, what are you talking about?”

“Even now, you’re still playing innocent, huh?” he said as he pulled out a stack of photos and flung them straight at my face. Pain flared across my cheek, hot and stinging, as the photos fluttered to the floor around my feet.

I picked up one of the photos. It showed Michael and me in bed, naked, having sex.

Then I flipped through the rest of the photos with shaking hands. There were more, Michael and I having dinner at a restaurant, walking down the street hand in hand, smiling like lovers.

I had never done any of those things. Besides, the last time I saw Michael was last year.

“That’s not real,” I said. “Harrison, those photos are fake. That never happened.”

“Really?” He laughed. “Because it looks pretty clear to me.”

“It’s fabricated! Someone made this. I don’t know how, but I’ve never—I would never—”

“I trusted you,” he said coldly as I stared wide-eyed at him. “I thought you were different from the other women. Virtuous. Loyal to your vows. Turns out you’re just as fickle and wanton as everyone else. I can’t stand what you’ve done with Michael. I want a divorce.”

Everything had happened so fast. I had been holding back my emotions, keeping them buried deep, until I heard the word divorce.

Tears welled up, threatening to spill like a dam breaking, but I forced them back and managed to say through a trembling voice, “Divorce? Over these photos?”

“Is that hard to understand?” His eyebrows went up. “I can’t divorce my cheating wife? And you know what the worst part is?”

The worst part? Haven’t I done enough all these years? I always took care of him in every little way, always going along with his moods. I didn’t even realize that, in his heart, I was never truly enough.

“We’ve been married for three years now. Three whole years, and you still haven’t managed to give me a child.”

My hand twitched toward my stomach before I could stop it. I’d been about to tell him exactly that. That’s why I’d made the cake in the first place, why I’d been waiting by the door with a smile.

The pregnancy test kit was in my purse right this second, sitting on the kitchen counter just a few feet away.

“Do you still love me?” I croaked.

“No.” He didn’t even blink. “After this? No. I don’t.”

I took a shaky breath, trying to find the courage to speak. “What if we had a child?”

He laughed coldly, and the words cut through me like ice. “A child? You want to use a pregnancy to get out of this? You haven’t managed to get pregnant in these three years, and now, right after I tell you I caught you cheating, you suddenly bring up a pregnancy? I can see through your manipulations. You’re a compulsive liar. I don’t believe you’re even pregnant. Even if you were, how would I ever know it’s mine and not Michael’s?”

After his words hit me, all my strength to argue drained away. This was exactly how he saw me, a woman utterly disgraceful in his eyes. He didn’t love me. He didn’t love our child.

Why should I bother telling him anything now?

He left me sobbing there and disappeared into his office without a backward glance. I heard the sounds of drawers being yanked open, papers rustling as he searched for something.

He called his lawyer. The two of them talked about something I couldn’t make out. Then I heard the fax machine beeping.

Beep. Beep.

After that, he picked up a few sheets of paper and walked over to me. I looked down and saw, at the top of the page, a large, unmistakable title:

DIVORCE AGREEMENT.

I looked at him. He was staring at me too, anger still burning in his eyes, but there was something else there as well, something unsettled, almost lost.

He didn’t explain. Didn’t shout.

He just said, cold and final. “Sign it.”

My hands trembled violently as I wiped my tears. I took the pen he offered and signed.

Harrison signed right after me.

His phone suddenly vibrated against the coffee table between us. The screen lit up and I saw the name displayed there before he could snatch it away. I froze.

Lyndsey.

His ex-girlfriend. The woman he’d dated for five years before he’d ever met me. The one his mother had absolutely adored and talked about constantly even after Harrison and I got engaged.

She was the most important person in his life.

I looked up at him slowly. “This was never really about the photos at all, was it?”

He didn’t deny what I’d said. He didn’t even try.

He just picked up his phone and silenced the call.

“You wanted an excuse to leave,” I rasped. “You needed some kind of justification so you could go back to her without looking like the bad guy.”

“Don’t be so dramatic about everything. She is my friend now.”

“Dramatic?” I scoffed. “You just destroyed our marriage over fake pictures and now she’s calling you within seconds of us finishing the signatures.”

He grabbed his jacket. “I’m leaving now.”

He walked to the door and pulled it open. He stepped halfway through the doorway and then suddenly stopped.

His hand tightened around the doorknob. He stood there frozen for what felt like an eternity, his back still turned toward me so I couldn’t see his face.

“What was it?” he asked without turning around. “That good news you said you wanted to tell me earlier. What was it?”