002 One Ticket For Two

Scarlett’s POV

Sitting in the taxi to another hospital -- the hospital where SHE is, to see him. I feel sick. Carsick, morning sick, or just...sick of this trip.

This is the trip I hate the most, and this is a trip I have been taking for ten years: she is always in the hospital, and he is always around her, even before our marriage.

That’s what happens when your crush loves your sister who has Willebrand, combined with a RH- blood type, no less.

Yes, the illness where one can’t heal from bleeding, with the blood type that only 0.3% of people have.

Even a small cut on a finger could be lethal to her. That’s why she is the spoiled treasure of the whole family, the untouchable, the miracle that gets everything she wants by just existing.

Me? Even my existence gets ignored.

My parents have only Ava in their eyes. My brother hates me as if I stole my health from Ava.

No, I just stole her man.

But they hated me even before that. Marrying Sebastian only let their hidden hatred out of the bag.

But I did steal, and I paid for it. I married him, and I got only five years of torment from him.

I thought loving him with all I have could amend for my sin, and I paid with all the love I can find in me. I thought it was my life a dream coming true when I married him, I guess I should have known when I spent our wedding night alone that...

...He will never be the little hero who saved me ten years ago. Not for me, never again.

[Sorry, I guess the plan is back on...after all. Are you still available?] I text Aurora. I feel bad that I just told her to cancel my flight when I was told it would be a one-ticket-for-two.

[For you? Always.]

I close my eyes. It’s decided then.

I can’t back out of it now. He won’t let me. He has been waiting for these divorce papers forever.

I just need to figure out what the baby means in this mess. Well, probably a question only I need to answer. He wouldn’t want anything to do with the baby, and Ava...

It would be tremendously kind of her if she would let the baby live. I’m sure if she asks for my abortion from him, he will happily oblige.

I take a moment after the crazy taxi’s bumpy ride to adjust my breath, letting the thin sweat on my forehead fade as I swallow down the nauseous lump dangling behind my tongue. I get car sick as easy as it is, and carrying a little thing in my womb is making it even harder.

I blame him. It’s definitely a he, bringing nothing but trouble for me, just like his father.

Then I laugh at myself for my childish thought.

A moment ago I was feeling only coldness and horror at the news of his existence, thinking it was just a tiny embryo growing in me that was too little to even show in the scan, a little thing that meant nothing but trouble for me.

But now, I’m already imagining teasing it for its most beautiful laugh in the world. Even before he was born, he was already bringing me joy.

I want to keep him.

That idea scares me. Even if I go through with the plan, could I really bring a baby into a world where he loses one of his parents even before he is born?

Tears swell my eyes at that thought and I can barely see. I blame the hormones.

Giving my tears time to dry, I drag my rubber limbs to Ava’s fifth-floor ward slowly. He is waiting for me inside, but not for the file I WANT to give him.

He wants the one that shatters my heart.

I thought I was ready. I thought he had ground my heart to shreds so tiny that I couldn’t find any love left in me. But it still hurts. And it’s even more impossible to do now, with the baby’s weight on the scale.

“Sebastian, I’m scared. It’s the worst feeling, waiting for the result...” Ava’s timid, girly voice hits me through the door, and I pause, “Hold meeee.”

One sentence from my dear sister, and I lost all my strength to enter. I know he would. He would hold her, with all the love in his heart.

I don’t know how much that love is, but I surely got none.

If I had doubts before this, I don’t now. The only fate for this marriage is to end. I’m here to deliver the divorce papers, I warn myself.

The baby...is just a surprise that won’t change anything.

Five years is long enough of a mistake. I don’t have too much left in me to maintain a marriage-for-one. He married me, but only on paper. His heart is her belongings. Always has been, and always will be.

Tonight I will be in another city, leaving the man I love to the woman he loves.