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Episode 14 — Something Is Changing
publish date:
2026-11-12 22:02:24
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THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 15 — The Breaking Point
I woke up with my cheek pressed to the pillow and the room tilting slightly.It passed in a few seconds. I sat up, waited for the dizziness to settle, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.It's nothing, I told myself.But the nausea was already curling in my stomach, and the memory of my phone screen from the other morning flashed in my head. MmI pushed it away. I had to. When I was nineteen, the specialist had been clear. The trauma of being Jade's donor, the surgeries, the years of my body being treated like a spare parts warehouse—he had told my mother it would be highly unlikely for me to conceive naturally. Not impossible, but improbable.I had held onto those words for years. I had built my entire understanding of my future around them. So, I couldn't be pregnant. It was scientifically improbable.Which meant the dizziness, the tiredness, the sudden wave of sickness—it had to be something else. It had to be because I had been lazy. I had spent the last month eating pastr
THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 14 — Something Is Changing
A month passed, and I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.Marcus went back to work. He left at eight, came home at seven, and complained about the traffic on Sunset. His leg didn't hurt him on the stairs anymore. We ate dinner together most nights—sometimes at the kitchen counter, sometimes in the study with our plates on our knees. It was ordinary. I had never had an ordinary anything in my life.The tiredness crept in so slowly I almost didn't notice it. I'd wake up at seven feeling like I hadn't slept, and by three in the afternoon, my body felt heavy, like I was moving through deep water. I blamed the change in weather.Then the coffee started tasting wrong. Not just wrong—offensive. I poured a cup on a Tuesday, lifted it to my mouth, and had to set it down. Maria asked if I wanted tea instead. I told her I was just cutting back.Marcus caught me pushing my eggs around my plate a week later."You're not eating," he said, not looking up from his paper."I'm not hungry.""Yo
THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 13 — A Date with My Husband
---Two weeks went by, and I stopped counting the days. Marcus came down the stairs without holding onto anything. He just walked. He told me about work on a Thursday, over breakfast, with his mouth half full of toast. "Monday. Board meeting. I'm going back."I set my coffee cup down. "Does Dr. Bennett know?""Dr. Bennett says I can walk to the end of the street. A board meeting is sitting in a chair and disagreeing with people. I've been training for that my whole life.""That's not what I asked.""I'll take it slowly.""You won't.""I'll take it slowly," he repeated, and this time he set the toast down and looked at me, and I could tell he actually meant it.Gerald came round that afternoon with a folder and a list and a face like a man carrying something heavy. They sat at the kitchen table going through it while I made tea and tried not to hover. "The Hong Kong contract has to be renegotiated," Gerald said. "They've had three extensions. They know we're weak.""Then we don't look
THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 12 — The Night He Couldn't Remember
---He was already at the table when I came down, which never happened. His plate was untouched and his coffee had gone cold and he was looking at his phone."Morning," I said.He didn't answer."Marcus."He looked up. "What? Sorry. Morning."I poured myself a coffee and sat down, and he went back to the phone. Then he put it face down on the table, and then he picked it up again."How's your leg today?" I asked."Fine.""Dr. Bennett said you'd have good days and bad days. Is it a bad—""It's fine, Freya."He said it sharply enough that I stopped. He didn't look up. He just sat there with his thumb resting on the edge of the phone, and after a minute he pushed his chair back and said he had to go."Where?""Out."He took his cane and he left, and I heard the front door and then the car, and then nothing.---I spent the morning doing nothing useful.I reorganised the books in the study and then put them back the way they were. I answered an email from Karine about a fabric shop in Par
THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 11 — A Step Closer
The newspaper was still on the table when I came down. Someone had left it folded to the society pages, and there we were—me standing beside his chair with my hand on the backrest, him looking at the camera like it owed him money.Marcus Hunt and his wife Freya attend the Hunt Foundation gala.His wife.I read the caption three times and then I stopped, because reading it a fourth time wasn't going to change anything about the last eight months.He'd said he enjoyed himself. He'd said I looked beautiful. He'd laughed at the thing I said about the turtle, and he'd told me about Milo and the salsa lesson. Not once—not the whole evening—had he brought up Jade.Which was why I couldn't leave it alone. That's the thing nobody tells you about being treated badly for long enough: when someone is finally decent to you, you don't relax. You start looking for the catch.He'd called me a ghost in his house. He'd said it in a bedroom with the door closed and his leg strapped to a machine, and he'
THE REPLACEMENT BRIDE Episode 10 — THE CHARITY GALA
I wake up and for a moment nothing feels strange.Then I remember the night before. The laughing. The stories. The way he said, I just don't feel like being alone right now.I tell myself it was nothing. That people are allowed to be pleasant to each other without it meaning anything.I don't believe a word of it.---Maria finds me in the hallway a few hours later."Mr. Hunt would like to see you."I go. Of course I go.Marcus is in the study, dressed and at his desk. His wheelchair is pulled up close to the table. He looks up when I walk in and something crosses his face—not irritation, exactly. Something more careful than that."My father called this morning," he says.I wait."There's a charity gala tonight. The Hunt Foundation's annual dinner. He wants us there. Together.""Together," I repeat."In public." He sets his pen down. "Apparently the press has been running stories about the accident and the wedding. Questions about the company. He thinks two married people standing in
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