Chapter One

Isolde Laurent Pov 

I never thought this day would come. Not once in five years did I let myself picture it, and yet here I was, standing in my kitchen with a pregnancy test in my hand.

Two lines. Dark and clear. I had already taken three that morning and one more after lunch, and the doctor's letter was folded in my handbag under a pack of tissues. Five years of nothing. Five years of his mother's eyes dropping to my flat stomach every time she visited. Five years of me smiling through it. And now I finally had what Saffron Cole wanted.

I cooked all his favorites. Braised beef, garlic rice, the soup his grandmother used to make. I put on the cream dress he said he liked in our first year, back when he still said things like that. I set the table twice because my hands shook so badly the first time that I knocked a glass over.

Then I stood in front of the hallway mirror and practiced.

"Saffron, I have something to tell you." I pressed my hand to my belly. "Good news, for once."

I looked happy in that mirror. I looked like a woman who had earned it.

The clock struck three. Then four. The soup went cold and I heated it again. Just after five I heard the gate, then the car pulling into the driveway, and my heart started pounding so hard I felt it in my ears. I smoothed my dress, wiped my palms on it, and went to the door with my smile already in place.

The door opened.

Saffron came in first, tie loose, jacket over his arm. And hanging on his side, her fingers locked in his, was a woman I knew right away. Everyone in the country would have.

Nyx Sinclair. The superstar. The face on every billboard and magazine and phone screen I had ever scrolled past. Long glossy waves, wine-red lips, a white dress that probably cost more than my whole wardrobe.

But it was Saffron's face that stopped me.

He was smiling. A real smile, wide and easy, almost boyish. I had never seen it. Not at our wedding, not on any anniversary, not on one single night of the five years I had waited up for him. I could actually feel how happy he was, standing there in my doorway, and none of it had ever been for me.

His hand was on her waist. Not resting there. Holding her, pulling her in close like he was scared someone would take her.

"Saffron?" My voice came out small. "Who is..."

He didn't answer. His eyes went over my face, my dress, the table behind me with the candles and the cold food, and there was nothing in them. No guilt. Not even surprise. He looked like a man waiting in line at a bank.

He took a white envelope from inside his jacket and pulled out a stapled stack of papers. He held them out.

"Sign it."

Two words. He said them the way he'd ask me to pass the salt. And they hit harder than anything anyone had ever said to me. My legs went weak. I looked down and the bold black letters at the top blurred together. Divorce Agreement.

The tears came before I could stop them. I wiped my face with my right hand, fast, like I could hide it. My left hand went to my stomach on its own.

He saw that. His eyes dropped right to it and moved on. He noticed nothing.

"Did you hear me?" he said. "Sign it."

I took the papers. They rattled in my fingers. He pulled a pen from his pocket and held it out, a plain black pen, and I stared at it like it was something dangerous.

"Is this how you're going to throw me away?" I asked.

My voice broke on the last word. I wanted him to flinch. I wanted a lie, an excuse, even an insult, anything. He just stood there with his jaw tight and said nothing.

Nyx laughed softly. She stepped up against him and kissed his cheek, then slid her arm around his neck and rested her shoulder against his chest. Her breast pressed into his arm and she made no effort to hide it. She wanted me to see.

Something in me snapped.

"Five years," I said. It scraped my throat on the way out. "Five years I gave up my future for you. Five years I was a loyal wife. I cooked, I waited, I swallowed every insult your family threw at me. I kept believing you would change." I laughed, and even I could hear how ugly it sounded. "You never did. I'm always the one who gets hurt, and you don't even care how I feel."

"That's enough," Saffron said.

"I haven't..."

"Stop acting like you're the only woman who ever got divorced." Nyx's voice was sweet, almost friendly. She looked me dead in the eye. "Besides, you don't deserve him."

It landed like a slap.

I turned to Saffron and waited. I waited for him to tell her to shut up. To say something, anything, in my defense, just once. He tightened his arm around her waist and looked at the floor.

That was my answer.

I thought about the doctor's letter in my bag. I thought about saying it out loud. I'm pregnant. It's yours. The words sat on my tongue.

Then I looked at Nyx's hand on his chest, at that pleased little curl of her mouth, and at the man who hadn't even wondered why I was crying. I swallowed every word.

If he didn't care enough to look at me, he didn't deserve to hear it.

I put the papers down on the table, right between the candles I'd lit for him. I pressed the pen to the page and my hand stopped shaking. Just like that. I don't know why. Maybe that's what it feels like when the last thread finally gives.

Isolde Laurent. I signed it slowly, every letter.

I dropped the pen on top. "There."

Saffron blinked. Once. Something crossed his face, something I couldn't read, and then it was gone. He picked up the papers like a man collecting on a bet.

I grabbed my handbag, the one with the doctor's letter in it, and walked to the door. Nobody stopped me. Nobody said my name. Behind me Nyx laughed again, light and careless, and I heard it all the way down the hall.

At the door I turned around.

"I promise you, Saffron Cole," I said. My voice was quiet, but it didn't shake. "You will regret this."

He smiled at me. Small, cold, like I'd told a bad joke. Then he turned back to his superstar.

I walked out.

The sun hit me like an oven. Heat came up off the pavement in waves, hot enough to fry a person alive, and my dress was stuck to my back before I reached the gate. No car. No suitcase. No plan. Just one hand free to hold the only thing I had left.

I pressed it to my stomach and kept walking.

He had thrown away his wife. What he didn't know was that he'd thrown away his child too, and I swore under that burning sky he would never find out until it was too late to beg.