All Chapters of He Lost His Wife Before He Knew She Was Pregnant : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Three Lines and a Lie He Doesn't Know He's TellingVirelle's POVThree 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 ha

What? I Almost Told HimVirelle's POVI didn't wait for him. I walked straight through the lobby, past the piano, past the doorman who pulled the door open with a polite smile that had no idea what had just happened three feet behind him.The cold outside felt like the first honest thing all night. It was the kind of night where the air smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet, and I remember thinking, absurdly, that I should have brought a heavier coat."Virelle. Wait." His footsteps came fast behind me. I didn't stop until he caught my arm and I spun around hard enough that he nearly lost his balance."Don't touch me."His hand dropped. For a second something almost soft crossed his face, he took in the tears I hadn't noticed I was crying, and his jaw worked like he was trying to solve a problem he didn't have the pieces for."What's wrong with you?" he said. "You're acting like—""Like what, Kael? Like a woman who just heard her husband tell another man that her disappearing wouldn

The Man Who Let Me GoVirelle's POVI went back to the penthouse one last time. Kael was in his study, exactly where he always was, behind a desk covered in papers that mattered more to him than the woman standing in the doorway. He looked up and something flickered in his eyes when he saw the folder in my hands."What's that?""Divorce papers. I need you to sign them."The study smelled like it always did, leather and the faint bite of the whiskey he kept in the cabinet behind his desk, and for a second the familiarity of it almost made me lose my nerve. I watched him carefully, waiting for something, anger, panic, anything that would tell me he wanted to fight for us."You're serious about this," he said slowly."I've never been more serious about anything."He leaned back, studying me the way he studied a contract before signing it, looking for the catch. "You're upset about the hotel. I understand that. But throwing away four years over a joke seems extreme, don't you think?""Do

Ghost Rules Virelle’s POVI made the rules on the plane, somewhere over Pennsylvania, before I even knew where I was landing.Cash only. No accounts in my real name. No forwarding address. Nothing that could be traced back to me, not a receipt, not a signature, not a single piece of paper with Virelle Hartwell written on it. I said it to myself like a prayer, cash only, no accounts, no trail.Delphine met me at the gate with red eyes and a hug so tight it hurt, and she didn’t ask me a single question the whole ride into Queens, which told me she already knew the answer would break my heart to say out loud.“There’s a woman,” she said finally, pulling up outside a diner with a faded sign that read Thorne’s. “Mrs. Papadakis. She rents rooms above the place. She doesn’t ask questions. My aunt used to clean for her. She’s tough, but she’s fair.”“Does she know who I am?”“She knows you need somewhere to stay and you have cash. That’s all she needs to know.”Mrs. Papadakis turned out to

Virelle’s POVI threw the phone in the drawer like it had bitten me.I didn’t decide to do it. My body just did it, hand moving on its own, drawer sliding shut hard enough to rattle the cheap dresser it sat in. I stood there staring at it like the wood itself might start talking next. This is an attempted legal service notification for Virelle Hartwell.I hadn’t heard that name out loud in weeks. Hearing it now, flat and robotic, coming out of a phone in a city where nobody was supposed to know it, felt like being grabbed by the wrist in the dark.I didn’t touch the phone again for two days. I told Mrs. Papadakis I’d lost it when she asked why I wasn’t answering her knock about the rent schedule.“Lost it,” she repeated, arms crossed in my doorway, clearly not buying a word of it. “You’ve been in this room for two days straight. Where would you lose a phone you’re not carrying anywhere?”“I misplaced it,” I said. “I’ll find it.”She looked at me the way she’d looked at me since the da