FAT, BARREN, AND REJECTED
Even as I said it, I felt something in my chest twist painfully at the betrayal of my own words, at the four small heartbeats I was disowning with a lie meant to protect myself from a truth I no longer trusted him to receive gently.
His expression didn’t soften. If anything, it hardened further, something cold settling behind his eyes that I recognized immediately, having seen its early shadow in the study, in the garden, in every moment he’d chosen suspicion over belief since the day I arrived.
“A coincidence,” he repeated, his voice flat with disbelief. “You expect me to believe that a woman who spent two weeks insisting she’d shared a night with me exactly a year ago is now, conveniently,