CHAPTER 1
Summer
6 months ago
The brownies hit the bottom of the trash can with a dull thud, and Mia’s face crumples.
“Sugar is bad,” Kevin snaps, brushing past us like we’re inconveniences instead of his family.
I pull my daughter close, her little hands still dusted with flour, her tears soaking my blouse. The scent of chocolate hangs in the air, warm, sweet, comforting. Everything this house isn’t.
“It’s ok pumpkin, you did nothing wrong do you hear me? Daddy is just mad at mommy, not at you ok?” I smooth her hair.
Mia nods but she doesn’t look convinced.
Twenty minutes later, he walks back into the kitchen, dressed for dinner at my parents’like he didn’t just make his four-year-old cry.
“I told the cook to stop using sugar and gluten. Mia could have your genes, and it’s better if she learns to eat healthy early on,” Kevin says while fastening his tie. He glances at his watch.“I have an appointment with a client in fifteen minutes, so I’ll meet you at your parent’s place.”
Not a question, an announcement.
I don’t respond, though the urge to throw a shoe at him pulses through my veins.
Kevin wasn’t always…this.
Once, he was my best friend.
Our parents were business partners, practically raising us in the same rooms, the same clubs, the same suffocating social circles where everyone smiled with their teeth and judged with their eyes. We bonded over hating all of it, two kids hiding behind banquet tables, making fun of the adults we were expected to become.
For years, we were inseparable: same schools, same friends, the same pressure to be perfect heirs to perfect families.
Then sixteen hit, and so did the matchmaking.
“We’re just friends,” we both said.
“That will change,” our parents insisted.
Neither of us had the spine back then to fight the expectations. Kevin proposed on my eighteenth birthday, public, flashy, orchestrated down to the last camera flash. Our parents beamed like they’d just merged two empires. We married that summer, only weeks before I was supposed to start college. I told myself it was fine, that I could still study, still build a life. We even got an apartment near campus, just the two of us.
But Kevin changed as soon as we started living together. The more money he made, the more he put distance between us. We used to make fun of the adults, always talking business, always wearing suits. Now he’s exactly like them.
A month into our marriage, two pink lines appeared.
I can still feel the cold bathroom tile under my knees, the way my breath stuttered when I realized my life had just… shifted. I told Kevin first. He didn’t panic or yell. He just went blank, quiet in that way that says he’s already somewhere else. Already planning how this fit into the Masters family narrative.
My parents reacted like I’d delivered them a royal heir. A grandchild with the Masters name? Perfection. Destiny. A headline they could parade around town.
College plans dissolved overnight. I threw myself into baking, one small oven, one tray of cookies at a time. Flour dusted my hands, sugar coated my cheeks, and the warmth of the kitchen felt like a hug I hadn’t realized I’d been missing. Each loaf of bread, each pie, each cupcake I decorated became my small rebellion, a tiny act of love and joy in a world that seemed determined to deny me both.
And then Mia was born. Kevin didn’t pick her up. Not once. He stood near the window, talking about quarterly numbers while I held our newborn daughter against my chest. Her tiny fingers curled around mine, anchoring me to a world that finally made sense.
In that moment, everything changed.
Motherhood rewrote my perspective. Every smile, every laugh, every chocolate-stained finger taught me more about love than I’d learned in eighteen years of society’s rules. Mia didn’t care about perfect dresses, flawless behavior, or table manners. She just loved, fully and fiercely.
Time passed. I stayed home with Mia while Kevin graduated and stepped into the Masters empire. He was rarely home, only appearing at dinners or business events to maintain the perfect couple illusion. Meanwhile, Mia and I built our own little world, filled with laughter, sugar, and love, and I clung to it like a lifeline.
My chest tightens as I smooth Mia’s hair.“Ready, pumpkin?”
