My vision blurred almost instantly.
Tears flooded so fast I didn’t even feel them forming.
One moment I was staring at the half-open door, the next everything had dissolved into distorted shapes and trembling light.
I bent slowly, almost mechanically, to pick up the fallen paper.
My hands were shaking so violently it took me twice to grasp it.
My fingers curled around the sheet as if holding it tighter could change what I had just heard.
But it didn’t. Nothing changed it.
Nothing softened it.
My throat tightened painfully.
This was the same man who had pulled me into his arms at night like I was something precious.
The same man who had looked at me like I mattered.
The same man who had whispered things into my skin that I had stupidly, desperately believed.
My mind began to betray me in fragments—memories I hadn’t asked for, surfacing like wounds reopening.
The night he flew across the country because I had casually mentioned loneliness, arriving without warning just to sit beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The day he canceled a meeting that everyone said was impossible to cancel, simply because I had a migraine and he didn’t want me alone in pain.
And then—
The night he had been quieter than usual, sitting at the edge of the bed in the dark, admitting in a voice I barely recognized that I made him want to live again. Not just exist. Live.
All of it flashed through me like proof.
Like something I had misunderstood entirely.
My breath hitched.
It turns—it’s all a lie.
His heart has always belonged to Zara—and always will. That is why he cannot even imagine me having his child.
That’s why he can’t even imagine me carrying his child.
How foolish I’ve been.
The thought didn’t just hurt—it poisoned everything behind it.
A fresh wave of tears spilled down my face as I turned away from the study door.
My legs felt heavy, disconnected, like they didn’t belong to me anymore.
Each step away from that door felt like stepping out of something I had built my entire world around.
I had been so sure.
So foolishly, dangerously sure.
