The day I found out I was pregnant.

I hid it from my husband. Took the train seven hours.

Just to surprise him.

But when I stepped off the train, after nineteen unanswered calls, his messages finally came through on WeChat.

【I should've told you sooner.】

【I have a family here. A wife and a kid.】

One message after another. My mind went blank, my fingertips shaking as I kept reading.

【I'm at the hospital right now.】

【My wife found out about you. Last night she tried to kill herself. Slit her wrists.】

【My kid can't lose his mother. I can't let my family fall apart.】

【We need to talk.】

The last message was a family photo and a hospital address.

A low roar filled my skull.

I didn't even have time to think. Somehow I was already there.

……

My hand rested on the door handle. I counted five slow breaths before I pushed it open.

A fruit knife slipped from Marvin's hand and clattered softly against the floor. The woman on the bed flinched at the sound. Marvin stood, positioning himself between her and me, and looked at me with open wariness.

「This is my wife.」

「Sybilla Harding.」

He turned back to her, and his voice went soft.

「Zoe Summers.」

「You know.」

Sybilla's face was chalk-white against the pillow, her wrist wrapped in thick gauze already staining through with dull red. When she saw me, she managed a smile.

「Get her a chair, would you?」

She smiled like someone who owned the room, and said it to Marvin.

「We can't have her standing there. People will think we ganged up on some poor girl.」

My fingers dug into the strap of my bag. I watched Marvin look away from me, a stiff little nod.

「Sure.」

He set the stool beside the bed as though I wasn't in the room.

「Sit.」

In every version I'd imagined, I would see Marvin and tell him his joke had gone too far, that I was actually angry, actually hurt.

That I'd even

cried on the way to the hospital.

I wanted to tell him.

I wanted him to hold me so I could say：「You're going to be a dad!」

「We're going to be parents!」

「And after this, you are never allowed to scare me like that again!」

All that hurt climbed up my throat and died there, because what I was looking at made it impossible to speak.

「Zoe, is it?」

Every muscle in my body locked. Sybilla's smile was almost pitying.

「I know you've been with Marvin for three years.」

I gripped the bag so hard my knuckles ached, and my eyes went to Marvin without thinking.

「He even faked a wedding for you.」

Marvin kept his head down, like a child caught doing something wrong.

My heart sank with him, and I listened to Sybilla go on.

「On behalf of my husband, I'm sorry.」

「For deceiving you the way he did,」 she paused, as if something had just occurred to her, and called out：「Honey.」

Marvin reacted instantly, pulling a bank card from the bedside drawer.

「There's two hundred thousand in here.」

He didn't look at me. His voice was dry, scraped thin.

「Sybil said to give it to you. For what you've been through.」

Two hundred thousand.

Like a slap across the face, hard enough to leave my head ringing and my chest aching hollow, and I held on with everything I had before the tears broke through anyway.

「Marvin.」

I stared at that cold little card. My voice came out raw.

「What is this supposed to be?」

I lifted my head and picked the card up off the table.

「Payment for three years of my feelings?」

「Or,」 and I laughed, tears streaking through my makeup until I must have looked like a clown：「payment for letting you use me for three years, and now you're settling the tab in one go?」

「Marvin.」

Something in me snapped. I grabbed the bank card and hurled it straight at Marvin's face.

「What am I to you?!」

「Marvin!」

「What the hell am I to you?!」

Every wall I'd tried to hold up came crashing down. Tears poured out no matter how hard I fought them, no matter how badly I wanted to keep some shred of dignity. I couldn't. I seized my backpack with both hands and swung it into him, again and again.

「I sat on a train for seven hours! Seven hours telling myself it was fine! You were just busy! You just didn't see my messages, just didn't pick up my calls! I should understand! I should be more considerate! You're busy! So I'll just come find you myself!」

「I had time, right?!」

「I'll just bend over backwards for you, right?!」

「But I imagined ten thousand possibilities, and not one of them—not one—was this! This is the surprise you had for me!」

「You tell me!」

「That the man I married three years ago was someone else's husband! Someone else's child's father! You're telling me I'm the other woman!」

「Marvin!」

「I don't accept this!」

「I will never accept this!」

I collapsed into sobs, tears spilling without end, my whole body shaking so hard I couldn't hold myself still.

I thought of the pregnancy report tucked carefully inside my backpack, how I'd pictured the look on Marvin's face when he found out he was going to be a father.

It never occurred to me.

Marvin was already a father.

He'd already had that joy, already lived it with someone else.

It never occurred to me.

That this relationship would end like this, in something so bleak and wretched. I never imagined it, not for a single second. And through the blur of tears I watched Marvin stand there like a child who'd been caught, not saying a word while I screamed at him, not defending himself, just standing there like an ostrich with his head in the sand.

I lost the last of my control, grabbed his collar, and screamed：「Do you even know——」

The words were right there, right on the tip of my tongue. I'm pregnant too!

I'm pregnant too!

I'm carrying your child!

I have a baby too!

The instant before I said it, Sybilla thrashed on the bed, fighting to get up, screaming：「Don't you dare hurt my husband!」

「Don't you dare hurt Marvin!」

She couldn't even stand. She tumbled off the bed and the monitors crashed down with her.

It was like Marvin finally snapped out of it. He shoved me hard, and my lower back slammed into the corner of the table. The pain was so sharp my vision went black.

But I could still see him catch Sybilla, steady and sure.

She didn't care that the IV needle had been ripped from her hand, didn't care that blood was soaking through her hospital gown. She planted herself in front of Marvin and screamed at me.

「Zoe!」

「Whatever you've got, take it out on me!」

「Don't you touch my husband!」

「Don't you touch my child's father!」

Sybilla was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.

Marvin held her tight, and the tenderness in his eyes was so raw it almost spilled over. The gentleness he gave her cut through me like a blade.

I stepped back without thinking, ignoring the searing pain in my lower back, and heard Marvin call my name.

「Zoe.」

「I admit it,」 he said, arms still tight around Sybilla, looking at me with something like disappointment：「This is all my fault.」

「I lied to you. I wronged you.」

「But my wife is innocent,」 his eyes red, his voice scraped raw：「You shouldn't have hurt my wife!」

「She needs to stay calm. Why did you have to come here and upset her?!」

He looked at me as if he'd finally made up his mind.

「Zoe.」

「Our marriage certificate was fake.」

「I had someone make it just to deal with you.」

The air left my lungs. Before I could react, my foot caught on the backpack lying on the floor. I looked down at the bag I'd chosen so carefully, and I remembered: the pregnancy report, laid neatly inside a picture frame, waiting for him to see it.

I'd even brought a hidden camera—tucked it right into my bag so I could catch the exact moment surprise lit up Marvin's face.

And now.

I was standing on that same bag, listening to the photo frame's glass shatter inside it, cracking apart the way three years of loving Marvin Delgado had cracked apart, until nothing was recognizable anymore. I pressed my hand to my chest, the pain so bad I could barely stay on my feet, and heard him say:

「Sybilla and I built everything from nothing. She's my first wife. She's the only partner I'll ever have.」

「If you hadn't kept pushing for a wedding, kept insisting on a marriage certificate,」 Marvin looked at me, his expression twisted with pain：「I never would have forged one to deceive you!」

「If I'd known that lying to you would cost me Sybilla, cost me the life I already had, I never would have chosen you!」

「Zoe!」

「You were never worth giving up a stable life for!」

「Zoe!」

「Don't you get that?!」

Marvin severing every tie between us, throwing everything he had into shielding Sybilla—it was like a dull blade hacking into my chest, again and again, until the pain went numb and all I could do was watch myself come apart. Then Sybilla broke into sobs, begging me.

「Zoe!」

「Please!」

「Let Marvin go!」

「I can't live without him!」

Her voice hammered straight into my nerves.

「I'll die!」

「Without Marvin!」

「I'll die!」

I finally believed the absurdity of everything in front of me.

I finally accepted that the husband I'd loved for three years was nothing but a liar, through and through.

And I.

I was just the most forgettable piece in his lie—a pawn he could throw away the second I threatened his real life.

I started laughing. The laughter got louder, wilder, more absurd, and the tears wouldn't stop. I walked up to Marvin, saw him tense and guarded, and just stood there laughing, looking at him.

「Marvin.」

I bent down and picked up the filthy, ruined bag.

「We're.」

I brushed the dust off.

「Done.」

I slung it over my shoulder and turned to go. Marvin's eyes flickered with panic and he reached for my wrist, but Sybilla grabbed onto him, holding tight. She was on guard against me. But I no longer felt the terror I'd walked in with.

「Sybilla.」

I didn't look back at either of them, didn't look at anything in that room. I just turned my head.

「If you want him.」

「He's yours.」

I pushed through the door and walked into the corridor. Behind me, Sybilla's sobbing shattered into pieces. I heard Marvin comforting her.

「Everything's going to be fine from now on.」

「We'll be okay.」

Everything around me was strange—the hospital, the hallway, the faces of strangers turning to stare—and then a vicious cramp tore through my lower belly. The pain buckled my knees, and someone was asking me:

「Miss?」

「Are you all right?」

I looked at the concern on a stranger's face and tried to force a smile, tried to hold myself together long enough to say 【I'm fine.】

But the words locked in my throat and wouldn't come out. The moment I tried to stand back up,

I heard someone shout.

「Someone fainted!」

「Someone fainted!」

I lost consciousness completely.

What rose up to meet me was the night Marvin proposed—rain coming down hard, but he'd built a clear dome on the rooftop just for me. My friends led me inside, and it was overflowing with flowers, a banner strung above them, and there he stood in the middle of it all, smiling at me, asking: