Chapter 2

That day, I accidentally knocked over my favorite vase.

When Ethan saw, he just calmly picked up the pieces.

But that vase was something we'd made together during our best year, at a pottery studio in Vermont.

He'd said with a straight face that he was going to make it a family heirloom.

"Maybe I can glue it back together."

I crouched on the floor, my fingers trembling as I tried to fit the shards together.

Ethan frowned and pulled me to my feet.

"It's just a worthless vase."

My eyes stung instantly.

But he was looking at my belly.

"Is the baby giving you trouble again?"

I used to tell myself it was fine.

He was a rational person. It was normal for him not to care about sentimental keepsakes.

Until that night, when I went to bring him fruit in his study and spotted a locked glass cabinet.

Inside, carefully preserved, was a pen Lily had given him.

A twenty-dollar pen from a stationery store.

In that moment, it was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head.

We had a screaming fight. I even smashed the cabinet open and hurled that pen into the trash.

The next second, Ethan fished it right back out.

Like he was retrieving something precious.

When he looked at me again, all that was left in his eyes was impatience.

"Claire, go look in a mirror. Look at yourself right now."

"You're the one who broke the vase today. What exactly are you blaming me for?"

I made him swear he hadn't fallen for Lily.

And if he had, then he and Lily could both rot in hell.

Professor Reed, who never believed in oaths or gods, actually hesitated.

After a long time, he finally spoke.

"Yes. I have feelings for her."

"But we haven't crossed any lines, and we won't. There's no reason for you to act like you've suffered some monumental injustice."

I couldn't hold back the tears.

He sighed, reached over, and smoothed my messy hair.

"Claire, we've been together eleven years. There's no excitement left. Sometimes I regret it. Getting married abroad the minute we turned eighteen."

"But back then, I never imagined that ten years later, I'd fall for someone else."

The man who once bought out every firework in the city just to make me smile was him.

The man now looking down at me, coolly discussing his change of heart, was also him.

"Lily's lively. Not dull like you. She likes pranks, she likes cheesy romance movies, she likes feeding stray cats on the street."

"You like all those silly things too. But when she does them, I just find it... endearing."

"I can't help how I feel."

Finally, he lit a cigarette, his tone gentle and cruel at the same time.

"As long as you're willing, the position of Mrs. Reed will always be yours."

"But you have to accept that she's the only one in my heart."

After that night, I sank into a long, slow collapse.

I cried every day until my eyes were swollen shut.

I tried not to care when he came home late. Tried not to care when he missed prenatal appointment after prenatal appointment. Tried not to care when he took Lily to Hawaii on vacation.

But it was all just lying to myself.

Until today.

He knelt before me in front of everyone and begged me to give Lily my heart, even if it meant losing our six-month-old baby.

And suddenly, I realized this marriage had become utterly pointless.