Chapter 3

3.

I'd heard that a million times since I lost the baby at the beginning of the year.

All I remember is that the baby had started to move. That day, I drank the "special wellness drink for pregnancy" that Chloe had so "helpfully" recommended, the one Ethan brought home for me. A few hours later, the bleeding started.

The day before, at my check-up, I had heard a strong, steady heartbeat. In the blink of an eye, it was just a pool of red on the emergency room floor.

The irony was, Ethan stood by my hospital bed and demanded:

"How could you be so careless? What the hell did you drink?"

I wanted to die, too.

When I was lying on that cold operating table, the doctor telling me to spread my legs.

When the anesthesia hadn't fully kicked in, and I could feel the cold instruments inside me.

When my postpartum depression was so bad I cried and begged him to stay with me for just one night, but he had to rush off to a company product launch―which was really a meeting with Chloe. He pried my fingers off his arm, one by one, and coldly shot back, "You're insane."

I had wanted to die so many times.

The scars on my arms, the sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet, the withered orchid on the windowsill―they all saw my despair.

For the past 264 days, I’ve been living on the edge of hell.

But I survived.

Yesterday, our anniversary, was my final goodbye to the old Emily Carter.

And Ethan helped me make the decision.

I pulled the documents I'd prepared from my purse and handed them to him.

"Sign this."

Ethan frowned, looking at me suspiciously. "What is this?"

Before I could answer, his phone rang.

"Ethan, I twisted my ankle on the stairs... It hurts so much... Can you take me to the ER? I'm so scared something's wrong with the baby..."

On the other end, Chloe's voice was frantic and fragile, filled with the panic of a new mother.

Ethan's face changed. "I'll be right back to talk," he said, grabbing his car keys and bolting out the door.