Chapter 2

The marriage was never Liam's choice. It was his father's.

After the accident, Mr. Stone, a man whose respect I had earned through my work long before I ever dated his son, came to my hospital bed. He was a formidable man, but his eyes were filled with a deep, weary guilt.

"Ava," he had said, his voice heavy. "Liam will marry you. He will take care of you for the rest of your life. It's the least he can do."

Liam had fought it. I heard the arguments through the thin hospital walls. He didn't love me, he'd shouted. He felt trapped. But his father's will was iron. We were married in a quiet, joyless ceremony at City Hall a month later.

The first year was cold. Liam was a stranger in our home, polite but distant. He did his duty, guiding my hand, reading to me, describing the world I could no longer see. But there was no warmth, no love.

Then, gradually, something shifted. He started to relax around me. He would talk about his day, share a joke, even hold my hand without being prompted. I thought, foolishly, that he was learning to love me. I fell deeper in love with the gentle, attentive man he was pretending to be.

For a few years, we found a quiet rhythm. A semblance of a happy marriage. His parents were thrilled. Mrs. Stone, who had always treated me like a daughter, was desperate for a grandchild.

She was the one who booked the surprise trip for us, a week at a secluded mountain resort. She hoped the change of scenery would bring us closer, and it did. For one week, the pretense fell away, and it felt real. That was the week our baby was conceived.

When I told Liam I was pregnant, his reaction was... complicated. There was a flicker of something I couldn't decipher, then a resigned smile. Later, I would realize he thought I'd planned it, that I'd used the pregnancy to solidify my position, to trap him completely.

The day I came home from the doctor's office, my world shattered, I found him in the living room.

He wasn't alone. Chloe was with him, curled up on the sofa.

Liam was carefully feeding her a spoonful of soup from a bowl. The aroma hit me first. Ginseng and chicken. It was the special nutritional soup Lisa, our housekeeper, made for me every day since I became pregnant.

"Liam, it's so good," Chloe cooed, her voice sickly sweet. "You're taking such good care of me and our baby."

"Of course," Liam said, his voice softer and more tender than I had ever heard him. "You and our little one are my world."

He looked up and saw me standing in the doorway. His expression barely flickered. There was no guilt, no surprise, just a cold annoyance.

"Ava. You're back."

It wasn't a question. It was a dismissal.

"That's my soup," I said, my voice flat.

Liam didn't even have the grace to look ashamed. He set the bowl down.

"Lisa made plenty. Chloe needs the nutrients more right now. The doctor said she's a bit weak."

He stood up and walked over to Chloe, placing a hand on her stomach. The casual intimacy of the gesture was a physical blow. He had never touched my belly with such open affection.

I just stood there, my heart a block of ice in my chest. I watched the man I loved, the man I had married, lavish affection on another woman in our home, using my things, my food, my life.

I was a ghost in my own house.

I turned to go back upstairs, my newly restored sight a curse. Seeing it all was so much worse than just imagining it.

As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard their voices drift up from the living room. They didn't even bother to whisper.

"Did you see her face?" Chloe asked, a spiteful giggle in her tone. "She looked like she was going to cry."

"Don't worry about her," Liam's voice was cold. "The divorce papers are ready. Once she signs them, she'll be out of our lives for good. Then we can finally be a real family."

I leaned against the wall, the last embers of hope dying inside me.

I had thought I could wait, that I could endure this for the sake of our child. But I was wrong.

There was nothing left to wait for. The man I loved was gone, if he had ever existed at all.

In his place was a cruel, selfish stranger. And I was finally seeing him clearly.