The zipper on my dress caught halfway up my back, the teeth snagging on fabric that used to flow like water but now pulled tight across my body. I stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom, struggling with the navy silk gown while behind me, in matching bassinets by the window, Noah and Emma created their evening symphony—Noah’s sharp, rhythmic wails harmonizing with Emma’s softer, hiccupping cries. Four months old and already they had perfected the art of tag-team crying, ensuring that silence was a luxury I could no longer afford.
My fingers fumbled with the zipper again, and I felt the familiar throb of my C-section scar, still healing, still reminding me that my body had been sliced open to bring two humans into the world.
The dress was a size larger than I used to wear, but even that wasn’t enough. The fabric strained across hips that had widened, pulled tight over a stomach that still carried the softness of pregnancy.
“Are you really wearing that?”
Liam’s voice cut through the crying. He stood in front of the full-length mirror across the room, adjusting onyx cufflinks that caught the light.
At thirty-four, he was the picture of success—jawline sharp enough to cut glass, hair perfectly styled, wearing a tuxedo that cost more than most people’s monthly rent.
He looked at my reflection in the mirror, his upper lip curling in that expression I’d come to know too well. Distaste. Pure, unfiltered distaste.
I froze, my hand still on the zipper.
“It’s the only formal dress that fits right now, Liam. And barely.”
He turned, his eyes scanning me from head to toe.
They didn’t linger on my face, didn’t see the dark circles under my eyes that makeup couldn’t quite hide, didn’t notice the exhaustion etched into every line of my expression. His gaze fixed on my waist.
On the softness of my arms.
On the way the dress clung to my post-partum body, refusing to lie. “It looks like a tent,” he said, reaching for a bottle of cologne. “Can’t you wear Spanx?
A girdle?
Something? The Board is going to be there tonight.
The investors. I need you to look like a CEO’s wife, Ava.
Not like…” He paused, spraying the expensive, woody cologne around his neck.
“Not like a dairy cow.”
The words landed like a physical blow. I looked down at my hands, at fingers that had held his through five years of marriage, through struggles and successes I’d orchestrated from the shadows. “I gave birth four months ago, Liam.
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