Part One
I flew thousands of miles across the United States—from California to New York City—to tell my husband I was pregnant. But when I opened the apartment door, I froze.
My husband was in bed with another woman.
If it were you standing there in that Manhattan apartment, watching the man you call your husband shield another woman from your eyes, would you feel pain? Anger?
Or would you laugh, the way I did?
Seeing Daniel, my husband, lying in bed with a strange woman right in front of me, I was too stunned to speak.
Even though, the moment I stepped into the apartment, I’d already had a feeling.
A pair of unfamiliar red high heels was placed neatly by the door, burning like a challenge.
On the shoe rack, an expensive designer leather handbag dangled—unfamiliar, glossy, and out of place.
Maybe they heard the door open, because the sweet laughter from the bedroom suddenly cut off.
I walked toward the bedroom. The door was wide open.
Daniel was lying there, his back resting against the headboard, a cigarette between his fingers, ash falling into the tray like gray‑white pieces of every lie he’d ever told me.
He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned, hair messy, but his eyes were cold, indifferent.
The girl was curled into his chest, wrapped in a thin blanket, only her long hair and bare shoulders visible.
She didn’t dare look at me. Her eyes stayed down, as if she were afraid my stare could burn.
But I didn’t care about her.
She wasn’t the one I had once trusted, once loved, once believed would walk through the years beside me.
Daniel lifted his head and met my eyes with a terrifying calm, like a lake with no ripples.
He stubbed out the cigarette slowly, lazily.
“Why are you here?”
His voice didn’t come from panic.
It came from inconvenience, like I was some uninvited disruption.
“Why didn’t you call first?”
Those words hit like a punch—not hard, but enough to knock the breath from my chest. My chest tightened, like all the air had been sucked away.
So now, to see my own husband, I needed permission.
So this house—my house—had no space left for me.
I hid my trembling hands behind my back, fingers digging into each other, trying to keep them from revealing the pain rising inside me. I looked straight into his eyes, jaw clenched, and forced a sentence through my parched throat.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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