CHAPTER 2: The Woman in My Kitchen

Ana's POV

I didn't leave the bedroom for three days.

The curtains stayed closed. The phone stayed face down. I laid on top of the covers in the same robe and stared at the light on the ceiling, morning into evening into morning again.

Sebastian didn't come home.

Why would he? He had somewhere better to be now. Somewhere warmer, somewhere that could give him the one thing I couldn't.

I kept seeing it whether my eyes were open or closed. His hands on her. Her legs around his back. The way he had looked at the floor instead of at me.

On the second day my phone lit up. It was Emily.

I let it ring. My best friend would hear it in the first word out of my mouth, the thickness in my voice, the crying I hadn't been able to stop. She would come straight over with wine and soft eyes and questions I couldn't answer yet. I wasn't ready to be seen. So I let the call die in my hand and turned the phone back over.

I told myself I would feel human again soon.

Then, on the third evening, the front door opened.

My heart did something stupid and hopeful. I sat up quickly, pushing the hair out of my face, already hating myself for the part of me that still wanted him to walk in and say it had all been a terrible mistake.

But it wasn't Sebastian.

Nicole stepped into my home like she had the deed in her purse. She looked around the living room, slowly, taking in the photographs and the furniture I had chosen, and her mouth curled like she found all of it a little sad.

"How did you get in?" My voice came out rough from three days of silence.

She held up a slim brass key and let it catch the light.

"Sebastian gave it to me." She set it down on my table. "I should get used to the place. I'll be living here soon enough."

The floor seemed to tilt under me.

"Get out of my house."

"Your house?" She laughed. "Sweetheart, nothing in here is yours. Not the house. Not the name. Not the man. You only ever borrowed all of it." She walked closer, heels clicking on the floor I had polished myself. "Look at you. No job. No class. No child. You were a placeholder, Ana. You kept the seat warm until the real wife arrived."

"That's enough."

"He never wanted a woman who couldn't give him a son." She tilted her head, and her eyes dropped to her own stomach, then lifted back to me, gleaming. "But I can. I am carrying his child right now. So you see, there is no contest. There never was."

At that moment, something snapped behind my ribs.

I crossed the room before I knew I was moving. I didn't know what I meant to do, only that the burning in my chest needed somewhere to go, and her smug, perfect face was right in front of me.

But I never reached her. The door banged open and a hand caught my wrist and yanked me back.

The room turned. Then pain burst across my cheek, sharp and ringing, and I understood half a second late that Sebastian had hit me.

I pressed my hand to my face. My own husband. He had never raised a hand to me, not once in two years, and now he stood between me and his mistress with his chest heaving like I was the threat.

"Have you lost your mind?" His voice shook with rage that had nothing to do with me. "She is pregnant, Ana. You could have hurt the baby. What is wrong with you?"

I stared at him. The man whose hand I had held in that doctor's office. The man who wouldn't look at me three nights ago. He could look at me now. Now that I was the villain in his story.

"She walked into my home," I whispered.

"It is my home." He said it flatly. "And you are lucky I let you stay in it this long."

Nicole sweetly touched his arm, the picture of the frightened expectant mother. He immediately turned to her, all softness, asking if she was all right, guiding her to the couch.

I stood there with my hand on my burning cheek and watched my husband comfort another woman in our living room.

I didn't cry. Not in front of them.

I turned and walked back up the stairs.

The next morning I came down to the smell of coffee and eggs.

Nicole was at my stove. In my kitchen. In a silk robe I recognized as one Sebastian had bought me last Christmas, the tags long gone, the sleeves rolled to her elbows like she had worn it a hundred times. She didn't even glance up.

"What are you doing?" It wasn't a question. I had no questions left.

"Making breakfast for my future husband." She slid the eggs onto a plate, neat and unbothered. "He likes them soft. But you would know that, I suppose. For now."

I looked at her in my robe, in my kitchen, cooking for my husband, and something inside me went very quiet and very clear.

I was done.

I walked into the living room where Sebastian sat scrolling his phone, and I said the words I should have said three days ago.

"I want a divorce."

He looked up slowly. For one second I saw something cross his face. Not love. Not regret. Amusement. He set the phone down and leaned back like a man settling into a deal he intended to win.

"Fine," he said.

The word landed easier than I expected. Very easy. I should have known he wouldn't let me walk out clean.

"But you will do one thing first." A small smile touched his mouth. "You put your hands on the mother of my child. You endangered a baby, Ana, a thing you could never give me yourself. So before I sign a single page, you are going to get down on your knees."

The room went silent.

"You are going to kneel," he said, "and you are going to apologize to Nicole.”