Pregnant and Betrayed by My Fake Husband

The day I found out I was pregnant.

I hid it from my husband. Took the train seven hours.

Just to surprise him.

But when I stepped off the train, after nineteen unanswered calls, his messages finally came through on WeChat.

【I should've told you sooner.】

【I have a family here. A wife and a kid.】

One message after another. My mind went blank, my fingertips shaking as I kept reading.

【I'm at the hospital right now.】

【My wife found out about you. Last night she tried to kill herself. Slit her wrists.】

【My kid can't lose his mother. I can't let my family fall apart.】

【We need to talk.】

The last message was a family photo and a hospital address.

A low roar filled my skull.

I didn't even have time to think. Somehow I was already there.

……

My hand rested on the door handle. I counted five slow breaths before I pushed it open.

A fruit knife slipped from Marvin's hand and clattered softly against the floor. The woman on the bed flinched at the sound. Marvin stood, positioning himself between her and me, and looked at me with open wariness.

「This is my wife.」

「Sybilla Harding.」

He turned back to her, and his voice went soft.

「Zoe Summers.」

「You know.」

Sybilla's face was chalk-white against the pillow, her wrist wrapped in thick gauze already staining through with dull red. When she saw me, she managed a smile.

「Get her a chair, would you?」

She smiled like someone who owned the room, and said it to Marvin.

「We can't have her standing there. People will think we ganged up on some poor girl.」

My fingers dug into the strap of my bag. I watched Marvin look away from me, a stiff little nod.

「Sure.」

He set the stool beside the bed as though I wasn't in the room.

「Sit.」

In every version I'd imagined, I would see Marvin and tell him his joke had gone too far, that I was actually angry, actually hurt.

That I'd even

cried on the way to the hospital.

I wanted to tell him.

I wanted him to hold me so I could say：「You're going to be a dad!」

「We're going to be parents!」

「And after this, you are never allowed to scare me like that again!」

All that hurt climbed up my throat and died there, because what I was looking at made it impossible to speak.

「Zoe, is it?」

Every muscle in my body locked. Sybilla's smile was almost pitying.

「I know you've been with Marvin for three years.」

I gripped the bag so hard my knuckles ached, and my eyes went to Marvin without thinking.

「He even faked a wedding for you.」

Marvin kept his head down, like a child caught doing something wrong.

My heart sank with him, and I listened to Sybilla go on.

「On behalf of my husband, I'm sorry.」

「For deceiving you the way he did,」 she paused, as if something had just occurred to her, and called out：「Honey.」

Marvin reacted instantly, pulling a bank card from the bedside drawer.

「There's two hundred thousand in here.」

He didn't look at me. His voice was dry, scraped thin.

「Sybil said to give it to you. For what you've been through.」

Two hundred thousand.

Like a slap across the face, hard enough to leave my head ringing and my chest aching hollow, and I held on with everything I had before the tears broke through anyway.

「Marvin.」

I stared at that cold little card. My voice came out raw.

「What is this supposed to be?」

I lifted my head and picked the card up off the table.

「Payment for three years of my feelings?」

「Or,」 and I laughed, tears streaking through my makeup until I must have looked like a clown：「payment for letting you use me for three years, and now you're settling the tab in one go?」

「Marvin.」