I woke up and did not know where I was.

The ceiling above me was not mine and neither was the color of the walls. The smell of an unfamiliar cologne soaked into the fabric, and my stomach turned before my brain had even fully switched on.

I sat up slowly, my head banging like it would split olin that way that only comes from drinking things you should not have mixed. I pressed two fingers to my temple and breathed through my nose and waited for the room to stop tilting.

That was when my eyes fell on the body beside me.

There was a man, and I had never seen those shoulders before. He wasn't Ryan.

There was a stranger in bed beside me and I was naked and my head hurt and I could not remember how any of this had happened.

I instantly jerked up, pulling the blanket over my open body. He had the blanket pulled up over his face, only dark hair visible against the pillow, his breathing slow and even.

I was disgusted by the sight of him beside me but he was sleeping like he had nothing to be ashamed of.

Last night was my birthday and Ryan had planned a surprise party. I remembered that part. I remembered walking into the hall and everyone shouting and the warmth of it, all those people I loved in one room. I remembered taking more champagne than I should have. I remembered dancing to the blaring music and laughter and Ryan spinning me once on the dancefloor with that stupid grin of his.

But that was all. My mind was like a clean, blank wall where the rest of the night should have been.

"Hey! Wake up." I reached over and shook the man.

He made a sound but didn't move.

"Wake up." I shook him harder, my voice dropping low without meaning to, like some part of me was scared of what would happen when he opened his eyes. "Get up right now."

Just then, the door burst open and I turned.

Ryan stood in the doorway still wearing his jacket, his keys in his hand. He had clearly been out looking for me. I watched his eyes move across the room from the strange shoes on the floor to the clothes that were not mine trying very hard to understand what they were seeing.

And then they finally fell on me, sitting up in the sheets of a bed that was not ours.

"Ryan."

His face was blank and unreadable and he said nothing and that terrified me.

"It is not what you think." I was already struggling on the bed, already dragging the sheet around me and moving toward him. "I swear to you, I do not know what happened. I don't remember, I can't remember anything after the party, I would never…"

The man in the bed stretched and reached for me without opening his eyes. His hand found my arm.

"Last night was something else," he murmured, pulling me toward him. "Come back here."

I snatched my arm away so fast I stumbled. "Don't you dare touch me."

He opened his eyes then and took in the image of Ryan standing in the doorway.

Ryan's jaw tightened and the vein at his temple instantly went visible.

"Get out." He said it quietly, the calmness of his voice worse than any yell. "Get out of this room before I help you out."

The man didn't seem terrified. On the contrary, he was too relaxed. But he read the room fast enough. He grabbed his things off the floor and slipped past Ryan without saying a word or meeting anyone's eyes.

The moment the door clicked shut behind him, the silence he left behind became suffocating.

"Ryan." My voice was barely audible. "Please look at me."

He looked at me.

"I don't know him. I have never seen him before in my life. If something really happened last night, I swear.”

“Oh, please, Sera. That’s a very convenient story.”

“I swear someone put something in my drink because I would never…"

“You disgust me.” He said and walked out, leaving me to the aching impact of his words.

I stood in the middle of that room wrapped in strange sheets and I could not move. I wanted to cry but the ache didn't go past the ball in my throat and the tears refused to fall.

………….

Six weeks after.

Six weeks of Ryan sleeping on the same bed but facing away. Of dinners where the only sounds were cutlery and the television neither of us was watching. Of him saying "fine" when I asked how his day was and of me saying "fine" back, both of us performing a marriage that had stopped feeling like one.

I stopped trying to explain after the second week. I had said everything there was to say. I truly didn't remember and I obviously would never.

He said he did believe me but his eyes and actions said otherwise.

Until five days ago. I don't know what happened but I was in the kitchen and he came and stood behind me and put his arms around me. He didn't say a word, just held on, and I felt him exhale like he had been holding his breath for the last five weeks.

When I turned around he kissed me the way he used to kiss me before everything, and I held onto him like he was the only solid thing in the room.

That night we found each other again. Ryan fucked me so hard it felt like he was letting go of all the pain with every thrust.

But I didn't mind. I had told myself it meant we were going to be alright.

But now, here I was standing in the bathroom and staring at two pink lines on a white stick. And as the coldness spread through my chest, I came to a realisation that nothing was ever going to be alright. Nothing was anywhere close to alright.

A pregnancy test does not turn positive in five days. Every woman knows this. I knew this.

So I knew what these two lines meant. And I knew whose this was not.

The stick was shaking in my hand. Or I was shaking... I couldn't tell anymore.

"Sera?" Ryan's voice came from the hallway. His footsteps stopped outside the door. I panicked in my heart but my body refused to move. So when he opened, he saw the stick.

I watched him read the lines, do the same maths I had just done, and arrive at the same answer I was still trying to crawl away from. And then, I watched the brief, involuntary flicker of something hopeful in his face go dark.

He looked at me for a long time without speaking.

When he finally did, his voice was… controlled. That was the thing about Ryan, he never fell apart where you could see it.

“When my family told me not to marry you, when they said a man like me had no business with a woman like you, I should have listened to them. I loved you, Sera. I want you to know that."

“Ryan, Ryan…” My voice finally broke. “”What do you mean loved?” The tears were now streaming down my face.

"Cheating wasn't enough for you Seraphina, you had to be careless enough to get pregnant? I need some air."

He turned and walked back down the hall and then I heard the front door open and close.

I sat down on the bathroom floor right there, back against the cold wall, the test still in my hand, tears streaming down my face and pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

I was pregnant.

Not by my loving husband but by a man I could not name.

And the husband who had chosen me against everyone's advice was standing somewhere outside in the cold, deciding whether love had a limit after all.

I was not sure I deserved to know the answer.

………..

Ryan stood in the doorway for a moment, just looking at me. Then he came in and sat in the chair across the room and clasped his hands between his knees.

I had not stopped crying since he left. My eyes were constantly leaking and I couldn't switch it off no matter how many times I pressed the back of my hand to your face.

"I'm sorry." The words scraped out of me. I bit down on my lip to hold the rest in. "I am so sorry."

He didn't answer straight away, the silence stretched.

"What exactly are you sorry for, Sera?"

"For all of it. For that night. For this..." I gestured at the test without looking at it. "I know how it looks. I know what you must be thinking and I understand, I do, but please believe me when I tell you I did not do this on purpose. I would never do this to you."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's the truth."

He looked at his hands. Something moved across his face but I could not read it.

"Sorry doesn't fix this." His voice was low. "The first child that comes into this house is supposed to be ours, Sera. Ours! Not this…" He stopped and exhaled through his nose. "Just not his."

"I know." My voice broke on it. "I know."

He was quiet for a long time and I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. He had come back. He had walked out that door and then turned around and came back and that meant something. It had to mean something.

I watched his face change. The hard line of his jaw softened. He stood up and crossed the room and crouched in front of me, and when he reached up and traced the line of my jaw with his thumb the way he always used to, I felt the last of my composure start to give away.

"Are you really sorry?" He sounded gentle now, almost tender. But there was a fire in his eyes.

"Yes." I whispered. "Yes, Ryan. I am."

He held my eyes for a moment. Then something settled in his expression, like he had made a decision.

"Then abort it."

I heard his words. I let it sink and understood it. But they would not arrange themselves into something that made sense in my head.

"What?"

"If you mean it." He pulled back and stood up slowly. "If you are genuinely sorry, you'll do this. I want you to carry my child and only mine. Get rid of that bastard and then we can put this whole thing behind us and start again."

He said it the way you would ask someone to cancel a subscription. It sounded very practical and straightforward. Like the solution was obvious and the only thing left was for me to agree.

But I just stared at him. This was the man I had loved since I was twenty years old, since that first year of university when he sat beside me in a lecture hall and borrowed a pen and never gave it back. I had loved him through everything. Through my father's illness. Through the funeral that happened just three months after our wedding, when I was still new to being a wife and suddenly had to learn how to be an orphan at the same time.

Dad had left everything to me. The company, the shares, a legacy built over thirty years that I had no idea how to carry alone. I was twenty three and hollowed out with grief and Ryan had been right there, steady and calm, telling me not to worry, that he would handle it, that all I needed to do was heal.

And I had let him. Of course I had let him. He was my husband. For two years he had been running my father's company and I had not questioned it once, not looked too closely at any of it, because I trusted him the way you trust the ground beneath your feet.

I had never refused him anything. Not once in four years of loving him had I looked Ryan in the face and said no. He had never given me a reason to.

Until now.

I could feel the word sitting in my chest and I knew that the moment it left my mouth something between us would change in a way that could not be taken back. I was not ready for that. Some part of me would probably never be ready. But my chin lifted anyway.

"I can't do that, Ryan." My voice was quiet but it did not shake. "I won't."

The nausea hit before I even fully opened my eyes.

I threw the sheets off and made it to the bathroom on instinct more than coordination, my knees hitting the cold tile just in time. I stayed there for a while, one hand gripping the bowl, the other pressed flat against the floor, pushing it all out.

When I finally got it all out, I sat back on my heels and breathed.

"Mrs. Green?"

Stacy's voice came from the doorway, soft and worried the way it always was in the mornings now.

"Almost done," I managed to say.

I flushed, pulled myself up at the sink, rinsed my mouth, washed my hands. By the time I turned around the worst of it had passed and my stomach had settled into that uneasy stillness I was slowly learning to work around. Stacy was waiting by the door.

"Your tea is ready, ma'am. It'll help."

"Thank you, Stacy." I took the warm cup she offered and held it in both hands. "Has my husband come home? Did he sleep here last night?"

She hesitated slightly but I saw it.

"I believe he's in his room, ma'am."

"His room?"

"Yes ma'am."

That was new. Ryan and I had separate rooms the way most people in houses this size did, but we never used them. Everything we owned was in our bedroom. The other room was just a room.

"Do you know if he came into our room at any point last night?"

"No ma'am, I don't think so." She kept her eyes down. "Shall I start breakfast?"

"Yes, please. Go ahead."

I watched her leave and stood there holding my tea, trying to figure out what to make of it. He was probably just exhausted and needed space. Since the incident, he has frequented there more. But in the last month, he was trying. Maybe he came in late and didn't want to wake me. There were a hundred reasonable explanations and I told myself to pick one and leave it alone.

I drank the tea slowly, waited for my stomach to settle and then had a bath and got dressed. Ryan had still not come to check on me and that was weird so I decided to go to him.

His room was down the hall on the left. I was almost there when I heard low sounds and movement. I thought I had a feminine laugh but it ended abruptly like someone had covered a mouth. Even though I could still hear shuffling sounds.

I stopped in my tracks and my heart beat quickened. “It's just in your head.” I whispered to myself.

When I knocked, everything fell silent and so I knocked again.

"Ryan."

The door opened slightly and Ryan stood in the gap with his body filling it deliberately, one hand on the frame.

"Hey." His voice was flat.

"Who are you in there with?" I frowned, trying to see past him. "I heard voices."

"That was just the TV."

"Ryan… I know what I heard."

"Just tell her the truth, baby." A woman's voice came from inside the room. She sounded too relaxed, liike she had been waiting for this moment and found it less exciting than she expected.

The word baby landed somewhere it had no business landing. I pushed the door with the tiny strength I had. He let me, stepping aside, and I walked in and saw her.

She was sitting up in the bed with the sheet pulled loosely around her, her hair a dark curtain around her shoulders, her eyes were bright and watchful and completely unbothered. She had the kind of face and air of a person that knew exactly what it was doing to a room and she looked at me the way you look at something mildly inconvenient.

"Hello, Sera." Her accent was faint and infuriating. She smiled slowly. "I'm Naomi."

Without saying a word, I turned to Ryan in shock. He was standing near the door in nothing but his undershorts, arms folded, watching me with an expression I had never seen on his face before. Or maybe I had and had chosen not to ignore it.

"Is she…" I looked between them. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Is she naked under there?"

Neither of them answered. They looked at each other instead and something passed between them that made my stomach turn.

Then Ryan smiled widely, but it was not at me.

"Why are you smiling?" The words came out before I could stop them. "What is funny right now? What is happening in this room?"

"You." He said it simply. "Standing there asking questions like you can't see what's right in front of you."

“Is she the person you're always on the phone with?”

“Isn't that obvious enough?”

"But you told me she was nobody."

"I know what I told you."

"You said there was no one else. You said…"

"I lied, Sera. I lied! God you're so slow." It was so casual and the irritation in his voice broke me even more. It was almost like my pain cost him nothing.

"There has always been someone else. You've just been to blind to see."