Sean's face drained of color, his eyes darting away.

"Did Cassie tell you that? We were playing a game with some coworkers, I lost, and that was the forfeit. That's all it was."

His tone smoothed itself out.

"Enough. None of that was real. From now on, I'll come with you to your prenatal checkups."

My fingers curled, nails digging into my palm.

He was still lying. For Myra.

If he loved Myra that much, then there was no reason left for me to keep this marriage together.

"Sean, I want a divorce."

Sean froze for a beat, his brow knotting, the anger in his eyes impossible to hide.

"Delilah, I'm not your control yoke. Stop sizing me up with those eyes of yours all the time!

"It was one joke. Can't you take a joke?

"Don't forget, right now you're nothing but a scheduling clerk at the airline. You haven't touched a plane in five years, and you're pregnant. What exactly would you do without me?"

"I spend all day dealing with clients at the firm. I'm exhausted. When I come home, I don't want to hear you nagging me about this garbage!"

He yanked irritably at his tie, and his eyes caught the stack of documents on the desk.

The critical condition notice sat right there on top.

Sean rubbed his brow, looking over at me, confused.

"Who's sick?"

He snatched the paper into his hand, trying to make out what it said.

A frantic knocking came at the door. Myra was outside, crying pitifully.

"Sean, the hospital says something might be wrong with the baby. I'm too scared to go alone."

"The baby's not going to leave me, right?"

Sean pulled the door open and soothed her, aching with worry.

"I'll take you to the hospital right now."

He scooped Myra up and left without a backward glance. He even forgot the laptop he'd never once let me touch.

Puzzled, I opened it.

The wallpaper on the screen made my chest ache until I trembled.

That year had been my first time as lead pilot on an international route.

One wing had lost balance and nearly caused a disaster. As the pilot in command, I was severely reprimanded, and the airline even considered grounding me.

Sean had been a passenger that day, and he tracked me down on my way home from work to thank me, sincerely.

He saw how low I was, handed me a cup of coffee, and gently reassured me.

"It was your first international flight. Handling a situation like that as well as you did already takes real skill."

Later, when the airline let me fly overseas again, I learned it was because he'd laid out meticulous evidence proving to my superiors that my handling that day had been flawless.

He was a top attorney at one of the country's most famous firms, and it was the first time he'd argued a case for someone who wasn't his client.

After that day, Sean confessed his feelings to me.

In the years that followed, we were often apart, and Sean would sigh, deflated, again and again.

"Lila, I don't want to keep living like this."

"But we're already married. You already have the baby coming, and your parents need someone to look after them. What if you stopped flying for now and switched to a different job?"

"I swear, I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

I knew becoming the best lawyer in the country had always been his dream.

I laid a hand over my belly and gave in.

I didn't look for another job. I applied to transfer positions myself. Scheduling was an easy assignment, and I could still watch the planes climb into the sky every day.

At least I hadn't drifted too far from the work I loved.

Only, every time I held my captain's uniform with its shoulder boards and quietly cried into it, Sean would see and hold me, aching with guilt, apologizing, promising he would never betray the love I'd given him.

Yet he took that captain's uniform of mine and put it on Myra, then snapped tacky, ridiculous photos.

I opened the encrypted folder on the desktop with the date he and Myra first met.

Inside was nothing but photos of the two of them at music festivals.

Check-in videos from tourist spots all over.

Ten years of chat logs from when they'd first met, and every airline ticket record from all his trips abroad over the years.

Even Myra's current job had come about because he'd pulled strings through his own connections.

And… the house his parents lived in, the property was registered under Myra's name too.

And the note on the file read,

“I'll always be your safety net.”

I stared at the screen. I don't know how long I sat there.

From the day Sean and I married until now, I had run the household for him, cared for his parents, smoothed over every tangle with the relatives.

Even I had nearly forgotten I was once a pilot.

A tear dropped onto the back of my hand, and I lifted it to wipe the wetness away.

So it turned out he wasn't incapable of tenderness. He'd just never once thought to catch me when I fell.

I closed the file, shut the laptop, and drove straight to the company.

“Mr. Fox, I heard the foreign airlines are short-staffed. Are they still looking for pilots?”

“I'm hoping you'll give me a chance. I want to fly international routes.”

Joshua Fox's eyes lit up.

“Delilah, you handled that accident so well back then. All these years you never once brought up flying again, so I assumed you'd given it up.”

“If you're willing to go, then it's not too late to start over now.”

Back home, I started packing.

This house meant nothing to me anymore.

The only thing I wanted to take with me was the memories of Cassie.

In all my years married to Sean, the one thing I never regretted was giving birth to Cassie.

She had been such a good girl from the start. On her first day of preschool, worried I'd fret over her, she'd asked her teacher to take a whole batch of photos to send me.

Later she grew up, school kept her busier and busier, and the photos grew far fewer.

Last year for her birthday, we'd planned to go skiing as a family.

But Sean said he had a tough case to fight and no time.

Cassie wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me, comforting me,

“Mommy, it's okay. Daddy's not coming, but Cassie has you, and that's enough.”

I held her and said yes, and up on the mountain we took so many photos.

In them, Cassie was so vivid, so lovely. Afterward I saved every one of those photos onto a USB drive.

But when I pulled open the drawer, I found the box that held the USB drive empty.

Remembering that Sean had come in here earlier, I was about to reach out to him.

Then I saw a video Myra had posted on her feed.

“Sweetheart, this USB drive has so much space, plenty of room for lots of the baby's photos!”

“Later we'll put all my prenatal chart and ultrasound scans on it too. I even booked a maternity photo shoot, so we'll save those negatives on it as well.”

So Sean had gone to the hospital to keep Myra company.

In the video, Myra leaned against Sean's shoulder, pointing at the screen and smiling like a newlywed wife eager for the child on the way.

But I recognized it at once: the USB drive they were using was the very one I'd used to store Cassie's photos.

When I reached the hospital, I saw Sean peeling shrimp for Myra.

Sean had a severe shellfish allergy.

At every family gathering, he'd wave the nanny over in disgust to take the whole plate of shrimp away.

When I was pregnant and craving it, I ordered a plate of spicy shrimp.

He watched me finish it, said nothing, and then in the middle of the night walked out of the house with his briefcase in hand.

He told me he had a flight to catch that night.

So it turned out that, from start to finish, it had always been different.

Myra saw me and shrank back under the covers in fright, explaining pitifully,

“Delilah, I'm on an IV, it's hard to manage, so Sean was just helping me. Please don't blame him.”

“Sweetheart, Delilah just can't do without you. See? She came all this way.”

“Besides, she's got nothing to her name now. If you weren't taking care of her, how could she wear such nice clothes, live in that gorgeous penthouse? Chasing after you this fast—she really is a parasite vine.”

“I could never drape myself over a man and feed off him like that. So all I can do is carry everything on my own!”

Sean tucked the edge of the blanket down around her, his eyes full of tenderness.

“Yes. No one's stronger than you, Myra.”

Sean looked over at me, and there was nothing in his eyes but helplessness.

"Lila, since you're already here, drop all that talk about divorce."

"You drive home first. Myra's pregnancy is unstable and she needs to stay in for a few days. I'll be here at the hospital looking after her."

Watching the two of them, all I felt was nausea.

Playing brother and sister, while carrying on an affair, and a pregnancy.

I looked at Myra, my voice cutting.

"Myra, you've got the nerve to seduce a man, so why did you also make my husband steal my USB drive?"

"What is this, your special talent? Being a professional mistress?"

The two nurses pushing open the ward door stared at Myra, aghast.

"So you two aren't married. Then isn't it inappropriate for this gentleman to be staying overnight..."

"And I actually thought they were a devoted couple. I even praised him for knowing how to take care of his wife. Turns out he brought his pregnant mistress to the hospital?"

Myra froze on the spot, her eyes flooding with tears in an instant.

The two nurses hurriedly swapped in the new IV bottle and left the ward with their tray.

Myra immediately threw herself into Sean's arms, sobbing until she couldn't speak.

"Sean, Lila is humiliating me on purpose!"

"I only kept that USB because it had a lot of storage. I wanted to make more records of the baby, that's all. You bought her so many USB drives, why does she have to curse at me like this?"

"Those two are my new coworkers. I just started at this hospital. How is everyone going to talk about me behind my back now?"

Sean patted her back gently, the flame in his eyes flaring up.

"Lila, I'm the one who gave the drive to Myra. What are you losing your temper at her for? These things are everywhere. Do you have to blow it so far out of proportion?"

"Besides, the pictures on it were blurry and ugly anyway. Keeping them was a waste. Just take new ones later, problem solved."

"It's not case files. How important could it be?"

Sean's words came off completely indifferent, his gaze contemptuous.

Beyond furious, I struck at his face, my accusation almost a cry of despair.

"Important, of course it's important! I can never take another picture of Cassie again!"

"When you were with your precious sister showing off her ultrasound scan in the family group chat, ignoring my calls and telling me to leave the group, Cassie was already gone!"

Sean shoved Myra away and suddenly stood up, staring at me, dumbfounded.

"How is that possible? How could Cassie..."

Before Sean could finish, Myra suddenly rolled off the hospital bed.

"Lila, how could you push me?"

"It's just a USB drive. I'll buy one myself. Here, take it back!"

She scrambled up off the floor and flung the drive from the cabinet. It landed in the trash can in the corner.

"How could Cassie be gone? I saw her outside the preschool just yesterday!"

"A woman like you, cursing your own daughter over jealousy. You'd love to strap a monitor on your husband, wouldn't you? How low can you get!"

The trash can was full of filth.

Fluid dripping from a discarded syringe fell onto the drive. Not a single one of the pictures Cassie left behind was left.

The rage and pain twisting together in my chest nearly swallowed me whole.

I walked to the bedside and seized Myra by the collar.

My other hand rose to strike her across the face.

Then someone gripped my wrist, and Sean shoved me away.

My forehead cracked against the cabinet, the sound landing heavy in the silent ward.