The Summer I Loved The Wrong Man

Gaia Karis POV The cake was heavier than it looked, and my arms had started to shake. I had been up since four. I stood in the kitchen in the dark, with one hand on the small of my back and the other cracking eggs into a bowl. I hadn’t eaten eggs in seven years. The smell turned my stomach, and I breathed through my mouth and kept going. Damien liked his birthday cake the old way. Lemon, three layers, real butter, real eggs. He was thirty-five today. He had left that morning without a word about it. Damien and I had been drifting apart for six months: late nights, missed dinners, and snapping at me whenever I asked about his schedule- it all felt like normal ambition. He’s busy, I told myself, piping the last curl of frosting with unsteady hands. He’s the heir. He has a lot on his mind. I got it, and I wanted to support him… so I chose to ignore the signs. The baby rolled under my ribs, slow and heavy. I smiled at my stomach. “Almost there,” I whispered. “Just a few more days.” I remembered how hard Damien courted me, how he made sure I had a ring on my finger. I believed in that man. And I still believed we could find him again. The lobby of the Ashby Group was all glass and marble and cold, expensive air. I carried the box across it with both arms, like a glassware. My ankles had swollen over my flats an hour ago. The receptionist had the kind of smile they didn’t teach in school, it was warm, polished and giving nothing away. “Good afternoon. How can I help you?” “Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Ashby. Damien Ashby.” I shifted the box on my forearm. “It’s his birthday, and I wanted to surprise him.” “Of course, ma’am. One moment.” She typed. I rested my palm on my stomach and waited. The typing stopped. “Mr. Ashby is hosting a private party on the top floor,” she said. “Mrs. Ashby went up about twenty minutes ago, so if you’d like to…” “Sorry?” I laughed. It came out light, because I still thought it was funny. “I’m Mrs. Ashby.” She took one look at my stomach, then at my ring, then at her screen. She kept looking at it for longer than anyone needs to look at a screen. When she spoke again, her voice was so low I had to lean in. “Ma’am, I really shouldn’t say this. Please don’t tell anyone I did.” Her eyes flicked toward the elevators and back. “Ms. Bernard has been signing in at this desk as Mrs. Ashby since February.” Juliette Bernard. I knew that name. Damien had been saying it to me all year, in the patient voice he used when he thought I was being dramatic. She’s a client, Gaia. An investor. Don’t read into everything. “She’s his client,” I said. “There must be a mix-up.” “That’s what we were told. “She said it gently, the way you speak to someone standing near a ledge. “But Mr. Ashby walks her up himself, and she’s never once been billed to a meeting room.” she swallowed. “You seem kind. I’d want someone to tell me.” The lobby tilted a little to the left, the marble and the glass and the cold air. I stood very still until it came back. Then I did the thing I had practiced for four years. I smiled. “Thank you. I’m sure it’s a clerical error. You know how records get.” “Of course.” She didn’t believe me, and she was kind enough to let me pretend. “The elevator on your right. Top floor. It opens straight onto the roof terrace.” The elevator walls were mirrored, so I watched myself go up: the belly, the gray smudged under my eyes, the cake pressed against my chest like it might stop something from hitting me. I had never once been inside this building. Four years of marriage, and Damien always had a reason. The press would be there, or his family, or the cameras, and I got tired so easily, didn’t I? I had been grateful for that. I thought it was how a man looked after his wife. A client, I told myself. Staff gossip. Somewhere around the sixth floor my hand found my stomach. I had been pregnant five times before this one. I knew the exact color of the bathroom tile at home, because I had stared at it every time it ended. This baby was the one who stayed. I kept my palm on him all the way up. The doors opened without a sound. There was no hallway and nowhere to stand and gather myself. The elevator opened straight onto the roof, into open sky and string lights and white flowers. A quartet played something slow by the railing. An average of fifty people in beautiful clothes stood in a half-circle with their glasses raised. Above them, between two potted trees, hung a banner. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAMIEN. SOON THERE WILL BE THREE OF YOU. Juliette sat beneath it on a cushioned bench, in a cream dress, with one hand on a stomach that was perfectly flat. Damien stood beside her with his glass, in the middle of a toast. “.…and I want to thank the love of my life,” he said, looking at her. “Juliette has been through more than any of you know, and she never once gave up on us.” Then one of the violins missed its note. Heads turned. I was standing alone in the open elevator, in a pale blue maternity dress from the clearance rack, holding a cake. I had never felt so looked at in my life. A silver-haired woman near me saw my stomach, and her whole face softened. “Oh, you’re her,” she said, touching her chest. “The surrogate. Thank you, truly. Juliette cried for a week when she heard the baby was healthy.” “Did she?” My voice seemed to come from another room. “She’s been so brave. And Damien has carried her through all of it.” Carried her. Two years of needles in my stomach until my skin turned yellow and purple, my hands shaking so badly I sometimes had to try twice. He had taken all of it, every shot and every night I’d cried with the shower running, and handed it to another woman to wear as her own grief. Damien turned and saw me. For half a second his face went soft, and I knew that look. It was the crooked, boyish smile from the boutique, the one that had made me feel chosen. My heart actually lifted. I thought, He’ll come to me now. He’ll say my name. Then I watched him count the room. Fifty guests, two investors, a board member three feet away. The smile came back, smooth and generous, and it was no longer for me. “And here she is,” he told the crowd, raising his glass. “The woman who has given us everything.” They clapped. Fifty people clapped for me, and not one of them knew my name. I opened my mouth to say I’m his wife, but Damien had already crossed the roof and taken my elbow, gently, like a gentleman. His thumb dug into the soft inside of my arm. “You look exhausted,” he said, for the guests. Then, so quietly only I could hear : “Don’t do anything stupid.” His hand was warm. His eyes were not. Over his shoulder, Juliette watched me from behind her champagne. Her eyes dropped to the cake, and her mouth curved, very slightly. She had known. They both had. I walked past him because it was the only thing my legs could still do. I set the cake on the long table between two glasses. My back ached so badly I had to hold it as I straightened. “Happy birthday, Damien,” I siad, in a voice so calm it scared me. “Congratulations.” Behind me someone murmured, “Oh, bless her, it’s the hormones,” and someone laughed. The violin found its line again. Damien didn’t follow. I didn’t remember going back down. I remember the heat on the street, thick as a hand over my mouth, and the way the baby had gone quiet. My phone buzzed in my hand. Damien: Don’t make this ugly. Go home. I’ll handle it after the party. I read it twice. I’ll handle it. The last time I cried in front of him, after the fifth loss, he had looked at me body instead of my face and said, “Maybe you’re just not built for it.” And I had apologized. Now I was a delayed shipment. Something small and sour rose in me, and it didn’t sound like me at all. I gave you two years of my body. You called me vessel. I stepped off the curb with my eyes on the screen. I heard the horn first, and then the brakes. I remember the exact thought I had, so clear it was almost polite. Not the baby. Take anything, but not the baby. Then there was a flash of white, and a sound like the whole would cracking.