I Was Pregnant, But He Still Chose Her

Chapter 3

"Finance Weekly got hold of some photos of me and Tiffany." Colin opened the folder to show several high-quality candid shots inside.

They showed him and Tiffany at a café. She was tilting her head up to put the straw between his lips, and on it was a faint smudge of lipstick that made it clear she had been drinking from it.

Colin, who never had a sweet tooth, was sipping a milkshake with his eyes practically brimming with sweetness.

The photos had been taken the day before yesterday, at the exact time Hilary had been lying unconscious on an operating table.

"The media is already coming after her, saying she's the one who came between us, and some people are even starting to call her out on social media," Colin said.

Hilary lifted her eyes from the photos to his face. "So?"

His voice stayed gentle, but there was no room for argument in it. "I've already put out a statement, saying you're not my fiancée."

Hilary hid the mocking smile on her lips. "But we're supposed to be getting married at the end of the month. The wedding planner has everything ready, and we're just about to send out the invitations, so how exactly are you planning to explain this?"

Colin's voice was cold when he replied, "The wedding will go ahead as planned, just with a different bride. I'll marry Tiffany first, but it's only temporary. Once this whole thing blows over, I'll divorce her and then marry you. Hilary, all you need to do is focus on getting better and wait for me."

A ringing sound filled Hilary's ears.

She thought back to three days earlier in that abandoned warehouse, when the kidnapper had forced Colin to choose between her and Tiffany, and he had used that exact same tone to tell her, "Hilary, just wait for me."

A laugh escaped her lips then, and all the hurt and disappointment she had been holding in kept piling up until she was laughing so hard that tears started streaming down her face.

Colin froze for a moment before reaching out to touch her cheek, but Hilary jerked away so suddenly that she knocked the glass of water clean off the nightstand.

"Calm down," he said with a frown. "I know this isn't fair to you, but Tiffany is just so pathetic. She has no one to rely on, and I can't let her take the heat from the public on top of everything else."

Hilary finally stopped laughing and simply closed her mouth, saying nothing.

With a sigh, Colin lowered himself into the chair by the bed and said, "Get some rest. I'll stay with you."

But the very next second, his phone started ringing, and he barely glanced at the screen before shooting to his feet. "Tiffany's being swarmed by paparazzi, I have to go get her. Just rest for now. I'll come see you another time."

Hilary watched him rush out of the room, a deep desolation settling in her chest as she realized that once again, she had lost to Tiffany, and that 15 years of standing by him, of building a life together, could not measure up to a woman he had only met in his senior year of college.

Hilary forced herself not to dwell on the hurt, not to let herself think about any of it, telling herself that the years of devotion had simply been wasted on someone who never deserved them in the first place.

But still, she could not stop the sadness from creeping in.

To keep herself from paying any attention to Colin, she threw herself into her finger rehabilitation, cooperating with every exercise they gave her, even when each session left her drenched in sweat from the pain.

*****

One day, Hilary had just shuffled out of the therapy room with one hand against the wall when a cloud of perfume came flying around the corner and crashed right into her.

"Ah!" Tiffany stumbled to the ground, her eyes instantly turning red. "Hilary."

The collision had left Hilary's chest aching, and now the crying was making her head buzz.

"Can you just shut up?" Hilary said.

Tiffany paused for a moment before straightening up on her knees and grabbing Hilary's bandaged hands to press them against her own cheek. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. If Colin had chosen you that day, you never would have gotten hurt like this."

Her voice was thick with tears, her forehead nearly pressed to the floor, and through the open collar of her shirt, faint red hickeys stood out against her collarbone.

Hilary tried to pull her hands back, but her damaged fingers had no strength to give.

"What's going on here?"

Colin's voice came from the end of the hallway.