He Bought Her a Car, I Ruined Him

Chapter 2

Her phone chimed, and the screen lit up in her hand.

She glanced down, then turned the screen toward me.

"Look. He's already asking what's taking me so long."

A message from a contact saved as Hubby appeared on the screen.

Hubby: Sophie, babe, what's taking you so long? I can't stand being in the car without you. Hurry back.

I stared at the message, then slowly reached into my pocket and unlocked my own phone.

I had asked Grant whether he could come with me to a follow-up appointment that weekend. His reply had been ice-cold.

Grant: The company is running mandatory training all weekend. Don't call and bother me. Go by yourself.

So this was his mandatory training: hovering beside Sophie while her new Audi was filled up.

Completely unaware of my reaction, Sophie Collins drew her phone back and continued shyly.

"This trip to Bellshore is special for another reason."

She lowered her voice as if she were sharing a secret.

"We're going to stop using birth control. He really wants a daughter who looks just like me. He says that when she grows up, we'll give her this Audi."

Nausea rolled through me, and my knees nearly buckled.

The previous month, after staying up night after night to complete handmade orders and help cover our bills, I collapsed in the kitchen and suffered a miscarriage.

When I woke in the hospital, Grant stood several feet from the foot of my bed, unwilling to come any closer.

He covered his nose and stared at me in disgust as I lay there pale and weak.

"Your body was too weak to carry the baby. Who else can you blame? Besides, we can't afford a child. It's gone, so let it go. It was bad luck anyway."

The baby he had dismissed as bad luck had been his child too.

Mistaking my horror for surprise, Sophie opened her photo gallery and held out a picture.

"Look. He took over the lease on this place for me last month."

The photo showed a storefront in the busiest part of downtown undergoing an expensive renovation.

"I only mentioned that I was bored at home and thought it might be fun to run a nail salon. He immediately spent 300,000 dollars on this place. He said he didn't care if it lost money as long as I was happy."

I swayed and grabbed the metal shelf beside me to keep from falling.

Grant had spent another 300,000 dollars on Sophie without a moment's hesitation.

The previous month, my mother had suffered a sudden heart attack and needed 300,000 dollars for coronary bypass surgery.

With nowhere else to turn, I had knelt on the cold living room floor and clung to Grant's pant leg, begging him to use the company's operating funds or our savings to save her.

He kicked me away, his face tight with impatience.

"Your mother is a bottomless pit! The company doesn't have a cent to spare. What do you expect me to do, pull 300,000 dollars out of thin air?"

In the end, I withdrew half of the 600,000 dollars my parents had placed in my wedding fund account years earlier. It was barely enough to cover the surgery.

Grant had taken the other half from me the day before, supposedly for his business deal, and used it to buy the Audi.

Yet somehow, Grant had found 300,000 dollars for Sophie's nail salon, all because he wanted to make her smile.

"You look terrible. Are you okay?"

Sophie finally noticed how pale I was. She put away her phone and reached out to steady me.

"Your husband sounds like a total jerk!"

She bristled with indignation on my behalf.

"His wife is sick, and he won't even give her money? What a cheap, heartless bastard. He's absolute trash."

In her bright, innocent voice, she tore Grant apart without realizing it.

I drew a slow breath. The frantic pounding in my chest settled into an eerie calm.

I placed the expensive chocolates back in her shopping bag.

"You're right."

I looked at her, and the last foolish trace of softness I had left for Grant vanished.