THE BABY I HID FROM MY BILLIONAIRE EX

The pen felt heavier than it should have. Or maybe that was just me. Standing in a lawyer's office at ten in the morning in a dress I had chosen carefully, because I wanted Rafael to see me and think, for one second, that he was making a mistake. He did not look like he was making a mistake. He looked the way he always looked in rooms like this one. Composed. Unhurried. Hands loose at his sides like nothing in the world had the power to touch him. He had worn the grey suit. The one I used to press my face against on Sunday mornings when neither of us was fully awake yet and everything was still small enough to be ours. I looked away from the suit. Atty. Reyes was talking about finalization periods and court timelines. I was not listening. I was watching the rain hit the window and thinking about how I had not eaten breakfast. Small things. Manageable things. Because if I let myself think about the large ones I would not be able to stand here and finish what I came to do. "Ms. Cruz." He slid the papers toward me. "Whenever you're ready." I was not ready. I had not been ready since the night three weeks ago when I came home early and opened the bedroom door and saw them. My husband. My sister. Laila's shampoo had been sitting on my bathroom shelf for months. She was always leaving things at my place. Always breezing in and out like she owned parts of my life. As it turned out, she did. I picked up the pen. My hand did not shake. I was proud of that, later. At that moment I was just floating somewhere above myself, watching a woman in a blue dress sign her name on a document that was going to undo six years of her life. Maia Cruz. Not Maia Lim. I had never legally changed my name, which Rafael used to call endearing and which now felt like the only smart thing I had done in this entire marriage. I put the pen down. "All done," Atty. Reyes said, with the careful gentleness of a man who had witnessed too many quiet endings. Rafael shifted beside me. Just slightly. Just enough. It was the way his weight changed whenever he was about to speak, a thing I knew the way you know the sounds of a house you have lived in long enough. "Maia." Just my name. In that voice. The one I spent six years thinking was the safest sound in the world. "Thank you, Atty. Reyes," I said. I picked up my bag and I walked out. Not running. Running would have meant something was chasing me. I walked through the carpeted hallway and into the elevator and out through the lobby where the guard held the door and said good morning like it was one. I stood under the building's overhang and breathed through the gray, tired rain. In. Out. Again. There would be time to fall apart. Just not here. Not in front of him. I found a taxi. I gave Joy's address. I sat in the back and watched Manila move outside the window, everyone inside their own lives, no one with any idea that mine had just been folded and filed by a man named Atty. Reyes. My phone buzzed. Rafael. I watched his name on the screen until it stopped. Then I blocked him. Not with anger. The anger had burned out in the first week and what was left was something quieter and harder, something that knew exactly what it was doing. I did not delete his contact. That was the one honest thing I allowed myself. The small admission that I was not as finished as I was pretending. Joy's condo smelled like fabric conditioner. There was a note on the counter: *adobo in the fridge. Eat something. J* I ate it cold, standing up, because sitting down felt like surrendering to something I was not ready to name yet. Afterwards, I stood in the shower until the water ran cold and let myself think about the things I had been holding back all morning. Six years. His hands. The grey suit on Sunday mornings. Laila's laugh at our dining table at Christmas, the way she used to hug me goodbye at the door. How long. That was the question that had kept me awake every night since I found out. Not why. I understood why, in the way you understand things that have no good answer. But how long had I been the only one in my marriage who did not know the truth. I turned off the shower. I dried my hair. I put on clothes that asked nothing of anyone. I sat on Joy's couch and opened my laptop and pulled up bus schedules to Cebu. I made this decision three days ago. I had just been waiting to finish the paperwork first. Cebu because it was far enough. Because I had no history there. Because years ago a small events company had wanted to hire me and I had been too in love with Rafael to leave Manila. The timing had simply been waiting. I was about to book the ticket when my phone rang. Joy. I answered, expecting her voice. Expecting something ordinary, something warm, something that belonged to the small safe world I was trying to build around myself. What I got instead was silence. Then a breath. Then Joy's voice, low and tight in a way I had never heard from her before. "Maia. I need to tell you something. I should have told you a long time ago." She stopped. Started again. "It wasn't just Laila." I sat very still. "What do you mean it wasn't just Laila?" Another silence. Longer this time. The kind that means the person on the other end is deciding how much damage they are willing to do. "Before her," Joy said. "There were others. I saw things. I didn't know how to tell you. I kept thinking it would stop and I kept thinking you were happy and I kept telling myself it wasn't my place." The laptop screen blurred in front of me. "How long did you know?" I asked. Joy's voice, when it came, was barely a sound at all. "Maia. Almost from the beginning."