Too Late to Win Me Back

Chapter 3 What Am I Supposed to Do

At first, Katherine had been furious. She had fought it. She had broken down over it.

But what, exactly, was she supposed to do?

'Blame Spencer?'

He was a victim in this, too.

Katherine remembered what had happened five years ago with painful clarity. Spencer had been drugged that night. He had barely been conscious. He hadn't known what was happening, and yet he had been forced into fatherhood all the same.

The pain he carried was no less than hers.

'Blame Jasmine?'

But back then, Jasmine had only been a young girl, sheltered, innocent, blindsided by a disaster she never saw coming. Afterward, fear had driven her to run. Then she found out she was pregnant and couldn't bring herself to end it.

For the past few years, she had been raising that child alone. And it hadn't been easy.

At one point, Katherine had even tried to make peace with it.

She and Spencer had been together for 10 years. They had been married for five years. Their lives were no longer simply intertwined. They had grown around each other so completely that one could hardly be separated from the other.

So maybe she should accept the child. Maybe she should treat him as the price of Spencer's mistake, the consequence of one terrible, senseless night.

But that child was Spencer's son, the son of the man she loved most in the world, a child he had with another woman!

And every time Katherine looked at his face, which looked so unmistakably like Spencer's, something inside her came apart.

She couldn't stay calm. She couldn't breathe through it.

She kept unraveling, over and over again. And through it all, Spencer's torment was no less than hers.

He had loved Katherine for ten years. He had been married to her for five years. Then suddenly, a complete stranger appeared and claimed she had given birth to his child.

He had slept with that woman while drugged and barely conscious. He hadn't known. He hadn't chosen it.

And yet overnight, he was a father. Overnight, he was burdened with a responsibility he had never asked for. Overnight, a c***k had opened inside his marriage to Katherine, a c***k that would never fully disappear.

At first, Spencer had lost control too.

He had hated Jasmine and Aiden. He had coldly pushed the boy away every time the child tried to come near him with those careful, hopeful gestures.

He had said he would never acknowledge a child born from something like that. In one of his worst rages, he had even shouted at the boy to get out.

But in the end, Aiden only had to clutch at the hem of Spencer's jacket and look up at him with those frightened, eager eyes, and Spencer's resolve would break.

Afterward, he would regret it.

He would hate himself for softening.

The last time it happened, Spencer, always so composed, controlled, impossible to shake, had dropped to one knee in front of Katherine with red-rimmed eyes. His voice had been hoarse, unsteady, almost pleading.

"Katherine, help me. What am I supposed to do so I don't lose you?"

That was how the last three months had passed. Through countless cycles of painful self-hypnosis, rebuilding, and subsequent destruction, by the end of it, Katherine was barely holding herself together.

And Spencer had moved Jasmine and Aiden into another apartment, far away from where Katherine would ever have to see them.

Then came the storm. A month ago, thunder had cracked across the sky in the middle of a downpour. Spencer had been covering Katherine's ears when his gaze drifted toward the window. He went still for just a second.

"Thunder," he murmured.

Then, he said the company had an emergency, grabbed his coat, and rushed out into the rain.

That was the moment Katherine understood. He wasn't thinking about work. He was thinking about Jasmine and Aiden, alone in the apartment where he had hidden them away.

Katherine spent the whole night curled up on the couch, waiting for him to come home. He never did.

Instead, a w******p message from Jasmine popped up on her screen.

The photo showed Spencer at dawn, asleep on a couch with Aiden curled in his arms.

They were sleeping side by side. Even in sleep, the furrow between their brows looked exactly the same.

The sight made Katherine's chest tighten so sharply it hurt.

A message appeared beneath the picture: Katherine, I'm sorry. Aiden was terrified of the storm and wouldn't let go of his dad, so Mr. Hopkins had no choice but to stay the night.

The words looked polite. But Katherine could feel the smugness.

Only then did Katherine realize that Jasmine was no longer the awkward, innocent Jasmine she had first met.

Maybe she had never been that timid, fragile girl at all. Maybe that version had only ever existed for Spencer.

Something had already started to change.

The next morning, when Spencer came home, Katherine showed him the message.

He frowned hard the moment he saw it, then pulled Katherine into his arms, his face full of remorse.

"I'm sorry. If you don't like this, I'll make them leave."

After that, he went into the bedroom and made a phone call.

His voice was low, full of restrained anger. Through the c***k in the door, Katherine could only catch fragments.

"I told you Katherine is my line. You are not allowed to appear before her! Are you trying to get yourself and Aiden thrown out of Arvandor?"

For a while after that, Jasmine and Aiden disappeared from Katherine's sight.

Then one day, Katherine went to the office looking for Spencer and found out he wasn't there.

That was when she learned the truth. Every time he said he was busy, he had been going to the apartment, spending time with Jasmine and Aiden.

No matter how Aiden had come into the world, Spencer was still his father. And Jasmine was still his mother.

They had a child together. That meant they would be tied to each other for the rest of their lives.

So where did that leave Katherine?

What was she supposed to do with ten years of love with five years of marriage?

And then she discovered that her period was late. She went to the hospital. The test came back positive. She was pregnant. And on the very same day, she learned she was dying, with just one month left to live.