His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns

POV: Yessica | Location: New York "Conference call in twenty." Lewis didn't look up from his phone. Yessica set his plate down. Eggs perfect, bacon crispy, coffee at exactly the temperature he liked. Three years of mornings and he still hadn't learned to say thank you like he meant it. "I made your favourite," she said. "Mm." Scroll. Scroll. She sat across from him with her own coffee and watched him eat without tasting. His thumb moving across the screen. The Singapore deal. Always the Singapore deal. "I thought we could have dinner tonight," she said. "There's a new Italian place on—" "Can't. Harrington account." "Tomorrow?" "Singapore team arrives. All week." He stood. Left half his breakfast untouched. Reached for his jacket. "Lewis—" "I'll be late tonight." He was already checking his watch. "Don't wait up." The elevator doors closed. The penthouse went quiet. Four hours of preparation. Eight minutes of presence. Gone. Yessica picked up his plate. The eggs were perfect. The bacon crispy. She scraped everything into the garbage disposal and stood there while it ground, listening to the sound that matched something in her chest — violent, then finished, then nothing. The kitchen was spotless when she was done. It always was. Her phone buzzed. Pippa: Lunch today? Haven't seen you in forever. Can't. Appointment. She didn't have an appointment. She just couldn't face Pippa's careful eyes. You always have appointments. You're avoiding me. Just busy. Soon, I promise. The lie sat in her mouth like something stale. She walked past the wedding photos on the hall wall without looking at them. Lewis smiling at the camera — professional, controlled, giving nothing away. Her in a designer gown, believing every word of her own vows. Twenty-eight years old and she was already disappearing. She caught herself in the hallway mirror. Hollow eyes. Sharp face. She tried to remember the last time someone had asked her a question that wasn't logistical. She couldn't. The bathroom cabinet. Aspirin — the headaches had been constant for weeks. Her hand knocked something over. A box fell. Tampons. Yessica stared at them. When was my last period? The thought arrived quietly. Then it didn't feel quiet at all. Six weeks. Maybe seven. She'd been so focused on Lewis, on the cold sheets, on the eight-minute breakfasts — she hadn't noticed her own body. Her hands were shaking when she found the test in the back of the drawer. Bought months ago on a hopeful day she barely remembered. She tore the package open. Set it on the marble counter. Two minutes. She sat on the bathroom floor and stared at it. The marble was cold through her clothes. Outside, the city moved past the windows — indifferent, enormous, completely unaware. Forty seconds. Thirty. Please. Twenty. She closed her eyes. Ten. Five. The timer beeped. She looked. Two pink lines. The sound that came out of her wasn't a cry. It wasn't a laugh. It was something smaller than either — the sound of a person who has been holding their breath for months finally letting go. She pressed her hand flat to her stomach. A baby. Lewis's and hers. Something real. Something that couldn't be ignored or scrolled past or left on a plate. This will change things. It had to. A baby would make him slow down. Come home. Look at her like she was still the woman he'd walked up to at that gallery opening — the one he'd talked to for an hour, who he'd called extraordinary on their third date. She grabbed her phone. His name on the screen. Her thumb over the call button. No. Not like this. Not on the phone between meetings. Tonight. She'd make it perfect — candles, his favourite wine, the test in a small box with tissue paper. She would plan every detail. She was good at details. She'd been good at details for three years and none of it had been enough, but this was different. This was a baby. Yessica stood. Looked at herself in the mirror. The hollow eyes were still there. But the ghost was smiling. She didn't yet know what was waiting for her down the hall. In the hours still to come. She didn't know that tonight, Lewis would come home late again. She didn't know she would overhear a phone call — her mother-in-law's voice, sharp and certain — that would rearrange everything she thought she was fighting for. She just stood there with two pink lines and three years of cold sheets and the particular cruelty of hope.