The Night of Your Surgery Novel – I forbade Rex Blackwood from bringing his assistant to our lake house. He agreed, but behind my back, he bought her a penthouse in the city’s most exclusive district. The whole world said I had married the prince of the tech industry, that getting pregnant with twins was a fairy tale come true. But on the day of my emergency C-section, I suffered a placental abruption and began to hemorrhage. Rex was on vacation with that woman at some lavish ski resort, completely unreachable on his private jet. My mom crumpled to the floor outside the operating room, her calls to him—over forty of them—all going straight to voicemail. Only later did I learn that his assistant, Chloe, had been with him since she was an eighteen-year-old college intern.
I took my twin boys and moved back to the apartment I’d had before the wedding. When Rex finally came looking for me, I was in the middle of changing a diaper. He stood at the door, dressed in a bespoke suit and holding a gift box from a luxury baby boutique. “Savannah, come home with me.” He held out the gift box. “I messed up.” I glanced up at him and smiled. “Messed up what?” He froze. The question clearly caught him off guard. I took the gift box from his hand and, right in front of him, tossed it into the recycling bin in the hallway. “Messed up…” I clapped my hands together, my voice deceptively soft. “Rex, you should have just had her carry your children instead of lying to me.” 1 Rex bent to pick up the gift box. The recycling bin tipped, its contents—scraps of paper and packaging—spilling out and clinging to his Italian leather shoes. He didn’t move. “Savannah,” he said, his voice low and strained, “I know you’re upset—” “I’m upset?” I picked up James.
The little guy had just finished his milk and let out a soft burp. “What, exactly, am I upset about?” He straightened, his gaze sweeping across the cluttered living room. A changing table, cans of formula, and baby toys littered the space. His mom had come by last week, insisting the apartment was too small and that I should move back to the lake house. “I handled the situation with Chloe badly.” “Chloe.” I repeated the name, the sound of it bitter on my tongue. “Is that the woman you bought a penthouse for on Fifth Avenue?” Rex’s expression tightened. “Did you buy her a three-million-dollar apartment?” I patted James’s back gently. “In the city’s most expensive high-rise, overlooking Central Park.” His voice was flat. “The deed’s in her name.” My hand stilled. James started to fuss. I shifted him to my other shoulder, resuming the steady, rhythmic patting. “Her name,” I repeated. “Rex, you bought her an apartment?” He was silent for two seconds. Two seconds was all it took.
From the crib, Lucas suddenly started wailing, his small voice cracking as his arms and legs thrashed. I didn’t have a free hand. Rex moved toward him instinctively, bending down as if to pick him up, but he hesitated, his hands hovering uselessly in the air. He didn’t know how to hold a baby. At the lake house, we’d had a nanny. He’d never changed a single diaper. “You should go,” I said. He stood motionless beside the crib. Lucas’s face was blotchy and red from crying. Rex just watched, helpless, the cuff of his bespoke suit brushing against a dried milk stain on the crib rail. “Savannah, the doctor said your recovery isn’t going well. The boys need a father.” I placed James in his rocker and strode over to scoop up Lucas. The moment he was in my arms, Lucas quieted, nuzzling his little face against my chest. “They never had one to begin with,” I said. Rex’s head snapped up.
“How many of my prenatal appointments did you make it to?” I soothed Lucas, my voice quiet but sharp. “The time I fainted from low blood sugar in the hospital corridor, the nurse called you, but you were in a ‘board meeting.’ The time the babies were kicking up a storm and I wanted you to feel it, Chloe answered your phone. And the day I had the placental abruption? The day I was bleeding out on a table?” Lucas began to suck on his fingers, and I gently pulled his hand away. “My mom knelt outside the OR and called you forty-three times.” A muscle jumped in Rex’s jaw. “You were in Aspen that day.” I said, “You were with her. Some ‘corporate retreat.’ A private jet, round trip, all to surprise the old flame who’s been by your side for eight years.” He started to speak. “That was a critical company event, I couldn’t get away—” “Couldn’t get away?” I laughed, a sharp, humorless sound. “She’s been with you for eight years, since she was an eighteen-year-old intern. You couldn’t get away from a ski trip with her?” The living room fell silent, the only sound the soft cooing from James in his rocker.
The rhythmic chopping from the kitchen suddenly stopped. Rex looked straight into my eyes. “Savannah, I ended it with her.” I said nothing. “I gave her the apartment. It was a severance package.” He took a step forward. “I promise, from now on—” “You promise.” I smiled again, a brittle, sharp thing. “The last time you promised not to bring her to our lake house, you turned around and bought her a penthouse. The time before that, you promised to break it off completely before the babies were born, yet on the third day after my C-section, she sent me a picture of the two of you.” Rex froze. “Guess what she sent?” I put Lucas down and turned to face him squarely. “She sent a shirtless photo of you. The tattoo on your ribs—the one that was supposed to be my zodiac sign? You changed it to her name.” The color drained completely from his face. … “Rex,” I said, leaning against the crib, “when you were trying to win me over, you swore you were single. When you proposed, you told me I was your one and only soulmate.
When I was pregnant with our sons, so sick I was throwing up bile, you would touch my belly and say our family of four would be your entire world.” James began to fuss in his rocker. I went over and picked him up. His little mouth turned down, on the verge of tears, so I turned aside, lifted my shirt, and began to breastfeed him. Across the room, the only sound was Lucas sucking his fingers in the crib. Rex was still rooted to the spot. He hadn’t even glanced down at the trash clinging to his expensive shoes. “That tattoo photo…” He finally spoke, his voice rough.
“I didn’t know… I thought she Photoshopped it…” “Of course it wasn’t Photoshopped.” I cradled the back of James’s head. “You didn’t know she was ‘liking’ photos of my baby bump on social media. You didn’t know she was using your phone to send me cruel messages in the middle of the night. You didn’t even know she took a picture of my ultrasound scan to show off to her best friend.” Rex took a hesitant step forward.a