First Marriage Failed, Second Marriage was Sweet Novel – The fake heiress, June Fox, pushed me down the stairs while I was pregnant. I collapsed in a pool of my own blood, feeling the life inside me slipping away, tears streaming from the pain. And my husband, Patrick Harding, was wiping the tears of the woman trembling in his arms, murmuring soft words of comfort. “Don’t look. It’s ugly. Are you hurt anywhere?” Because the best window for emergency treatment was missed, I could never carry a child again. Patrick shrugged it off like it was nothing. “So you can’t have kids. It’s not like you’re dying.” From the day we started dating, through our wedding, to now, eight full years.
He knew better than anyone how much I loved children. And he had stripped me of the right to ever be a mother. Three days later, I stumbled home in a daze. On the master bedroom sheets, there was a half-dried stain. It was obvious. They’d had sex in my marriage bed. I shut the bedroom door. Something inside me went quiet for good. I dialed a number I hadn’t touched in years. “I agree. I’ll honor our arrangement.Leave him and marry you.” —— “Serena Abbott, the divorce papers and the resignation letter are both ready. Are you really going through with this?” My closest friend handed me the two documents, her eyes full of reluctance and confusion, a sigh caught in her throat.
She had been there since I was brought back to Graystone City. She’d witnessed every chapter of my love story with Patrick. I took the papers. Eight years of my life, condensed into two thin sheets. Almost laughably light. I nodded, firm. “Yes.” I was going back to Havenport. My adoptive parents were still waiting for me to come home. I turned and walked out, carrying those two sheets of paper straight to Harding Group, all the way up to the top floor. Patrick looked up when I came in, mildly surprised, a crease of irritation forming between his brows. “Why did you check yourself out? Are you feeling better? I’ve been swamped.
That’s the only reason I haven’t come to see you.” “You don’t need to rush back to work. Your only priority right now is recovering. You know that, right?” Swamped. Not swamped. He simply didn’t care enough. He’d been too busy taking care of June Fox. I smiled and said nothing. I slid the papers across the desk toward him. “Sign these.” Patrick’s gaze dropped. His pupils contracted, an involuntary reflex. “What is this?” I watched his hand reach to flip the first page, and the sting behind my eyes deepened. A bitter laugh escaped me. “Call it your compensation to me.” A flicker of guilt crossed his face. Even he knew he’d gone too far.
He opened to the first page. Patrick was always careful; no matter how rushed, he’d at least skim the contents. But then his phone rang. The name on the screen burned into my eyes like a brand. Sweetheart June. June Fox. The woman who had stolen eighteen years of my life. Who tormented me the moment I was brought back. Who had now killed my child. Patrick knew everything I’d suffered. There was a time he’d despised June Fox too. And now he had her saved as Sweetheart. How absurd. I let out a cold laugh. Eight years of love, reduced to a punchline. Patrick answered immediately, his voice softening without him even realizing it. A whiny, coquettish voice poured through the speaker. “Patrick, I want boba from that place in Southvale.
Come get it with me!” He stood without a second of hesitation, already heading for the door. “Serena, I’ll be back in a bit.” I reached out and caught his wrist. My fingertips were ice. My voice was flat. “June Fox pushed me down a flight of stairs and killed our baby. You signing a little compensation on her behalf isn’t unreasonable, is it?” His brow furrowed. Displeasure flooded his eyes in an instant. “I told you, June didn’t do it on purpose. She had terrible cramps that day. She lost her footing and bumped into you.
She was so scared she cried.” “Stop making everything into such a big deal.” Lost her footing. Three little words, weightless as air. I laughed. Laughed until my eyes blurred with tears. I had been writhing in a pool of blood, screaming in agony, and he was wiping June Fox’s tears. I had been on the operating table, hovering between life and death, and he was rubbing June Fox’s stomach through the night. I stared into his eyes, searching for even a trace of guilt. Of love.
Patrick shifted under my gaze. He searched my face too, looking for the old grievances, the hysteria he was used to. But all he found was emptiness. A silence that had nothing left to give. “Just sign. Once you do, I’m gone. I won’t keep you from your boba date.” I pressed the pen into his hand. He hesitated for a moment, then flipped straight to the last few pages. One broad stroke of his hand, and Patrick Harding sprawled across the signature line. He stepped forward, pulled me into his arms, and pressed a kiss to my forehead, a gesture that almost passed for tenderness. “Whatever you want,