Chapter 4

He glanced past me at the exam room, nothing in his eyes but irritation.

"Since you've already seen, I won't hide it from you."

"Brooklyn is pregnant now, and she can't be put under any stress. If you have a problem, take it up with me. Don't make a scene here and embarrass everyone."

"On your birthday, Brooklyn had just been betrayed by her ex. She was in a bad way, so I had a few drinks with her. We both got drunk, and we ended up sleeping together by accident."

My fingertips went cold all at once.

My birthday.

That day, I had waited for him at the restaurant for six full hours.

At one in the morning, he finally sent me a single message:

【Something came up at the company.】

Later he brought back a necklace that wasn't even my size, calling it a late birthday gift.

Thinking about it now, it was probably just something Brooklyn hadn't wanted.

Quinn watched the color drain from my face, and his tone softened instead, as if he were coaxing an unreasonable child.

"Callie, it was only a drunken accident. There's no need to act like the sky is falling."

"In our circle, what man doesn't have a few women on the side?"

"Love is love, marriage is marriage. You need to learn to tell them apart."

I stared at him, dazed.

Even now, he still thought I was the one who needed to change.

"So you're planning to let her have this child?"

"The child is innocent."

Quinn said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Brooklyn's health is fragile. The doctors said a pregnancy like this is rare for her. Now that the baby's already here, we can't have her give it up just because you can't accept it."

I almost laughed.

So Brooklyn's baby was the innocent one.

Her health was fragile, so her pregnancy was rare and precious.

How many rounds of treatment I had gone through for a child, how many injections I'd taken, how many times I'd lain on an operating table, he seemed to have forgotten all of it.

Quinn reached out, as if to stroke my hair the way he used to.

I took a step back, turning my head aside to avoid him.

His hand froze in midair, and his face darkened again.

"What are you throwing a fit about now?"

"I already promised you I'd make up the hundredth wedding to you."

"Brooklyn is only having the baby. She won't threaten your position. As long as you're gracious about it and don't drag this in front of my mother, the place as the Vance heir's wife is still yours."

"And when the child is born, it'll be registered under your name."

"You get a Vance heir handed to you for nothing. What more could you want?"

At that, Brooklyn's expression dimmed. She had clawed her way up from the bottom, using the guise of Quinn's best friend to get close to him, and what she wanted was far more than this.

"Quinn, I just remembered, I left one of my medicines in the exam room. Would you go get it back for me?"

Once Quinn was gone, Brooklyn stepped closer, every trace of frailty wiped clean off her face.

"Callie, do you really think you couldn't conceive for five years just because of bad luck?"

My heart clenched hard.

"What do you mean?"

"You tried to get pregnant for five years, went through all those treatments. Every single time, you wore yourself half to death, didn't you?"

The images I had deliberately buried came flooding back before I could brace for them.

The pain of needle after needle driven into my body.

The hope I let flicker to life, so carefully, every time I waited for test results.

And the despair that came after each result, more absolute every time.

It wasn't that I'd never suspected.

After the second failed IVF cycle, the doctor had warned me that my hormone levels were changing abnormally, and asked whether I'd been taking any other medication.

I went home and dug out every pill bottle, ready to bring them to the hospital for testing.

But Quinn took them all away.

He said:

"Those are just fertility vitamins I had someone buy from overseas. There's nothing wrong with them."

"You're under enough pressure already. Stop letting your mind run wild."

After that, every single day, he prepared my pills and warm water with his own hands.

He would watch me swallow them before he left, satisfied.

I once mistook that supervision for care.

I was even moved to pieces because he remembered exactly when I was supposed to take them.

A chill crept slowly up my spine.

I forced myself to stay calm.

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

Brooklyn savored the color draining from my face, and finally stopped stringing it out.

"Quinn told me long ago that the Vances' first heir had to be born from me."

"You can be his fiancée, you can use the Pratt name to keep up appearances for the Vances, you can even go on dreaming that you're the only woman he's ever loved."

"But you don't have the right to be the first to carry his child."

I stared her down.

"You're lying."

"Whether I'm lying or not, don't you already have the answer in your heart?"

Brooklyn leaned close to my ear and said it word by word:

"All these years, the fertility vitamins he handed you with his own hands weren't vitamins at all."

"They were birth control pills."