Chapter 1

My husband is allergic to me. Eight years married, and he has never once touched me.

Separate beds, separate meals, even two washing machines in the house. The moment I came too close, he couldn't sit still, could barely breathe.

I dragged him to doctor after doctor, but his symptoms only got worse, until just sharing a room with me left him nauseous and faint.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's all my fault, I'm useless. I can't even give you a child. You've suffered all these years for nothing."

The guilt and heartache in his eyes were what did it. I've always been terrified of needles, but I was the one who suggested IVF.

Except now, lying on the retrieval table for the sixth time, my eyes caught on an online help-post.

【I've lied that I'm allergic to my wife so I could stay celibate for my first love for eight years. Now my first love and I have a child. What do I do?】

The story was so familiar it choked me. Clinging to one thin hope, I tapped through to his page, and the ground dropped out from under me.

The only account the blogger followed was Leah Henson. My own sister. Same mother, same blood.

And the blogger himself. I couldn't think of anyone it could be except my husband, Duke Gilbert.

Before I'd even surfaced from the enormous pain of it, the door of the operating room swung open.

The doctor came in holding the thirty-five-centimeter retrieval needle. "Open a little wider, please. We're about to start."

I dumbly drew my legs back together. "I'm not doing the retrieval."

1

The doctor's whole face froze in shock, the instrument still hovering in her hand.

I got down off the table and turned to leave.

She hurried to stop me, her voice earnest. "Ms. Henson, the follicle quality is excellent this cycle. The odds of a successful pregnancy are very high."

"After trying so many times, you're right at the finish line. It would be such a waste to give up now."

I had no mind for any of it. I walked to the doorway of the operating room and sat down.

The replies under the post were mocking me, spelling out just how ridiculous the last eight years had been.

【Come on, man, how did your wife actually believe an excuse that insane?】

【Bro's a genius. Allergic to only one person on earth, and it's his wife. Only you could come up with that.】

Even his lies were this lazy, and I of all people had believed him without a shred of doubt.

Before we married, Duke told me himself that he was allergic to contact with women.

Even the simplest physical touch left his whole body wrong, his chest tight with panic.

I thought he was just born that way, and I believed love could get us through anything, so I married him gladly.

I went with him to every hospital there was. Dermatology, internal medicine, immunology, even a psychologist. Nothing helped.

But in the end I still wanted a child.

Five years ago, after another failed attempt to talk himself through it, Duke broke down sobbing.

I lowered my head and looked at the needle marks packed across my belly.

Five years. Over a hundred stimulation shots driven into my body, over a hundred trips to the hospital to track ovulation.

Alone, I endured the insomnia, the mood swings, the body that no longer looked like mine, all from the hormones, all so I could have a child with him.

My phone buzzed and pulled me back.

A message from Duke. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I've put you through pain again. The second I'm done here, I'll come straight home to take care of you."

The old me would have replied in a heartbeat.

This time I didn't. I just opened that post again.

I tapped through the avatar to his page and scrolled up like a woman possessed.

Eight years.

Over a thousand posts, every one of them about Leah.

When my eyes landed on a few of the dates, the pain in my chest hit hard.

The first IVF cycle failed. I cried myself sick, and all he did was comfort me with "it just isn't the right time yet," then turned around and went off to celebrate with Leah.

There they were in a photo, riding a Ferris wheel together. The caption: The romance of a Ferris wheel is only for the one you truly love.

I'd begged him more than once to ride it with me, and he'd always turned me down with some excuse or another. So it turned out this romance was one he'd meant for my sister all along.

The fourth retrieval, I hemorrhaged out of nowhere, my life hanging by a thread.

The doctors issued a critical-condition notice but couldn't find a single family member to sign. All eighty-nine calls I placed went unanswered.

Wrung out and shaking, I couldn't hold the pen, so I pressed my thumbprint down with everything I had left and signed for myself.

At that same moment, he was two thousand miles away, delivering Leah's dog's litter.

……

I couldn't name the feeling. I only knew a huge piece had gone hollow inside me.

I closed the page and replied to an email that was about to expire.