How am I supposed to know how to hold back?
Everything that made me shine, I earned on my own.
Since when did making myself stronger become a crime?
Cara looked down at the son she'd just set back in the crib.
"I'm starting to regret this now."
"Pushing him this hard, he really might die..."
Her friend shot her a look.
"What you should be doing right now is telling him you gave him a son. Then he won't get desperate enough to end it."
"The way you look so guilty about it, don't tell me the baby isn't Rhys's..."
Then the friend caught what she'd just said, and froze.
"Wait, wait. Is the baby really not Rhys's?"
I froze too, my whole body locking rigid like a statue, as if I'd been struck by lightning.
"What the hell? The baby isn't his?"
Something uneasy surfaced in Cara's eyes, but in the end she nodded.
"Holy shit. Are you out of your mind?"
"That baby is Rhys's whole world!"
"Don't forget how much he cared about this child the day you found out you were pregnant."
"You, oh you. You really are..."
"Don't tell me it's Tristan's?"
"Jesus. If Rhys finds out, he'll kill both of you."
The sudden words left everyone in the room stunned.
I glared at that door, eyes wide, the fury in my chest refusing to cool.
"You, when did you and Tristan sleep together?"
Cara said nothing. She lifted the hem of her shirt to show her friend.
Below her chest, her name and Tristan's were tattooed together.
Through the gap in the door, I saw it with my own eyes.
In that moment, it was like a knife going through me.
"I don't even know why I fell for Tristan. Maybe it was that one afternoon when he handed me a warm handkerchief. Maybe it was that his situation made me pity him."
"While Rhys was away on a business trip, the two of us got together."
"That was the happiest, the most joyful time of my whole life."
"We shut ourselves in a hotel for three days and three nights and never left, and marked each other with the tattoos of our love."
"After Rhys came back, every time we slept together I kept my top on, so he never knew our secret."
"One time we nearly got caught. My mother-in-law was the one who covered for me and Tristan."
The friends couldn't bear it, feeling this was too unfair to me.
The whole ward went silent. Nobody said a word.
Because it was all too explosive, too sordid, the kind of thing you'd only see in a movie.
And when I learned that my mother knew they'd betrayed me and cheated on me, and covered for them anyway, my legs nearly gave out under me.
I braced hard against the wall, and the soles of my feet went ice cold.
Everyone said Tristan was pitiful, that I should give in to him more.
But where was he pitiful? He stole my mother's love, and he'd cheated with my wife and fathered a bastard child.
I lost my job because he used the threat of suicide to make my mother and my wife frame me for cooking the books.
When the fish farm was doing well, he used his depression to force them to poison my fish.
My fingertips dug into my own flesh, and blood welled up, ran across my palm, and dripped to the floor.
I didn't know how I was supposed to clean up what was left.
Not only were my savings gone, I still owed my workers their wages, and the buyers were blowing up my phone, pressing me to deliver.
If I couldn't deliver, I'd have to refund them. But I had almost no money left.
What scared me most was that if I couldn't pay, they'd wreck my reputation all over again.
Once word got out, I'd never claw my way back.
Watching the same numbers call again and again, I finally swallowed the grief and walked out to answer.
"Rhys, do you actually have the stock to deliver on time or not?"
"If not, then refund us our money."
