The trending headline about Lillian Fox's return to the States lit up my phone screen while Joe Delgado had me pinned against the floor-to-ceiling window, my body still limp against his.
I clung to his flushed neck and tested the waters with a teasing smile. “Your college sweetheart's back in the country. Aren't you going to welcome her home?”
His rhythm faltered. He caught my earlobe between his teeth, his breath ragged. “I've got zero interest in seeing her. What I am interested in is when you're giving me a daughter.”
That look in his eyes, raw and possessive, sent a tremor straight through my chest. It also let me quietly exhale.
I thought he really had left Lillian Fox in the past.
Until the next day, when I went to pick up my medical results alone.
Outside the OB-GYN clinic, I ran into Joe Delgado.
Across the corridor, he had his arm wrapped carefully around his college sweetheart, Lillian Fox.
My five-year-old son was tugging at the hem of her dress, clinging to her like she belonged to him.
“Aunt Lillian, when do I get to be a big brother?”
Joe looked down at the slight swell of her belly and laughed softly：“Soon.”
In that moment, I knew my seven-year marriage to Joe Delgado was over. I dialed my best friend Jordan Avery. “Besides the divorce, I need you to help me dump my ten percent founding stake in Delgado Group.”
Two seconds of silence on the other end. “Sarah Henson, Delgado Group is on the rise right now. You offload that ten percent and Joe could lose absolute control of the company for good.”
My gaze went cold. “That's exactly the point. I want to drag him from the clouds straight into the dirt.”
“Are you sure about this?” Jordan sighed. “Once those shares are gone, there's no coming back for you and Joe. Ever.”
I let out a hollow laugh：“He never loved me. There was never any 'ever' to begin with.”
All I could do now was take back everything I'd ever given him before he realized what was happening.
As for the love he never gave me, the bond my own son never felt for me, I was done wanting any of it.
——
“If I can get Joe's signature on a divorce agreement, can the marriage be dissolved within a week?”
Jordan's voice pitched high on the other end of the video call. “You're getting a divorce? What about Sunny Abbott? You're not even going to fight for custody?”
Facing her bewildered stare, I managed only a bitter smile. “That father and son. I don't want either of them.”
I'd gone to the hospital today to pick up my test results. Instead, I walked into Joe holding my son's hand.
Just when my whole heart believed the two of them had come for me, Joe stepped forward and wrapped his arm around the woman walking out of the OB-GYN clinic.
My own son was calling her Aunt Lillian, his voice warm and familiar.
The woman was no stranger to me.
She was the very same Lillian Fox who had dumped Joe years ago and left him lovesick ever since.
Once Jordan confirmed everything could be handled, I hung up.
Seven more days. I just had to survive seven more days, and I could rip myself clean out of Joe Delgado's world.
With the same reckless conviction I'd had the day I threw everything away to run toward him.
........
Rain tapped against the glass in a thin, restless rhythm. I stared at the freshly printed divorce agreement on the table and thought how these seven years of marriage were nothing but a joke.
The summer before my senior year of high school, I'd been cornered by a group of lowlifes. In my most desperate moment, Joe Delgado happened to pass by and saved me.
He dropped me off at the hospital and left without a word. I asked around everywhere until a few scraps of information from the police told me he was a student at Stanford.
So when it came time to apply to colleges, I chose Stanford without a second thought.
On the first day of school, I spotted him at a welcome event.
I was gathering every ounce of courage to walk up and ask for his number when I froze mid-step. Joe was gently wiping the sweat off another girl's forehead.
I learned soon enough that Joe Delgado was Stanford's golden boy, but what he was known for even more than his looks or his grades was the way he adored his girlfriend, Lillian Fox.
He'd ride his bike across half the city just because she mentioned wanting pastries from the west side. He'd strip off his own coat in a blizzard to bundle her up because she hated the cold. He'd finish the half-eaten bowl of soup she pushed away without blinking.
I lived like a shadow that couldn't stand the light, burying my feelings so deep they'd never see the surface.
Then, after graduation, Lillian decided Joe couldn't give her the life she wanted and left to study abroad.
The day I heard the news, I was on my way to meet an arranged match my family had set up. I bought a plane ticket to Joe's city on the spot and bolted from that picture-perfect setup without looking back.
My father was livid. He swore he'd disown me, cut me off as his daughter entirely.
I didn't flinch.
Everyone deserves to go mad for love once, even if it means crashing headfirst into a wall.
The day I knocked on the door of that cramped apartment, Joe was sprawled across the couch reeking of liquor.
His stubble was a mess. His eyes were dead.
I cleaned up the vomit without a word, left a bowl of hot porridge on the nightstand, and held him together while he screamed Lillian's name like it was tearing him apart, swallowing my own heartbreak so he wouldn't hear it crack.
Slowly, quietly, my steady presence pulled him out of that wreckage.
Three months into dating, Joe proposed.
The ring was a soda-can tab. There were no witnesses. I said yes through tears anyway.
Because I believed, truly believed, that if I gave him enough of my heart, the day would come when he'd make room for me in his.
For seven years after the wedding, I swallowed my pride and begged investors on his behalf, survived countless client dinners, drank until my stomach bled, and dragged him from a nobody people sneered at into the Joe Delgado that every player in finance respected.
His attitude toward me shifted, too, from stiff politeness at the start to something that gradually softened.
He'd serve food onto my plate in front of guests, introduce me to his partners with a smile and the words "my wife."
I thought the bitter years had finally turned sweet. Until today at the hospital, when I watched him cradle Lillian Fox against his chest and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear with a tenderness I recognized. What cut even deeper was my own son, the boy I'd carried for ten months, the boy I'd nearly bled to death delivering.
Faced with his father's affair, he hadn't just kept the secret from me. He was calling her Aunt Lillian like she was family.
It hit me all at once——
These seven years of marriage were nothing but a stolen dream.
The dream was over. It was time for me to go.
Then my phone rang. Joe Delgado's name pulsed across the screen.
A name that used to taste like honey. Now all it left was revulsion.
