Jillian's POV
But then, I was crushed by disappointment.
Ethan’s eyes were glued to Howard’s phone screen. Light from the display kept flashing across his face. He looked like a cat that had spotted a fish; his Adam’s apple bobbed with eager hunger.
After loving him for eight years, I had never seen him like this. If the woman on that screen were standing right there, he wouldn’t hesitate and immediately pounce on her.
As Howard swiped through the photos, Ethan’s mouth curved higher and higher. He clearly liked what he saw.
After a long, deliberate scroll, he stopped on one picture and said, casual and satisfied, “This one. That’ll do. She looks good.”
“You’ve got an eye, Ethan!” Howard crowed. “This one’s a tough prize. She's hard to get. I’ll call her over right now.”
The men’s leering laughter cut into me, and Ethan’s laugh was the loudest of all.
My heart fell completely into a dark pit.
Humiliated and trembling, I ran to the bathroom and vomited until I retched. I clutched my abdomen and thought of the twins growing inside me, and for a moment, I didn’t know what to do. These were the children I’d waited eight years for. Because of my PCOS, getting pregnant was harder for me than for most women. But Ethan’s mother had made it clear over and over that if I couldn’t have a child, I didn’t belong in their family.
So, for his sake, I had seen specialist after specialist and taken bitter medicines. Finally, my perseverance paid off, and I was pregnant. When the doctor told me it was twins, I was over the moon. But that joy lasted only an hour before Ethan crushed it.
I fixed my face, wiped my swollen eyes, and waited outside the bar for a ride. Then I saw him come out, walking fast, eyes already locked on someone.
Seeing that, I canceled my ride with my heart racing, thinking maybe the conversation I’d overheard had been a cruel joke. Maybe he still loved me and would come running to me now.
I took the pregnancy test from my bag and hurried toward him. “Honey!” I called.
But he didn’t hear. His attention was on a small-waisted, high-hipped girl who had just appeared.
I raised my hand to wave, but it immediately froze mid-air. Then a gust of wind sent the pregnancy paper fluttering right in front of Ethan.
Yet he didn’t even glance at it. He just brushed it aside with his foot, letting it fall to the pavement.
Then Ethan stepped forward, deliberately placing his shoe on the paper as he bowed to the girl with an exaggeratedly polite flourish. “Dulce!” he shouted.
She bobbed her head and cooed, “Ethan!”
Her voice matched her name: sugary, flirtatious, instantly endearing.
They smiled at each other like old friends and slipped arms together, possessive and familiar.
So this was the hard-to-get girl Howard had bragged about. Whether she was truly aloof didn’t matter.
The sight of Ethan pressing my pregnancy paper under his shoe felt like him stepping on my heart. The pain took my breath away.
I melted back into the shadows and watched the look on his face—awestruck and enchanted. His gaze lingered on Dulce Vance with restrained appetite. Their shadows on the pavement merged close together, looking very intimate. We were only three meters apart, but it might as well have been galaxies.
I couldn’t let it go, so I called him.
But when he pulled out his phone and saw it was me, he impatiently cut the call.
I called again, and this time, he snapped, “I’m still with a client. Don’t bother me.”
“I need to tell you something—”
But before I could finish, he had already hung up on me. Then, with his face soft and gentlemanly, he led Dulce back into the bar.
From the back, they looked perfect for each other, while the pregnancy test lay torn on the ground under his foot, crushed and split. A single sheet of paper was discarded like me.
In sorrow, I ripped the pregnancy results into pieces and walked away feeling empty, as if someone had taken all the color from my life. The cicadas droned in the summer heat, but I felt ice running through my veins.
Without thinking, I found myself at the hospital entrance, slumping onto a bench with my thoughts in a tangle. I had already begun to decide to terminate the pregnancy when my phone rang, and it was Howard.
