Too Late, Billionaire I Already Divorced You

After I got pregnant, something in me came loose.

Every single day I'd text Edwin Vance to ask whether he loved me.

The first ninety-nine times, he answered me gently.

Then came the hundredth.

This time he fired back three lines, his patience gone.

*Marie Pruitt, do you have nothing better to do?*

*The morning sickness is over, the baby's done wearing you out, so now you've moved on to wearing me out?*

*If you've got that kind of time, go look in a mirror and take a good look at that face of yours, it's about as appealing as a slab of grocery-store pork*

I froze.

A second later the messages were unsent, and a voice note popped up in their place.

"Sorry, my junior assistant sent those by mistake just now. Don't take it to heart."

Whether it was a mistake or not didn't matter anymore.

All I knew was that our marriage was finished, completely.

……

I got up and went to the hospital.

When I walked out of the procedure room, the baby, four months along, was gone.

By the time I got home, the sky had gone fully dark.

The living room lights were on, and Edwin was sitting on the couch.

He heard the door and looked up, frowning.

"Where've you been? It's this late and you can't even answer a text or a call?"

I didn't say anything.

I changed into my slippers and went to pour myself a glass of water.

He watched me, his eyes lingering on my face for a few seconds, and finally said:

"About this afternoon, I already explained it to you. My junior assistant picked up the wrong phone."

"She's already apologized to me, and I gave her a talking-to. It won't happen again."

A junior assistant, picking up her boss's private phone by mistake?

I let out a soft laugh, set the glass down, and looked at him.

Edwin is very good-looking.

I knew that from the first moment I saw him.

At thirty-three he looked better than most men his age, and even sitting on the couch in loungewear he could have stepped out of a magazine.

I used to love just looking at him. I thought I could look at him my whole life and never tire of it.

But tonight it hit me that his good looks had nothing to do with me.

Like a beautiful dress in a shop window. You stand on the other side of the glass admiring it for a long time, convinced it's yours, when you've never once held it in your hands.

"Edwin."

I spoke, and my voice came out steadier than I'd expected. "That junior assistant of yours, what's her name again?"

He paused.

"Amber Swanson. Why?"

"How long has she worked for you?"

"About six months." Then he added, "Why are you asking? Didn't I tell you it was a misunderstanding? Do you really have to keep picking at it? Can't you just pretend you didn't see it?"

Four questions in a row.

I didn't take the bait. I just kept going. "I remember when she first started, you actually mentioned her to me. You said your new assistant was useless, nothing like the sharp, get-it-done type you always liked. After that you never brought her up again. I assumed you'd fired her."

"Turns out you didn't fire her at all. And it was right around when she showed up that your overtime started running later and later, and the business trips got more and more frequent."

Edwin's brow furrowed again.

"Marie, what exactly are you trying to say?"

I gave a small smile. "I'm just stating the facts."

His frown deepened, his tone sliding back into impatience. "Marie, I know being pregnant is hard, and your moods swing. I get that. But you can't start imagining things over a few texts that got sent by mistake. It's not good for you, and it's not good for the baby."

The baby.

Those two words were a fine needle, slipping in clean and finding my heart.

How long had I been married to him?

Four years, I think.