He was impossibly picky about food—he'd take a few bites of restaurant meals and push the plate away. So I cooked every meal myself, rotating through recipes to keep him interested. Some nights I'd spend three or four hours in the kitchen just to perfect a single dish he loved.
Yet somehow, in the year I hadn't known about, he'd taught himself to cook. For Alice.
All that tenderness I thought belonged to me had been given to someone else long ago.
No. Maybe it had never been mine to begin with.
The gossip continued, but I walked past as if I'd heard nothing, heading straight for the front door.
A slender, pale hand blocked my path.
Alice.
She wore an obscenely short lace nightgown, the hem barely grazing the tops of her thighs. The smell clung to her—that unmistakable, nauseating musk of what had just happened upstairs—and it flooded my nostrils.
I was about to tell her to move when she produced something from behind her hand.
A pregnancy test.
Two unmistakable red lines filled my vision, and the vein at my temple began to throb.