Chapter 1

Three months after the car accident, Clementine hauled me home from a work party.

I was badly drunk. With distaste she yanked my tie loose, then braced a knee against the edge of the bed and started unbuttoning my shirt.

"Lewis, the doctor only said you can't have kids. He didn't say you're not a man. Why are you wrecking yourself?"

She always had a sharp tongue.

But that night, when she kissed me, the corners of her eyes were still red.

So later, when someone laughed at me for being the end of my line, she grabbed a glass and threw the drink in his face.

"Whether my man works or not is none of your damn business!"

I thought she really didn't care about a child.

Until six months later, when her belly began to swell.

I stared at that twelve-week prenatal checkup report and couldn't say a word for a long time.

Clementine, on the other hand, was perfectly calm.

She leaned back into the sofa, even in the mood to smile at me.

"Don't give me that dead man's face. Isn't this a ready-made one I got for you?"

My fingertips trembled. "Whose is it?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Does it matter? Either way, it'll be born a Matthews."

For the first time, the woman I'd loved for seven years felt like a total stranger.

Yet she reached out, hooked a finger in my belt, and slowly pulled me closer.

"Lewis, you should thank me."

"From now on, when people see the child, no one will whisper behind your back that you're a useless man."

I looked down at the hand she'd curled around my waist.

Once, if she'd touched me like this, I would have handed her my life.

This time, all I felt was dirty.

……

I lifted her hand away.

It wasn't rough, but Clementine froze for a second.

She probably hadn't expected me to pull back.

In seven years, no matter how far she went, all she had to do was burrow into my arms or crook a finger, and half my anger would drain away.

She used to laugh at me for being spineless.

"Lewis, you're stuck with me for the rest of your life."

But this time, I stood a little farther from her.

"Whose is it, really?"

The smile faded from Clementine's face.

"You really have to ask?"

"Is it too much to want to know who slept with my wife?"

She frowned.

"Don't talk so ugly."

I almost laughed.

She was carrying another man's child, and she was the one griping about how I talked.

The phone on the coffee table suddenly lit up.

Ferris Fox. Clementine's childhood friend, the one she'd grown up with.

I'd met him plenty of times.

The message was a single line.

Don't butt heads with Lewis. She can't get worked up this early in the pregnancy.

I stared at that line of text.

Clementine reached for the phone. I got there first and pinned it down.

"Ferris Fox?"

She was silent for a few seconds.

"Yeah."

The last bit of wishful thinking in my head disappeared for good.

"You slept together?"

Clementine rubbed at her brow, irritated.

"Once."

She said it very lightly.

So lightly it was as if she were telling me she'd gone out and bought a coffee.

I stood there, not moving for a long time.

Clementine got up and came over.

"Lewis, I don't have feelings for him."

"This was my idea."

"I didn't want to just find some stranger. I know Ferris inside and out, and his health is fine. He promised he'd never use the child to trouble us later."

She'd even thought it all through for me.

I asked in a low voice, "So you had your pick?"

Her expression shifted slightly.

"What?"

"Picked whoever was healthy, whoever's family had no hereditary diseases, whoever wouldn't cling to you afterward."

"Clementine, do you still think you're being rational?"

That finally got to her.

"Then what do you want me to do?"

"After your accident, do you not know what people out there were saying about you?"

"Do you have any idea what kind of state you drank yourself into?"

"Every time I heard someone say you were finished, I had to come home and pretend I hadn't heard. Lewis, it hurt me too!"

Her eyes went red.

"I just wanted all of it to end."

I looked at her.

"So you slept with Ferris."

"Yes."

"For me?"

"That's right."

That "that's right" was more sickening than if she'd just admitted to an affair.

I nodded.

"Fine."

Clementine was stunned.

"What do you mean?"

I turned and headed for the study. She chased after me and grabbed my arm.

"Lewis, don't be pigheaded. I know you can't accept it right now, but the moment the child is born, it's ours."

"He'll call you Dad, his records will be under your name, and Ferris won't ever appear."

I turned back.

"And you?"

"What?"

"When you lie next to me, are you going to think about exactly how this child in your belly came to be?"

Clementine's face went white in an instant.

I pulled her hand off me.

"Because I will!"

That night, I slept in the study.

At two in the morning, the door was pushed open.

Clementine stood in the doorway, hugging a pillow.

"The bed's cold."

In the past, all she had to say was that, and even mid-argument I would have thrown back the covers.

I glanced at her.

"Turn on the air conditioner."

She didn't move.

"Shut the door on your way out."

Clementine stared at me for a long time.

In the end she slammed the door hard.

She probably thought I was just jealous.

She didn't know I'd already been searching for divorce lawyers on my phone.