Chapter 3: Chapter 3
Albert didn’t come home that night. I didn’t ask where he was.
I’d already seen Krista’s social media.
She’d posted a picture from a high-end baby boutique. In it, Albert was studying a crib with a look of tenderness I’d never seen him direct at me.
He’d never cared about my desire for children. Whenever I brought it up, his line was always, “We’re still young.”
I swallowed the bitterness and closed the app.
The next day, I met up with my friends and told them the wedding was off.
Albert hated ceremonies, calling them a “show for other people.” I’d practically begged him to agree to even a small wedding. Now, my friends stared at me in shock.
“After all those years of chasing him? You finally landed him, and now you’re just… done?”
Done.
It sounded so easy. It wasn’t.
Years of chasing him, only to be betrayed weeks before our wedding. But I’d finally faced the truth: this relationship had always been a one-woman show.
Albert had never once paused for me. I’d just fooled myself into thinking marriage would change him.
Then, six months ago, Krista—his mother’s supposed “savior”—reappeared, and everything fell apart.
I watched him run errands for her, bend over backwards for her, and care for her in ways I’d only ever dreamed of.
When she needed money and a baby, he offered himself up without a second thought.
I didn’t give my friends the dirty details. I just told them I’d taken a job in Seattle and would be gone for a few years. To avoid a pity party, we went to a bar and drank until midnight.
I stumbled home to find Albert had just gotten back. He caught a whiff of the alcohol on me and wrinkled his nose in disgust, instinctively taking a step back.
“Stay away from me. You reek like a drunk.”
I almost laughed. Of course. Krista was pregnant. He had to stay “pure.” I figured he was probably too high on her pregnancy hormones to smell anything else.
But I said nothing, took a shower, and got ready for bed.
As I passed the living room, I saw Albert grinning at his phone, a sweeter smile than in any of our engagement photos. I ignored him, ready to retreat to my room, but his voice stopped me cold.
“We need to talk.”
The last time he said that, he told me he was going to marry and impregnate another woman. Now that she was pregnant, what else could he possibly want?
