My Fiancé Had A Secret Wife Chapter 08
“I’m sorry. I killed our first child. It was me.”
He raised his hand and slapped himself across the face. Then again. Then again.
“I’m sorry. Evelyn, I’m so sorry. I’m garbage. I’m a monster—”
“Please. Give me one more chance. Let me—let me try to make this right.”
The last of the sunset came in through the window and fell on him crumpled there on the floor.
And I couldn’t help it. I remembered the first time I’d ever seen him.
In a hospital, too. In a room like this one.
He’d looked up at me with this brilliant kind of despair in his eyes, and he’d taken my hand and said:
“Dr. Hart, it’s okay. If you can’t save me, that’s okay too.”
I’d just come back from my rotation in a field hospital overseas. I still had that young doctor’s arrogance, that unshakable confidence.
I laughed and told him: “No. I’m absolutely certain I’m going to fix you.”
Except Adrian’s heart wasn’t a normal case.
The critical notifications kept coming. His numbers kept crashing. Round after round, it almost broke my confidence in the OR.
And in the middle of all of it, when I was the one about to fall apart—
—this half-dead patient of mine started telling me stupid jokes to cheer me up.
The sunset would hit his face just right, and I’d look at him and see a dying tree pushing out one impossible green leaf.
It was the light in his eyes that reminded me why I did this. He was the reason I fought that surgery through to a miracle.
The day it was finally over, we held each other for a long time.
Two vines twisted together, each one holding the other up.
After that, we skied at Aspen. We watched the sun sink into the sea from a terrace on the Amalfi Coast. On a gondola in Venice, we scratched our names into the wood where no one would find them. And we prayed for each other, side by side, in a little chapel on the water.
I really did think we might make it all the way. Grow old together. All of it.
“But right now, the only thing I can see when I look at you is you standing there watching. Watching them torture our child out of me. How am I supposed to forgive that?”
“Adrian. I really did think I’d spend my life with you.”
But the wheel of it all had already begun to turn.
Another woman’s perfume, another woman’s presence, began seeping into our lives. The fights ate through seven years of love.
The hardest night, I drove out alone to that little seaside chapel. I stood there and I asked a god who never answers, almost angry about it:
Is there any real love left in this world? Is there anything that doesn’t change?
The candles flickered. The saints didn’t say a word.
The high ones on their thrones look down at all our ugly, human wanting, and they say nothing.
I stood under that tall stained-glass window. I looked at the small pale blue card tacked to the prayer board.
“For my Vivian—may she always be safe and well. — Adrian.”
Something inside me went cold as stone.
Maybe that was the moment the whole doomed thing was finally severed. Not by me. By something older and more merciful.
So now, looking down at Adrian on his knees in front of me, my voice came out flat and steady, without a single tremor:
“The wedding is gone. The baby is gone. And I don’t love you anymore.”
“Which means we’re over.”
Really, actually over.
The two of us were never going back.
Before he could say another word, I picked up my phone and called the police.
They came quickly. They took the last one away.
After I was discharged, I hired the sharpest, coldest attorney in the city.
We put every piece of evidence in a binder and filed suit against all four of them.
The morning of the trial, the weather was beautiful.
Light poured through the tall windows of the courthouse, and none of it landed warm on the faces at the defendants’ table.
Fabrication of evidence. Aggravated assault. Conspiracy.
Charge by charge, the verdicts came down.
Adrian Ashford. Vivian Pierce. Lucas Hart. Serena Hart.
Their own boomerangs, all four of them, came flying home. They got exactly what they had earned.
As we filed out of the courtroom, Serena broke and ran toward me, sobbing.
“Evelyn, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”
“I know it doesn’t count for anything now. But I need you to know—I really did love you. You really were my best friend—”
Lucas dropped to his knees behind her.
“Evelyn, I’m sorry. I failed Mom and Dad.”
“I don’t deserve to be your brother. I’m not asking you to forgive me. Just—take care of yourself. And don’t ever trust anyone like me again.”
I stood there and let them finish.
My eyes burned. But I didn’t let a single tear fall.
I pulled my hand out of Serena’s grip and took one step back.
“Goodbye.”
“Let’s not see each other again.”
Then I turned around, walked out of the courthouse, and got into the car back to Pinecrest.
Outside the window, the city slid by frame by frame. It felt like the whole place—every old story in it—was falling behind me.
Up there, I would keep doing the work. I would keep saving lives.
I’d stand in that small circle of light under the surgical lamps and pull one life after another back from the edge.
I’d eat properly. I’d sleep. I’d live.
But I wasn’t going to spend another tear on anyone who didn’t deserve one.
From here on out—different roads. Different lives.