Cold Marriage, Burning Regret novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Past Midnight

At the penthouse Scott asks Marcella to sign a doctor's statement that she cannot conceive and stay until his birthday. She refuses, and by morning her lab account is frozen by his order.

I was folding scrubs into a duffel bag when I heard the elevator open at 11:40.

The penthouse had thirty-one windows over the lake, and I had never once felt at home behind any of them.

Scott came to the bedroom door and stood in it with his hand on the frame.

He had taken off his tie.

"You made a scene," he said.

"You put your first love in my chair."

"Lydia has been through a great deal."

"Is she pregnant?"

He didn't answer right away, and I watched him pick his words.

"Lydia is carrying the child my grandmother will name as my heir," he said.

It was not a yes.

It was close enough that I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"I have a doctor's license, Scott. Say the word. Is it yours?"

"The trust doesn't ask who fathered what. It asks who my grandmother recognizes."

"That is not what the trust says. I have read it. You gave me a copy on our wedding day."

His jaw moved.

"Then you also know what it needs before it will recognize any other child," he said.

I did know.

A physician had to certify in writing that the wife of record could not conceive.

"You want me to sign that," I said.

"You'd be signing what your own file already says. Unexplained infertility. Two years of treatment."

"My file says nobody can explain it. That is not the same as saying I can't."

"It's the same on paper."

He took a folded sheet from his jacket and laid it on the duvet beside me.

It was already typed, with a line for my name and my license number.

"Sign it, take the settlement, and be gone by Monday if you like," he said. "Stay until December first and I'll double it."

I looked at the paper.

I thought of the clinic's waiting room, the pamphlets, the way a nurse had once patted my knee and told me to be patient with my body.

I thought of Scott's form, the single page his assistant had sent, which said he was cleared and which I had never been allowed to see the lab work behind.

"Sit down," I said.

He didn't.

"You were cleared by your grandmother's doctor," I said. "Fine. Sign my line, and I'll sign yours. We'll both certify what we know."

"That isn't how it works."

"Why not?"

He looked at his watch.

It was a small thing, and he did it every time he was in this room.

"It's late," he said. "I'm not discussing my medical history at midnight."

"It's twenty to twelve."

"Marcella."

"I won't sign it," I said. "I won't say in writing that my body is the reason you have no child. You can send your lawyers."

His face did not change.

His voice, when it came, was perfectly even.

"Then you leave with what you came with," he said. "The lab runs on Ellery money. You know that."

"I know it better than you do. I wrote the grant."

"And I sign the checks."

His phone lit up on the dresser.

Lydia, said the screen.

Scott picked it up and read it, and for a moment his face changed.

I had waited three years to see that face turned toward me.

"I have to go," he said.

"It's the fifteenth," I said. "It's our anniversary."

"I know what day it is."

"Then go."

He stood another second in the doorway.

I thought he would say something.

Instead he took the folded paper off my duvet, put it back inside his jacket, and left without closing the bedroom door.

I listened to the elevator.

I zipped the duffel and did not cry.

Mara answered on the first ring, as she always did when she was on a night shift.

"Is it done?" she said. "Are you out? Tell me you left and he didn't even wave."

"I left."

"I'll leave a key under the mat. Do you want me to bring a bat?"

"I want your couch."

"It's yours until you die."

I took my laptop, my white coat, my mother's stethoscope and nothing that was his.

I left every dress he had ever chosen on its hanger.

At seven the next morning, on Mara's couch with my first coffee, I opened my email.

The top message was from St. Brendan's research office.

Your cardiac lab's funding account has been suspended, effective immediately, by order of G. Ellery.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend