Divorced for Being Barren, I Came Back Pregnant by His Rival novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cake Knife
Under the silver cover where the anniversary cake should be, his mother-in-law has set the divorce papers; Eliot signs at the table, cuts his own slice and walks out, and the doctor the next morning says he was never barren: someone has been dosing him.
The silver cover came off the plate, and there was no cake under it.
There was a stack of paper with a blue tab.
"Divorce," Eugenia Auchincloss said, from the head of the table. "Sign where the tab is, Eliot."
Four candles were still burning in the centerpiece, one for every year of the marriage.
Eliot Standish looked at the papers, and then at his husband.
Grayson was cutting his steak and did not look up.
"Four years," Eugenia said. "Not one pregnancy, not one scare. The doctors say you're defective, dear, and I won't have that in my son's bed."
Defective was the word she used for an omega who could not carry.
She used it at their anniversary dinner, with the good china out and the housekeeper standing by the door.
"There's a clause in the prenup," Grayson said, to his plate. "Childless after four years, the marriage ends. No settlement. It's all in there."
"You knew about the clause," Eliot said.
"Everybody knew about the clause."
Grayson finally looked up, and the face Eliot had loved for six years was smooth and tired and bored.
"Colby is expecting," he said. "Three months. I'd rather you heard it from me."
Across the table, a young omega in a cream sweater went white and stared at his lap.
That was the new fiance.
Colby Ames, twenty-three, who had sat at this table twice before as "a friend of the family."
Eliot waited to feel it.
What he felt was the cold, from the soles of his feet up, and then a clear space in his head.
He picked up the pen.
"Eliot," Colby whispered. "I didn't, I never meant..."
"I know," Eliot said. "Eat your dinner. You're eating for two."
He signed the first page, the second and the last.
Eugenia's mouth curved, a small pleased line.
Eliot slid the wedding ring off his finger and set it on the empty plate where the cake should have been.
Then he reached over and took the silver cake knife from the tray.
He cut a slice from the cake the housekeeper had carried in on a stand.
He put it on his own plate.
He ate the first bite standing up, while all of them watched.
It was lemon, his favorite, and it was dry as chalk in his mouth.
"Happy anniversary," he said.
Nobody answered him.
The box was in the hall closet where it had sat for four years, under the winter coats.
Seven black lab notebooks, the spines taped, every page dated and signed by his advisor.
Grayson had never once asked what was in them.
Eliot carried the box out the front door and down the stoop, into the cold, with nothing else in his hands.
A black car had stopped at the next house.
A man got out of the back, and the whole street changed.
It was a smell, cedar and cold smoke, and under it something warm like bread.
Eliot had not smelled another person in four years.
Streets had smelled like streets, and Grayson had smelled like his cologne.
Now his knees went soft and his pulse hit his throat.
"Standish."
A big hand closed on his elbow before he could tip over.
August VanDusen looked down at him, buzzed sandy hair, a crooked nose, a charcoal coat open over a suit.
The CEO of the company that had spent six years trying to beat Auchincloss Biotech.
The man who had sat in the second row when Grayson announced Halcyon, and clapped.
"You're shaking," August said. "Where's your coat?"
"Let go of me."
August let go at once, and held his hand up in the air.
"I can have a car take you anywhere."
"Not yours."
"Fair." The crooked mouth twitched. "If you ever want to argue chemistry with a man who reads the whole page, my door's open."
Eliot didn't answer.
He walked to the corner with the box against his chest and did not look back.
The clinic on Second Avenue opened at seven.
He was in the first chair, still in his dinner clothes, because he wanted one answer before he left the city.
"Run everything," he told the doctor. "Hormones, fertility, all of it. I want to know what's wrong with me."
The doctor took his blood and came back in ninety minutes with a tablet in her hand.
She sat down on the rolling stool.
"Mr. Standish, there is nothing wrong with you."
"Four years. No pregnancy."
"You're not infertile. Your body has been chemically suppressed for years." She turned the screen toward him. "This is a slow-release heat suppressant, a high dose, and your blood is full of it."
"I've never taken a suppressant."
"Someone gave it to you, every day, in something you swallowed."
Eliot sat very still.
Every night at ten for four years, Eugenia Auchincloss had brought him a cup of tea, herself, and watched him finish it.
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