Love Reduced to Zero, No Need to Meet Again novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Birthday Cake
Cora finds Porter and her sister in her bed, her mother takes Daisy's side, a pregnancy notice arrives, and she dials the one number she never used; Eli says yes before she finishes and that they have never met.
The cake box was still in my hands when I shoved our bedroom door open.
He had texted at noon to say he would carry my coat and my cake up from the car, and to come home early.
Porter was in our bed with my sister Daisy.
I threw the box at them.
It hit the headboard and split, and blueberry filling slid down the wall over our wedding photo.
Porter rolled over and covered Daisy with his body before he looked at me.
He wasn't surprised. He was annoyed.
"Cora, I was drunk," he said. "Be angry with me. Leave Daisy out of it."
My head went white. I crossed the room and swung at her.
Hands caught my wrist and threw me sideways.
It was my mother. She had come early to cook my birthday dinner, and she had let herself in with her key.
My lower back hit the bedpost and I slid down to the carpet.
"What is wrong with you?" she hissed. "Daisy loves him. She can't help that."
"You've been married three years and there's no baby. The Ellsworths want an heir. She's doing you a favor, and you hit her?"
Daisy cried into Porter's chest, and he wiped her tears away with his thumb.
He didn't offer me a hand until my mother had walked Daisy out.
I got up without it.
"Nothing changes," Porter said. "You're still my wife."
"You slept with my sister in our bed. That's all you have to say?"
He sighed and kept his voice patient.
"I didn't want this either. But the family trust has an heir clause, and you haven't given me a child. Daisy is willing. I'm not asking for a divorce. So what's the problem?"
"I want a divorce."
He smiled a little. "No, you don't."
"If you leave, my father pulls the funding on your lab, and your nine people are out by Monday. Your parents won't take you in. You have nobody but me."
Then he rubbed his temples. "Stop this. I'll buy you a bigger cake tomorrow."
I twisted my wedding ring off my finger.
"I don't share a husband."
Daisy walked back in wearing one of his dress shirts, open at the collar over a neck marked by his mouth.
"Cora, I'm so sorry," she said. "It's my fault. Please don't be mad at him."
Porter's face went soft when he looked at her.
It was the face he used to have for me.
My mother came back with a mug of warm milk and put it in Daisy's hands.
"Look what you've done. She's terrified," she said to me. "Apologize to your sister and I'll forget tonight happened. Or else."
Over my mother's shoulder, Daisy smiled at me.
"Or what? You'll cut me out of the will?"
I turned to Porter. "My lawyer will send the papers."
I dropped the ring on the carpet and walked out.
On the porch my knees gave and I slid down the wall.
My back throbbed, and lower down, in my belly, something ached.
My phone buzzed with a notice from the hospital portal. Positive pregnancy test. Eight weeks. Please book a first prenatal visit.
When I was thirteen, my parents locked me in the backyard all night in winter as punishment.
The infection after it left damage, and the doctors told me I would almost certainly never carry a child.
I put my hand over my stomach.
Whatever happened next, this baby was not going to grow up in that house.
I made it down to the garage and into my car before I started shaking.
I pulled the gray wool coat off the passenger seat and wrapped it around me. I had worn that coat every winter for seven years. Porter said a paramedic left it on me the night I broke my leg.
When I reached for my seatbelt, I saw a scrap of black lace caught in the seat seam.
It wasn't mine.
My phone lit up. Daisy had sent a video of Porter kissing her.
Under it, she wrote: "Like your birthday surprise?"
Then: "He says your lab smells like disinfectant and makes him sick. He prefers my perfume."
Then: "We've done it in your bed. In your car. In your precious lab."
I screenshotted every message before she unsent them, one by one.
Porter texted: "Don't bring up divorce again. I'll let it go this time. Your gift is in the back seat. Happy birthday, Cora. Regardless."
I opened the box on the back seat.
Inside was a necklace set of deep red rubies.
I was sick on the concrete.
A lab explosion once opened my advisor's throat in front of me, and she bled out on the floor. Since then I couldn't look at red.
Porter knew that.
I dropped the box in a trash can and blocked them both.
Then I called my lawyer from the curb.
"Draw up divorce papers. Get me a full accounting of our marital assets and every contract tied to my lab. And call the dealership. I'm selling this car."
I walked down Newbury Street in my heels and bought a small cake from the first bakery I passed.
Every year Porter bought two matching blueberry cakes, one for me and one for Daisy, and called it fair.
I sat on the curb and ate frosting off the spoon, and it tasted of sugar and my own tears.
I threw the rest away.
Then I took out my wallet and found the card the Draper Biotech recruiter had pressed into my hand at my PhD defense.
Five years in my wallet. Porter said that company was beneath me.
I dialed the number on it.
It rang once.
"Cora Fairbank," a man said. "I've kept this line open for five years."
"I'll join Draper Biotech," I said. "I have conditions."
"Name them."
"My whole team comes with me. My notebooks stay mine. And Porter Ellsworth never touches my work."
"Yes," he said, before I had finished.
"That's not everything."
"It doesn't need to be. I owe you that much."
"You don't owe me anything," I said. "We've never met."
He was quiet for a moment.
"No," Eli Draper said. "We haven't."
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