Pregnant for His Lover's Cure, I Sent Him a Jar and Divorce Papers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Jar
At Gavin's birthday party Camille sends a dark glass jar and her signed divorce papers to the stage, then walks out; at the gate his half-brother says the induction is booked.
At nine that night a waiter carried a dark glass jar across Gavin's birthday party.
He set it on the head table in front of Gavin.
Two hundred guests were watching him get ready for his toast.
I watched from the staircase, thirty weeks pregnant, in the white linen dress he had chosen for me.
He had stopped the band twice that evening to ask if I wanted to sit, and he had carried my shoes upstairs himself.
The jar had come from me.
Three nights earlier I had walked past Gavin's study with a glass of milk and heard my own name through the door.
"Camille only has to get through the delivery," Gavin said.
He had his phone on speaker, and the voice that answered him was warm and breathless.
"Is she suspicious?"
"She believes everything I tell her. Once the cord blood is banked, Bianca, it's yours."
Bianca is my sister.
She was adopted when I was four, and in my family that meant she got the first slice of every cake.
I stood in the hallway with the milk going warm in my hand.
Then I took my phone out of my robe pocket and pressed record.
"You're sure it will work?" Bianca asked.
"The clinic says a newborn's cord blood is your best chance. Two more months. Then I'm yours and nobody has to pretend."
I listened to all of it.
The next morning Gavin brought me strawberries in bed and kissed my belly.
"The clinic is sending papers about the baby's future," he said. "Just sign where they flag it. Don't read them, you'll only worry."
I smiled at him, and I signed the divorce papers that afternoon at my lawyer's office, with my coat on, while he was in a board meeting.
I told no one else for three days.
At the party, Bianca arrived at seven in a pale silk dress with a box of strawberries for me.
She hugged me for a long time.
"I'm so proud of you," she whispered. "You're glowing, Cam."
Forty people were standing in the front hall.
She took the glass elevator up to the terrace and leaned on the rail, gasping.
An hour later I saw her coming down the back stairs from the guest wing, two at a time, one hand on the banister and a glass of champagne in the other.
She saw me and slowed to a limp.
I told myself I had imagined it.
At eight-forty I asked the head caterer to carry the jar to Gavin's table at the moment he stood to speak.
She asked no questions.
Now Gavin lifted the lid.
The ring was on top.
Under it were the clinic pages, cut into strips.
Under those were my divorce papers, signed and rolled tight with a ribbon of hospital blue.
He read them standing at the microphone.
I watched his face go through three things.
First he was confused.
Then he found me on the staircase.
Then he smiled, the same warm smile he had used on me for two years, and it did not reach his eyes at all.
"My wife is a little tired tonight," he said into the microphone. "The hormones, you know. Thank you all for coming."
A few people laughed.
Bianca stood up beside him and put a hand on his sleeve.
"Cam," she called, soft, across the whole room. "Sweetheart, whatever you heard, you've got it wrong."
The room turned and looked at me.
I had thought about this moment for three days, and I had pictured myself shaking.
I wasn't.
I put my hand on my belly, where she was kicking, and decided.
So I walked out.
I went down the stairs one at a time.
Two hundred people stepped aside to let me through, and nobody said a word.
Gavin's voice followed me down the hall.
"Camille. The baby is mine. You signed for her, and you will not take her anywhere."
He was shouting it now, and he never shouted.
I kept walking.
The front door was open and the night was cold off the ocean.
At the end of the drive the iron gate was still closed.
A black car sat idling across from it with its headlights off.
A man got out and walked up to me, tall, in a grey sweater and no coat.
I had met him once, at my wedding.
Declan Maddox, Gavin's half-brother, the one nobody in that family ever mentioned.
"Camille," he said. "Don't go back inside. Gavin has booked your induction for four weeks from tonight, at the clinic, with his name on the order."
He opened the car door.
"I'll show you the order on the way."
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