The Heart That Turned Cold

The man who had paid to humiliate me that night was met with every bit of resistance I had left.

It was useless. By the time it was over, I had been beaten badly enough to be dumped at the hospital and left there.

Relying on sheer willpower, I escaped from the ward. And then I ran straight into my four-month-pregnant wife, Yvonne Kingsley.

She was lying in the arms of her college classmate, Zachary Gray, her face flushed with bashful sweetness. And this was the same woman who claimed she was frigid.

But what hit me like a sledgehammer was the casual conversation her best friends were having.

"A shame she has to terminate it. She'd be stoked if it were Zach's!"

"She thought her simp of a husband really got the vasectomy. The moment she found out she was pregnant, she bought out ten years' worth of mother-and-baby products from the mall."

"And she even booked family photos all the way up to the next ten years."

"Who would've thought her idiot husband still had a trick up his sleeve?"

I was shaking in the shadows. Though my body was battered, bruised, and covered in wounds, physical pain was nothing compared to the agony my soul was going through.

I prayed my eyes were wrong. I prayed my ears had misheard, but they had not.

The woman lying in Zachary's arms was my wife of seven years.

I heard every single word of that conversation. To them, it sounded no more interesting than discussing a grocery list. But every word pierced straight through me.

I had already been crumbling. Now, I was collapsing completely.

For seven years we were married. For seven years, she had never once initiated a hug. Even when I accidentally touched her, she would react with disgust, as if the vilest creature in the world had kissed her.

The old me believed she was frigid when she told me. I knew better after this scene. It was just another one of her lies.

Yvonne raised her head and looked at Zachary with a tenderness and dependence I had never seen before.

"We'll have our own child once I'm better, Zach. I'm not keeping anything related to Geronimo. He lied to me and ruined my chance of having your baby. I'll never forgive him."

I recognized that impatience and disgust in her eyes. It was the same look she had given me every day for the last seven years.

My heart was torn to shreds, but the pain gifted my mind a level of clarity it never had before. This was what it meant to look at someone like they were trash.

I had spent the last seven years lying to myself. What an idiot I had been.

When the nurse called for her, that woman walked forward with determination in her steps. "I'm going in. I'm not taking any chances. Not when that man's child might still be inside me."

A heartbroken Zachary kissed the top of her head. "I'll wait for you. Be brave."

She had just dismissed what might have been my unborn child like it meant nothing. That wordless cruelty poisoned the last of my hope, shriveling it up until nothing remained.