1 The private dining room was thick with the scent of roasted meat, bourbon, and the damp wool of twenty people sheltering from the early winter frost. Outside, Lake Michigan was churning under a slate-gray sky, but inside, the annual corporate retreat was well into its third round of drinks. Someone had just initiated a game of Never Have I Ever. Travis, my husband of three years and the firm’s youngest managing director, pushed his chair back from the table. “Excuse me for a second,” he murmured into the collar of his tailored jacket. “I need to take this call from the investors.” As the heavy oak door clicked shut behind him, the rotation landed on Hailey Brooks. Hailey was my best friend. We had shared twin beds in college, split the rent on a ratty walk-up in our twenties, and cried into each other’s shoulders through every heartbreak. Now, she was sitting across from me in a silk blouse the color of crushed berries, her cheeks flushed with gin. She held up five manicured fingers, lowered her lashes, and smiled. “Round one,” she purred, looking around the circle. “Never have I ever known the master security code to Mr. Hayes’s penthouse.” A chorus of low whistles echoed around the long table. “Round two,” she continued, her voice dipping lower, rich with theatrical embarrassment. “Never have I ever bought strawberry-flavored protection for someone sitting in this room.” The table erupted. Junior associates began banging their pint glasses against the wood. “No way!” someone shouted. “Brooks, you didn’t!” “And round three,” Hailey whispered, though she made sure her voice carried to every corner of the room. “Never have I ever gone twelve rounds in a single night with a certain boss.” The room practically shook with laughter and lewd cheering. Men clapped each other on the back, marveling at Travis’s supposed stamina, while the marketing girls leaned across the table, breathlessly asking Hailey when the wedding was going to be. Across from her, I quietly lowered three of my fingers. Travis and I had kept our marriage a secret since the day we signed the papers at City Hall. We lived in separate apartments to “avoid office scrutiny,” he had claimed. Every time I went to his penthouse, I had to wait in the hallway while he buzzed me in remotely. I didn’t even know the front door code. When the circle turned to me, a raw, bitter defiance clawed its way up my throat. I looked Hailey dead in the eye. “Never have I ever,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the noise, “been pregnant.” The room went dead silent. Everyone at the table put a finger down. Slowly, all eyes shifted back to Hailey. The blush on her cheeks deepened into something dark and triumphant. She gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her palm settling over her stomach. “Me too,” Hailey said softly. The room exploded into another frenzy of applause and raised glasses. “June loses! Penalty shots! Ten shots for the loser!” someone yelled. Then someone paused, laughing nervously. “Wait, June, you said you’re pregnant too? You can’t drink!” The senior accountant sitting next to me scoffed, leaning in with a conspiratorial smirk. “Oh, please, June. Don’t be ridiculous. I literally saw you buying a giant box of tampons in the lobby pharmacy this morning. Making up a pregnancy just to dodge a few shots? That’s pretty pathetic.” A ripple of mocking chuckles followed. Right. I lost. I reached out and pulled the tray of ten whiskey shots toward me. I didn’t flinch. I picked up the first glass, tossed it back, and let the burn tear down my esophagus. Then the second. The third. By the tenth glass, the room was spinning, but my hands were steady. After all, the child growing inside me wasn’t going to survive anyway. 2 Travis returned just as I set the tenth empty glass down with a dull thud. His face was an unreadable mask of corporate composure. He didn’t ask why there was a row of empty shot glasses in front of me, nor did he ask if I was alright. Instead, he walked past my empty chair and naturally settled into the vacant seat beside Hailey—the furthest possible spot from where I sat. A chorus of hushed giggles broke out. The department head raised a glass toward him. “Travis, man! Let me toast you. Congratulations, brother!” Travis frowned slightly, his sharp, dark eyes darting across the room to pin me against my seat. I knew that look intimately. It was the same icy glare he gave me whenever he thought I was stepping out of line. He assumed I had broken our agreement. He assumed I had blabbed our secret to the entire office. I didn’t look away. I stared back at him, searching the sharp contours of a face I had loved for eight long years, wondering when the man who used to hold my hair back when I was sick had turned into a stranger. A hand tugged at his sleeve. Hailey leaned her entire body against his shoulder, her voice sweet and breathless. “Everyone’s congratulating you, Travis. Come on, take a drink with me.” She lifted her glass of wine, but Travis immediately caught her wrist. His fingers were tender as he took the glass from her hands. “Not tonight,” he murmured, his tone softer than I had heard in months. “It’s not good for you. I’ll drink it for you.” He downed her glass, followed by his own bourbon. The table erupted into deafening cheers. “Look at him! What a gentleman!” someone squealed. When the dinner finally wound down and everyone spilled out into the brisk midnight air, I trailed several paces behind the group, my head pounding, my legs threatening to buckle under the weight of ten ounces of straight liquor. Travis kept a strict, deliberate distance from me. We have to avoid suspicion at the firm, he had drummed into my head for three years. Act like we barely know each other. At the curb, as the wind off the lake whipped through the bare trees, the finance director glanced back at me. “Hey, Mr. Hayes, doesn’t June live up north near your neighborhood? Could you and Hailey drop her off on your way?” Travis didn’t hesitate for a single second. “We’re not going that way.” I swayed on the pavement, clinging to the edge of a concrete pillar just to stay upright. I looked at him, my vision blurring. He looked down, actively avoiding my eyes. “It’s out of the way. Just call an Uber, June.” He opened the passenger door of his Audi, guided Hailey into the seat with a protective hand behind her back, and reached into the rear to pull out a cashmere throw blanket, carefully tucking it around her lap. That was the blanket I had bought for his car last Christmas, knowing he always kept the air conditioning blasting even in late autumn. The finance director turned to me with a sympathetic grimace. “Are you going to be okay, June? The ride-shares are taking forever tonight.” “I’m fine,” I whispered, forcing a smile that felt like cracking porcelain. “I’ll get a ride. Don’t worry about me.” “Text the group when you get home safe, okay?” I nodded, standing alone on the frozen concrete until the tail lights of the last car disappeared around the bend. Snow was beginning to fall. Fine, icy flakes that drifted down from a pitch-black sky and melted against my burning cheeks. The cold bit through my thin wool coat, settling into my ribs like a frozen fist. I unlocked my phone. The ride-share app showed a queue of 118 people. Estimated wait time: 2 hours and 38 minutes. A notification chimed on the screen. It was a text from Hailey. June, I’m so sorry. I’m pregnant. I can’t let my baby grow up without a father. My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the snow-dusted sidewalk, burying my face in my hands as the sobs tore out of me, jagged and suffocating. This was the girl who had run the last lap of the 800-meter dash beside me in college when I had an asthma attack. This was the girl who had stood between me and a frat-boy creep at a tailgate party. This was the girl who, on a freezing November morning during our sophomore year, had taken off her own jacket to tie around my waist when I bled through my jeans, shivering in her thin T-shirt the entire walk back to the dorms. Hailey Brooks was the only person in the entire world who knew that Travis and I were married. She had known everything. And she had taken him anyway. With trembling, frozen fingers, I dialed the 24-hour surgical clinic in the city. “Yes, hello,” I choked out through the cold. “I need to schedule a termination. As soon as possible. Please.” 3 It took me nearly two hours to walk back to my apartment. By the time I turned the key in the lock, my toes and fingers were entirely numb, wooden appendages attached to a hollowed-out body. I collapsed face-first onto the unmade mattress without even taking off my coat. In my feverish sleep, memories washed over me like a slow tide. I saw Travis at twenty-two, standing under the awning of a library in the rain, offering me his umbrella with a crooked, nervous smile. I saw the early days of our careers when he told me, Office romances are a liability, June. Let’s just keep us between us for now. “For now” had lasted seven years. During the day, he would criticize my slide decks in front of the entire board, cold and uncompromising. At night, in the dark of his bedroom, he would wrap his arms around my waist, burying his face in my hair, whispering, I’m sorry, baby. I have to be harder on you so no one suspects. You know I love you, right? And then he would make love to me until dawn to make up for it. Everything had shifted three years ago, on the very afternoon we signed our marriage certificate. Hailey had just gone through a brutal breakup and lost her consulting job. I felt terrible for her, so I pulled strings and begged Travis to create an opening for her on our project management team. Slowly, imperceptibly, the dynamics shifted. At first, Travis would complain: Why do you always have to invite Hailey to dinner? Then, within a year, it became: Where’s our little third wheel tonight? Did you ask Hailey if she wants to join? Maybe I had been willfully blind. Maybe I had trusted them both so blindly that I couldn’t see the foundation crumbling beneath my own feet until the entire house collapsed on top of me. A harsh buzz startled me awake. My phone screen glowed with an automated company alert: You have been marked late (30+ minutes). I scrolled through the notification bar. There were no missed calls. No texts. Not a single message from Travis asking if I had made it home in the blizzard. I splashed cold water on my face, pulled on a fresh blazer, and rushed to the downtown office. I intended to go straight to HR to request emergency personal leave, but as I stepped off the elevator, I ran directly into Travis. He stood in the hallway, crisp in a navy suit, holding a leather folder. His eyes flicked to his watch, cold and clinical. “You’re forty-five minutes late, June,” he said, loud enough for the passing interns to hear. “That’s an automatic deduction from your monthly performance bonus. We had a firm-wide dinner last night, and you’re the only one who couldn’t manage to show up on time.” I opened my mouth to speak, but before a sound could come out, the glass doors behind me swung open. Hailey walked in, carrying an iced latte, her cheeks rosy from the outdoor chill. Seeing the eyes on her, she offered a delicate, apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hayes,” Hailey said softly. “I had an early morning doctor’s appointment.” Travis’s expression softened instantly. The harshness in his voice vanished. “Just submit a doctor’s note to HR later today. It’s fine.” A couple of associates near the water cooler chuckled knowingly. “Why bother with a doctor’s note?” one whispered. “She’s practically the first lady of the firm now.” “Seriously. Talk about different rules for different people.” I stood there, the humiliation stinging like salt in an open cut. I was late because I had walked home two hours in a snowstorm after being abandoned by my own husband. She was late because of a pregnancy conceived in my bed. Something inside me snapped. For the first time in eight years, I spoke back. “Mr. Hayes,” I said, my voice ringing clear across the open floor. “If we both arrived late, why am I receiving a formal penalty while she gets a pass?” Travis turned slowly, his eyes narrowing into slits. “She has a valid medical condition. Are you pregnant too, June?” A colleague chimed in with a snicker. “Careful, June, you already tried that excuse at the bar last night.” Before I could reply, Travis’s executive assistant hurried down the corridor, breathless, and whispered something urgently into his ear. Travis’s jaw set hard. The color drained from his face. “Everyone pack your laptops,” he commanded, his voice cutting through the office chatter. “We have a structural emergency at the lakeside resort project. We’re heading to the site immediately.” He turned to leave, but paused, glancing back at Hailey with protective concern. “Not you, Hailey. The terrain is rough. Stay here.” A collective murmur of aww went through the department. “Look at him being so protective,” someone whispered. “They really are the perfect couple.” “June, what are you standing around for?” the team lead barked. “Grab the blueprints and get to the van!” 4 The lakeside resort was a multi-million-dollar Phase II development that our department had spent six months preparing. Despite Travis’s instructions, Hailey had insisted on coming anyway, riding up front in the executive SUV under the guise of “supporting the team.” When we arrived at the muddy, freezing construction site, the general contractor was already screaming. Travis stood in the makeshift site trailer, slapping a stack of structural blueprints against the folding table. His face was thunderous. “Who was in charge of the foundation load calculations on these prints?” he demanded, looking around the circle of engineers. “There’s a misplaced decimal point in the soil-bearing ratio. The foundation pour was executed on wrong specs. It’s a massive code violation.” Hailey stepped forward immediately, her eyes wide with manufactured distress. “It’s… it’s technically under my portfolio, Travis,” she stammered, biting her lip. “B-but June was the one who drafted the core data sheets.” I stared at her, the air leaving my lungs. I had built that entire portfolio from scratch. I had worked seventy-hour weeks doing every single load calculation. But last Friday, Travis had called me into his office and said, Hailey is behind on her quarterly performance metrics. Put her name as the lead on the resort project so she gets the bonus pool. The calculations were already done; all that was left was data entry into the municipal filing portal. Hailey had botched the simplest part of the job, and now she was tossing the entire disaster into my lap. “The person who drafted the file owns the mistake,” Travis said coldly, not even looking at the signatures on the cover page. “June, you stay here on site. You don’t leave until you’ve manually reconciled the raw logs and assisted the crew with the containment.” He turned to the rest of the department, his tone shifting back to executive charm. “The rest of you, pack up. We’re heading to the neighboring resort lodge. Drinks and dinner are on the company tab to celebrate the close of the quarter.” A cheer erupted. “Wait—Travis!” I stepped forward, my voice cracking. “The municipal logs take hours to verify by hand, and the concrete trucks are already—” “I gave an order, June,” he cut in, his eyes hard as flint. “Learn to take accountability.” Within ten minutes, the parking lot was empty, save for the contractor’s dirty pickup and me. I knew exactly what this was. It wasn’t about the data. It was a punishment. Travis was punishing me for speaking up at the office, for embarrassing him, for refusing to be the silent, invisible secret he wanted me to be. The site supervisor stubbed out his cigarette against a steel beam, glaring at me with open disgust. “Look, lady, your screw-up means the retaining trench needs to be reinforced with quick-dry cement bags before the freeze hits tonight.” “Where are the laborers?” I asked, looking around the deserted, half-dug trench. “Shift ended at four,” he spat. “My guys aren’t staying off the clock for an office girl’s typo. There are a thousand bags of concrete mix stacked by the generator. If you don’t move them into the trench support by morning, the whole retaining wall gives way, and your company pays the city millions.” He tossed a pair of coarse work gloves at my feet, climbed into his truck, and drove off. One thousand bags. Fifty pounds each. The winter wind howled across the frozen lake, carrying needles of sleet. I knelt in the mud, grabbed the first rough burlap sack, and hauled it against my chest. The weight sent a sharp, tearing pain straight through my lower abdomen. One. Ten. Fifty. By the three-hundredth bag, the cheap gloves had torn to shreds. My palms were raw, bleeding into the rough fabric. Three of my fingernails had snapped down to the quick. My breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps, my sweat freezing instantly against my skin under my damp coat. By the eight-hundredth bag, my hands were shaking so violently I couldn’t grip the burlap. Blood and cement dust crusted under my broken nails. I collapsed against the pallet, pulling out my phone with trembling, blackened fingers. The department group chat was buzzing with video uploads. I clicked on the latest clip. The private dining room at the luxury lodge was glowing with warm amber light. Travis was sitting with his arm draped casually across the back of Hailey’s chair, laughing as their coworkers chanted for them to drink from the same glass. Hailey was blushing, leaning into his chest, her head resting right against his lapel. A thousand bags. Fifty pounds each. A sudden, blinding rage cut through the exhaustion. I reached into the hidden zippered pocket of my leather tote bag and pulled out a small, worn leather folder. Inside was our original marriage certificate from the city clerk’s office. I had swallowed my pride for eight years. I had hidden in the shadows, eaten alone, slept alone, and carried his secrets. I was done hiding. 5 When I shoved open the heavy double doors of the private lodge banquet hall, the room fell dead silent. I was a walking nightmare. My hair was matted with frozen sweat, my face smeared with mud and gray cement dust. My coat was ripped at the seams, and dark blood was slowly dripping from my fingertips onto the hardwood floor. Travis stood at the head of the table, a crystal glass of scotch in his hand. He looked at me with immediate annoyance. “What took you so long?” someone near the front muttered. “Mr. Hayes always talks about departmental efficiency.” I ignored them. I walked straight down the center of the room, my boots leaving muddy, bloody prints on the carpet, until I stood directly across from Travis. “Travis,” I said, my voice raspy and raw. “When were you planning on telling everyone about us?” The room collectively froze. The coworkers who had been half-drunk suddenly sat up straight, smelling a scandal. I pulled the marriage certificate from my pocket and slammed it onto the table between his glass and Hailey’s plate. “We have been legally married for three years,” I said, my eyes boring into his. “How much longer were you going to pretend you don’t know me?” I expected panic. I expected him to lunge for the paper, to try and cover it up. Instead, Travis didn’t even flinch. He just looked at me with an expression of profound, weary disgust. Around the table, my coworkers didn’t look shocked—they looked at me like I was a lunatic in a circus. “June, this is getting embarrassing,” an associate named Mark said, shaking his head. “We get that you have a crush on the boss, but faking a document when he literally just made his announcement? Come on.” Mark nodded toward the massive projector screen hanging on the stone fireplace behind Travis. I turned my head. The screen was playing a continuous, high-definition slideshow. There was a professionally shot portrait of Travis and Hailey holding hands under the cherry blossoms in D.C. There was a photo of Travis on one knee on a white sand beach in Maui, holding open a velvet ring box. There was a candid picture of Travis in an apron, cooking in a sunlit kitchen. There was an oil painting of them walking hand in hand down the Champs-Élysées. And finally, a breathtaking photograph of the two of them under a canopy of stars at the Mauna Kea observatory. My knees nearly buckled. Every single one of those photos was a scene straight out of the private journal I had kept since college. The stargazing trip. The trip to Paris. The beach proposal. I had written down all of those dreams, planning to do them with Travis once our marriage was finally out in the open. Whenever I asked him, he always said, I’m too busy, June. The firm needs me. Later. He hadn’t been too busy. He just hadn’t wanted to do them with me. And the only person who had ever read that journal was Hailey. “Seriously, how shameless can you be?” a woman at the end of the table whispered loudly. “Travis just announced Hailey as his fiancée ten minutes ago. Is June seriously trying to play the side-chick victim card?” “Look at how he treats her,” another sneered. “If Travis actually cared about June, she wouldn’t be stuck as a mid-level analyst after five years. She’s delusional.” “If I were her, I’d crawl into a hole and never show my face again.” I stood there, surrounded by twenty people who viewed my entire eight-year life as a pathetic, desperate lie. I looked at Travis. He simply looked down at his watch, took another sip of his scotch, and said nothing. I turned around and walked out into the freezing night. 6 The cold wind hit me like a physical blow as I stumbled down the stone steps into the resort’s lakeside courtyard. The game was over. The three-way charade had ended, and I had lost everything. “June! Wait!” Footsteps crunched on the icy gravel behind me. I stopped beside the edge of the heated outdoor pool, which was steaming violently into the sub-zero air, a thin rim of jagged ice crusting along its stone borders. I turned around, hollow and empty. Hailey stood there, wrapped in a plush fur-trimmed coat. Her face was flushed, her breath coming in white clouds. “June, please, let me explain,” she pleaded, reaching out for my hands. “It’s not what you think! My father was forcing me into an arranged marriage with that awful developer’s son back home. Travis was just helping me put on a show so my family would back off! It was all an act, June. Please don’t be mad at me.” I stared at her, struggling to recognize the girl I had loved like a sister. “And the baby?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “Whose baby is in your stomach, Hailey?” Hailey bit her lower lip so hard a bead of red appeared. “It’s Travis’s,” she whispered. “June… I swear, I never meant for it to happen—” A hot tear spilled down my freezing cheek, tracing a line through the dried cement dust. “You never meant to sleep with my husband? You never meant to take my life? You never meant to replace me?” My voice rose to a scream, tearing my vocal cords. “You knew everything! You knew he was my husband!” I raised a trembling hand to press against my throbbing temple. Hailey grabbed my wrist, screaming loudly, “June! Stop! Don’t do this!” Then, she leaned in close. Her tearful, panicked expression vanished in an instant, replaced by a cold, venomous sneer. “You always thought you were better than me,” she whispered directly into my ear. “Top of the class. The golden girl. But look at you now, June. You lost.” Before I could process her words, Hailey gripped my arm with both hands and threw her entire body weight backward toward the pool, dragging me with her. Splash. The water was a shock of absolute terror. Hailey had been a competitive swimmer in high school; she surfaced instantly, treading water effortlessly. I had an acute, paralyzing phobia of deep water since nearly drowning in a lake at seven years old. Travis knew this better than anyone—it was the reason our master bathroom back in the city only had a standing shower. The heavy, waterlogged coat pulled me straight down. “Travis! Help me!” I screamed, swallowing a mouthful of chlorinated water. “Travis! Please!” Through the thrashing foam, I saw Travis dive into the pool. He swam with powerful, frantic strokes, heading straight toward us. For a split second, my heart leaped with the dying ember of hope. He reached me first. His hand grazed my shoulder. “Get yourself to the ladder!” he barked, his voice filled with fury. He didn’t grab my arm. He shoved past me, swimming right around my sinking body to wrap both arms securely around Hailey, hauling her toward the shallow end. The last ember died. The cold water closed over my head. My limbs felt heavy as lead, bound by an invisible anchor. I drifted downward into the blue-black abyss, watching the blurred, fractured light on the surface ripple and fade. I’m sorry, little one, I thought, letting my hand rest over my stomach. This world is too cruel anyway. You’re better off not coming. Above the water, muffled voices echoed through the concrete deck. “Oh my god! There’s someone else in the pool!” “Is anyone going to pull June out?” “Why would we jump in? She probably jumped in on purpose because she was jealous of Hailey!” “Seriously, let her cool off. Trying to ruin someone’s engagement party is sick.” A young intern’s voice broke through: “Guys, she’s not coming up… she’s sinking!” On the pool deck, Travis was frantically administering rescue breaths to Hailey. Hailey coughed, spewing a mouthful of water, and threw her arms around Travis’s neck, sobbing hysterically. “Travis! June pushed me! She tried to kill our baby!” Travis’s eyes went bloodshot with unbridled rage. He stood up, roaring across the pool deck at the hesitation of a few male coworkers who were taking off their shoes. “Don’t any of you dare touch her!” he bellowed, his voice shaking the glass windows of the lodge. “If anything happens to Hailey or my child, I will make June pay with her life!” Water rushed into my lungs. Darkness pressed against the edges of my vision. Travis Hayes, I thought as the world went black. I don’t love you anymore. Splash. A sudden, violent break in the water above. Strong arms locked around my chest, dragging my limp body upward through the crushing dark. For half a second, as my face broke the freezing air, I caught a glimpse of the sharp jawline and wide shoulders pulling me onto the stone deck. It was Travis. Why? I wondered vaguely. Did you have a shred of conscience left? Then, a piercing scream shattered the air. “Oh god! Look at her clothes!” a woman shrieked, pointing at the concrete beneath me. A bright, terrifying crimson was bleeding through the fabric of my light-colored trousers, spreading across the wet stone in a widening, horrific pool of scarlet. “That’s not normal bleeding… that’s too much blood!” “She wasn’t lying… she really is having a miscarriage!” Travis stood frozen over me, his pupils contracting into tiny pinpricks of pure horror as he looked at the blood pooling around his bare feet. The last thing I felt was two hands lifting me off the freezing ground into the air. “Call an ambulance!” Travis screamed, his voice breaking into a jagged sob. “Call an ambulance right now!”
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