(Sophia's POV)

Chloe stared at me.

The words just hung there between us in the corridor, and she had absolutely nothing to say to them. Her mouth opened, closed, and she looked away with the particular discomfort of someone who has asked a question they deeply regret.

"I'm sorry," she finally managed. "I didn't know."

"It's fine." I snapped on the fresh gloves. "Seven years is a long time to wait for something that isn't coming. You get used to it."

She looked at me with something I recognized as pity, and I let her have it. Pity was a useful cover. She would go home tonight and tell someone that Dr. Davis had a husband who couldn't perform, and that story would travel exactly as far as it needed to, and it would explain everything that needed explaining.

The truth was simpler and worse.

Sebastian had no problem. None whatsoever. On our wedding night, he'd sat on the edge of the bed in that enormous room in the Vance estate and told me, with the same expression he used to review quarterly earnings reports, that he had no intention of having children. Ever. He was busy. He would remain busy. He expected me to understand that and not raise the subject again.

I had understood. Or I'd told myself I had.

What I understood now, watching the memory from a distance of seven years, was that his real reason had nothing to do with being busy.

He didn't want children because he didn't want to give the woman he actually loved any reason to feel displaced.

The irony was that I had almost told him about Lily. Three separate times in the past two years, I had drafted the conversation in my head. Sebastian, there's something you should know. I have a daughter. She's four, she's healthy, she lives with Dr. Caldwell in the next city. I had gotten as far as the opening sentence twice before losing my nerve.

I was profoundly grateful for that cowardice now.

I was still standing at the nursing station when I saw him come back through the main corridor doors. He was holding a folded piece of paper-the billing receipt from Chloe's transfer, probably-and he walked past me without slowing down. His eyes moved across my face the way they might move across a wall. No recognition. No pause.

I watched him go.

He hadn't heard what I said to Chloe. Or if he had, it hadn't registered.

Either way, it didn't matter.

My shift ended at six. I drove home in the gray early light, too tired to feel much of anything, and let myself in through the front door.

I was still in the entryway, trading my shoes for slippers, when I heard footsteps on the stairs.

Sebastian came down in a fresh shirt, jacket folded over one arm. He was already dressed for the day, already somewhere else in his head. He crossed the foyer without looking at me.

I said it before I could think better of it.

"I want a divorce." My voice came out steady. "I'll give you three months to sort out the financials."

He stopped.

He turned slowly, and for a moment he just looked at me-that particular look he had, the one that evaluated without engaging. Then he adjusted his cuff link, unhurried.

"Because I took Chloe to the clinic last night?"

The word because landed like a slap. He knew. He had always known exactly what he was doing, and he had done it anyway, and now he was standing in our foyer framing it as an overreaction on my part.

I held his gaze. "Yes."

"You're serious."

"Yes."

He studied me for another moment. "If you want to fall apart at home, that's your business. But outside this house, you're still my wife. Act like it."

He wasn't apologizing. He wasn't explaining. He was telling me to manage my feelings quietly and maintain appearances, which was, when I thought about it, exactly what our entire marriage had been.

"After the divorce," I said, "that won't be my problem anymore."

Something shifted in his expression. Not softness-more like recalibration. He looked at me the way he might look at a subordinate who had unexpectedly pushed back.

"I don't have time for this right now," he said. "If you're serious, get a lawyer and have them draft an agreement."

He picked up his jacket.

"I'll have it on your desk by the end of the week," I said.

He didn't respond. He walked to the door, opened it, and left without looking back.

I stood in the foyer for a moment after the door closed.

Then I went upstairs.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the room. Seven years of small decisions-the curtains I'd chosen because they let in morning light, the lamp on the nightstand I'd found at an estate sale, the framed print on the wall that Sebastian had never once commented on. The room looked like a life. It just hadn't been one.

My phone buzzed.

I looked down at the screen. Lily's contact photo-a cartoon rabbit she'd picked herself-blinked up at me.

I pressed play on the voice message.

"Mommy." Her voice was bright and breathless, the way it always was when she had news. "Next month I get to come find you, and then we can be together all the time! Dr. Caldwell said I can bring Mr. Buttons. I already packed him."

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth.

I had been so careful. Five years of careful. And it had been worth every single day of it.

I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling until the sting behind my eyes faded.

My phone rang. Harper.

"Tell me Lily is actually coming next month," she said, before I could speak. "Because I've been looking at that kindergarten application for two weeks and I need to know if we're actually doing this."

"We're doing it."

"Okay." A pause. "Okay, good." Another pause, shorter. "Have you thought about what happens when Sebastian finds out you've been raising a daughter on your own for five years? Like, when that eventually comes out?"

I almost laughed. "He won't care."

"Sophia-"

"Harper. He just told me to get a lawyer and draft the divorce agreement myself. He didn't even ask why." I pulled my knees up and leaned against the headboard. "A man who can barely be bothered to process his own divorce isn't going to have a breakdown over a child he never knew about."

Harper was quiet for a moment. "You're probably right," she said finally. "Which is somehow the saddest thing you've said all week."

After we hung up, I sat with the silence for a while.

I thought about the first year of our marriage, how I'd spent months quietly wondering if something was wrong with me. Sebastian used contraception consistently, methodically, without discussion. I'd overheard Martha talking to one of the other staff members once-something about how Sebastian had turned down every match the Vance family had arranged for him over the years, and how he'd apparently told someone he didn't intend to have children. The rumor had circulated in those circles for long enough that people accepted it as fact. Combined with seven years of a childless marriage, the conclusion seemed obvious.

I had believed it for a while. It had even been a relief, in a strange way-it meant his coldness wasn't about me specifically. It was just how he was.

Except that it wasn't how he was. I knew that now. There was nothing wrong with Sebastian, biologically or otherwise. He had simply made a choice, and that choice had nothing to do with ambition or temperament.

It had to do with Chloe Davis.

I thought about the way he'd sat down beside her bed last night. The way his entire posture had changed. Seven years of watching him move through a room like the temperature had been set precisely to his preference, and in thirty seconds in that hospital bay, I had seen something I hadn't known he was capable of.

He had been afraid for her.

I turned off the lamp and lay back in the dark.

I did not let myself finish that thought.