Sold Out: Trashing My Cheating Husband

"We can always make another baby. There's only one Del." My husband said it with his hand locked around my arm. He was hauling me toward a table.

So a doctor could take our child out of me. Three hours earlier, his childhood sweetheart had opened her wrist. Her reason for wanting to die: I'd posted my pregnancy on Instagram.

I looked up at the man who had slept beside me for three years, and something in me went quiet and cold. Later, a car would take away his ability to have children at all.

And I would be flat out in a chair on the Mediterranean, working out how to spend the million dollars I took off him. Chapter 1 I waited three hours for Callum.

Dinner sat on the table. Every dish of it cold. I'd made all of it myself. On the coffee table, the test from that afternoon. Two lines. I was pregnant.

Three years married, and there was finally a baby. Mine and Callum's. I wanted to tell him so badly I couldn't sit still. It was ten at night. He didn't pick up.

He didn't answer a single text. He always called ahead when he worked late. He hated the idea of me worrying. So what was tonight? The longer I sat there, the tighter my chest got.

In the end I called his assistant. "Trevor. Is Callum tied up?" "Mr. Vance should be at the hospital right now." Hospital. The word went through me and my ears started ringing. "Ms.

Halloway tried to kill herself," he said. "She's not stable yet. He's staying with her." Delphine Halloway. Callum's childhood sweetheart.

The woman who had decided she hated me the first time she looked at me. Trevor didn't know anything past that. I hung up and sat there another two hours. Nothing from Callum.

Not one word. At some point it started pouring outside. Lightning cracked, and the sound of it went straight through my ribs.

At one in the morning I gave up and went to Mercy General. I found her room. There were voices inside. "I almost did it.

I was so close." "Why did you save me?" Through the glass, a bandage wound thick around her left wrist. She was white as the sheet, sobbing hard enough to shake the bed.

Callum had her in his arms before she finished the sentence. Something came up in his face and nearly spilled over. I had never once been on the other end of that look.

He smoothed her hair down. Slow. Careful. His voice was soft. The way you'd talk to a child. "It's okay.

It's over now." I stood there with my hand on the door and couldn't make myself push it. My palm went to my stomach without me telling it to. There was a life in there. It cramped.

Once. Then again. "Cal. Make Vivian get rid of it. Please?" Something inside me came off its hinges. I looked up. Had she lost her mind? She had two fistfuls of his shirt.

Her whole face was wet. "Vivian did it on purpose." "She knows I can never be a mother. She knows that." "And she still posted it—" She couldn't get the rest out.

She went at the bandage on her wrist, clawing, tearing at it. "What is the point of me? I should just be dead." "Okay. I'll do it." It came out of him that fast. No pause. Nothing.

He caught her hands to stop her. His eyes were steady. Certain. It went in like a blade and turned. And turned. Until there was nothing left in me that wasn't bleeding.

I couldn't get air. I ran. That baby I had waited three years for. And his own father wanted him dead. He was still just a clot of blood. I knew that. I grieved for him anyway.

Chapter 2 I lay in bed turning over and over. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Callum's eyes. Flat. Cold. Nothing behind them.

By five in the morning I gave up, pulled a coat over my shoulders, and went out onto the balcony. We were high enough up to see Mercy General, lit all the way to the top.

All those little bright squares. Behind one of them, Delphine. And my husband. I stared long enough that my mind started drifting back.

Callum and I dated a year and had been married three. In all that time I could count the number of times I'd seen Delphine on one hand. The first was while we were still dating.

He took me to meet his friends. A private room at a restaurant, everybody talking over everybody, warm and easy. Except Delphine. Delphine sat there and sulked.

Every time our eyes met, there was something in hers I couldn't account for. For a while I told myself I was imagining it. Then I reached for a dish and she pulled it away.

I said something and she picked it apart.

I said I couldn't do spicy food, and she laughed out loud, in front of the whole table. "What are you, delicate?" The room went quiet for about a second.

Then it picked right back up, like nothing had happened. Not one person said anything. Callum didn't either. After that I knew. She just didn't like me.

On the drive home I asked about her. Callum shrugged it off. "She's spoiled. Don't take her seriously." I let it go. I wasn't happy about it.

He must have picked up on that, because I never saw her at anything of mine again. Not one dinner. Not the wedding. The second time was late one night, after we were married.

She came through our door reeking of wine and threw herself against his chest, crying. "You said you'd take care of me." "You said you'd never leave me." "Cal. What am I to you?

Tell me what I am." I stood there in my own living room and had no idea what to do with my face. Pathetic. Also, somehow, funny. I pushed until he told me.

It was the first time he'd said any of it out loud. They were sixteen. Out painting somewhere with a class. There was an accident and she went into a pond and nearly drowned.

It was cold that day. By the time they pulled her out she'd gone rigid. She lived. The cold got into her, and she can't have children. Callum took every bit of it onto himself.

He put his head in his hands. "If I'd told her no when she begged to come with me—" "If I'd noticed the second she was out of my sight—" "Then none of it happens. Right?

None of it happens." So he spent years being good to her. Smoothing things over. Handing her whatever she asked for. And he knew exactly what he was doing.

He was paying something off. He got hold of my hands. "Viv. You have to believe me. I have never done one thing behind your back.

There has never been anyone but you." I lost it that night. I don't think there's a woman alive who can sit still while her husband treats some other woman like she's made of glass.

Especially when that woman is waiting for him. We didn't speak for a long time after that. He promised me, over and over, that he'd cut her off completely.

And he started being twice as good to me. To make it up to me. To pay that off too. Six months. That's all it lasted. Six months, and he was ready to kill our child for her.

Which made me wonder what all that kindness had actually been covering. The sky went light. I walked into the study. Callum Vance was not going to be my baby's father.

I was getting a divorce. I pulled open the desk drawer looking for a pen, and my hand stopped. Underneath everything, a phone. Callum's second phone.

Chapter 3 Worth a try, I thought, and turned it on. Once the seed is planted, you can always find something in the past to water it.

That phone says everything about how much I'd trusted him. That's what let him get this comfortable. He told me once that this phone was for important clients.

There was exactly one contact in it. The photo on the thread was Delphine. Which was almost funny. I made myself read every message the two of them had ever sent.

The first one was four years old. Delphine: [Are you really going to marry her?] Callum: [Yes. It's the condition.

It's how you get to stay.] Delphine: [Then what happens to me?] Callum: [Don't worry about that. I'll take care of you for the rest of your life.] The last one was yesterday.

Delphine: [Cal, I'm in so much pain.] Delphine: [I can't talk myself into accepting that you're having a baby with another woman.] Delphine: [After I'm gone, don't think about me.

Just live.] Delphine: [Goodbye, Cal.] He never wrote back. He'd have been too busy calling her. No wonder I could never get hold of him. He was on the other line the whole time.

There was so much of it that it took me hours to reach the end. In those messages, the two of them were a couple. As close as two people get. They told each other about their days.

The good parts and the bad parts. She'd take a picture of every set of underwear she bought and send it to him. And he'd write back with an actual opinion.

I'd send him a dress and ask what he thought. Two words came back. Looks fine. I set the phone down and tipped my head back. It was the only way to keep it in.

He married me for her. Now she'd opened her wrist and he'd panicked, and he couldn't keep it up anymore. The ceiling blurred.

My mouth stretched wider and wider until it wasn't a smile at all, and the tears came anyway. Four years. I loved that man with everything I had for four years. And I was the joke.

When I could think again, I started drafting the divorce papers. The pounding started a little while later. Loud enough to shake the frame. "Vivian!

Get out here!" I half recognized the voice. Patrice Halloway. Delphine's mother. It wasn't hard to guess what she wanted. I had no intention of opening it.

I'd just gotten off the phone with building management when I heard neighbors coming out into the hall, swearing about the noise. So I opened the door.

The second she saw me, Patrice swung. She'd been carrying that one up the elevator. "You poisonous bitch!" I'd been awake all night. I was half a beat slow.

It landed full on my right cheek. The swearing in the hall stopped. Neighbors stood in their own doorways, all of them turned toward us at once.

I hit her back before she got her hand down. Harder than she'd hit me. "You— you actually hit me." Patrice had a hand over her face, staring like I'd broken a law of physics.

When she came at me again I took the paring knife off the counter and held the point of it out at her. "Delphine cutting her wrist has nothing to do with me." Turns out Patrice liked being alive.

She stopped. She hated stopping, so her mouth got louder instead. "Del saw what you posted.

That's what pushed her over the edge." "You are a nasty piece of work, Vivian." "No wonder Callum treats my Del better than he treats you!" "If it wasn't for—" "Get out." I was shaking so hard I could feel it in my jaw.

I put that blade straight out in front of me, level with her face. Every bit of color went out of her. She stepped back. Her mouth was already opening again.

Chapter 4 Building security got there in time and hauled her off. The door shut. I let go, and the paring knife hit the tile with a sound that went through my teeth.

I didn't seem to hear it. I slid down and put my head in my arms. What exactly had I done? Was I not allowed to post that I was pregnant? On my own account?

Why was every single person coming for me? And then it hit me. The thing I'd been walking straight past all night. I have never followed Delphine anywhere.

She has never followed me. My account is private. So where did she see it? Callum came home while I was in front of the mirror putting ointment on my face.

I could hear how fast he was walking. Bedroom first. He searched it. Then he pushed open the bathroom door. I was just finishing.

In the mirror, my right cheek sat swollen and high, five fingers still printed on it, clear as a stamp. His eyes were on it for one second. He didn't ask.

He didn't say a word about it. He took my arm and started pulling me out. Somewhere in the middle of it the tube of ointment came off the counter.

The hard corner of it landed on the top of my foot, and my eyes went hot. "Callum. What are you doing?" "Let go of me." He didn't hear a syllable of it.

I couldn't get loose, so I put my teeth in his arm and bit down. That worked. He threw my arm off. I got out of that room without looking back.

When I came out again I had two copies of the divorce papers, and I threw them in his face. I wasn't waiting another minute.

I wanted to be unmarried to that man before the hour was up. Callum's eyes went down to the papers on the floor. When they came back up, the cold came off him all at once.

He said it through his teeth. "Del almost died because of you. And you think you get to walk out?" "Get in the car. We're going to the hospital." "No." "Callum.

I'm carrying your child." "You can't do this to us." Something moved in his face then. He stopped grabbing at me. For one second I thought his conscience had turned over.

Then he opened his mouth. "We can always make another baby." "There's only one Del." "Be good.

Once she can handle it, you can have as many as you want." Something went through me from the knees up. My mouth pulled sideways. "Delphine's life is a life. My child's isn't