The Plastic Lullaby

When I passed out on the bathroom floor from a raging fever, my multimillionaire lawyer husband was accompanying his pregnant exfiancée to her prenatal checkup.

On the day I went alone to the cemetery to visit my mother's grave, he was in a hospital delivery room, gripping his exfiancée's hand and praying. "You and the baby both need to be okay." That day, she and her baby were perfectly safe.

My abortion was on that exact same day. Chapter 1 Pierce smelled of alcohol, his lips trailing lazily over mine. My cheeks burned.

One hand instinctively hovered over my stomach as I tilted my head, trying to dodge him. He noticed.

His grip tightened, pulling me flush against his chest. "Why are you hiding?" he murmured, his voice rough.

I pressed my lips together, dropping a hint. "Turn off the light first." Only the lamp on his side of the nightstand cast a warm glow across the room.

Right next to it sat the ultrasound photo I had deliberately left out. I was pregnant. I wanted to tell him tonight.

But before he could notice it, his phone buzzed, shattering the quiet. Usually, he'd just grab it and hit decline without looking.

But tonight, his arm froze in midair, hovering right above my ultrasound. A name flashed on the screen—Celine.

Celine, Pierce’s high school sweetheart, the woman who had almost worn his engagement ring.

His hold on me loosened instinctively. "I need to take this." The bedroom door clicked shut. I stared blankly at the ceiling.

It wasn't like he never got calls when we were together, but he always answered them right in front of me. Celine was the exception.

A long time passed before the door swung open again. He brought the sharp scent of tobacco with him, leaning down to capture my lips.

Remembering the baby in my belly, I jerked my head away. His kiss landed on the corner of my mouth instead.

He frowned, pulling back. "You're acting weird tonight." Then, he turned and headed straight for his closet. "An emergency came up with a case.

Go to sleep, don't wait up." Right before he walked out, he suddenly leaned close again. "Do I still smell like smoke?" I froze.

He knitted his brows, muttering to himself, "I heard pregnant women shouldn't be around secondhand smoke." My pulse spiked. I thought he knew.

But then he stood up straight, ruffling my hair. "Why am I telling you this? It's not like you're pregnant." He walked out of the bedroom without looking back.

I sat there, paralyzed, my eyes glued to the ultrasound on the nightstand. If I wasn't the pregnant one he was talking about, who was? Later, the pieces finally clicked.

The pregnant woman was Celine. After Pierce left, I grabbed my phone and dialed my best friend, Quinn.

I needed to tell her about the baby. "I need to tell you something, but don't freak out." She cut me off immediately. "I'm going to tell you three things, and you don't freak out.

Celine got divorced. Celine is back in town. Celine is pregnant." Those three sentences hit like cinder blocks thrown into a glassstill lake. Shattering everything.

The roaring in my ears drowned out all other sound.

I gripped the phone, the silence stretching out for a suffocating halfminute. "I see," I managed to choke out. "What were you going to tell me?" she asked.

I made up the first excuse I could think of. "Just that I'm craving a latenight cheeseburger from that diner downtown." Suddenly, I didn't want to tell anyone at all.

I'd had a crush on Pierce since high school, and we ended up going to the same college. We only texted occasionally back then.

Then, right before graduation, he crashed a frat party we were throwing. He sat alone in the corner, downing straight bourbon, his eyes bloodshot, not saying a single word.

I ended up dragging his completely wasted self back to his apartment.

He was hammered, but a sliver of him was still lucid. "Cleo?" "It's me, Pierce." He looked at me and slurred, "Let's give this a try." At the time, I thought my years of longing had finally paid off.

It wasn't until much later that I found out that day was a special anniversary for him. Pierce told me not to wait up, and he was right. I didn't see him for the rest of the night.

Instead, my phone lit up with a new Instagram notification. A follow request from Celine. Chapter 2 I accepted the request. She didn't message me.

Instead, she posted a new Instagram story—a fullbody mirror selfie. [Thank you for helping me organize my new place so late. Here's to new beginnings.

A new me, and you.] In the photo, her hand rested gently on her stomach, a faint bump already visible. But what stabbed my eyes was the reflection in the mirror—half of a man's arm.

And on that wrist gleamed the watch I had given Pierce for our first wedding anniversary. I checked the time. It was 12:43 AM.

Pierce was busy setting up a new apartment for his high school sweetheart. Right when I was ready to tell him we were expecting a baby.

He had driven through the night to be with Celine. Hilarious. When I first graduated, I was broke, renting a studio in a sketchy, rundown neighborhood.

Pierce and I had just started dating, and I was too terrified of being a burden to ask for help. I hauled every single box myself.

One night, a methedout homeless man started hammering on my door. A violent shiver racked my body as I dialed Pierce's number.

The second I heard his voice, all my pentup terror snapped. I sobbed so hard I couldn't breathe.

Once he figured out what was happening, he called the cops for me, and then he showed up. I didn't find out until the next day that he had an important trial prep in another state.

He had sped across state lines for three hours through the dead of night just to get to me.

I fretted over his work, but he just simmered with anger that I had rented somewhere so dangerous.

He immediately started apartment hunting for me, moved me into a secure, gated complex, and fronted a whole year's rent. My throat went tight.

My eyes were red as I mumbled, "Thank you.

I'll pay you back." He let out a scoff of disbelief, yanking me hard against his chest. "Cleo, I'm your fucking boyfriend." I thought that was a privilege reserved only for the girlfriend.

And now. Celine probably posted that just for me to see. I gave her exactly what she wanted. I doubletapped the photo. Pierce never came home. I eventually passed out in a daze.

When I woke up for work the next morning, I saw a text from him. [It got too late last night. Didn't want to wake you, so I crashed elsewhere. Heading straight to the firm today.

I'll pick you up for dinner tonight.] I typed and deleted, typed and deleted. I wanted to ask if he knew about Celine. I wanted to ask if he was with her last night.

I wanted to tell him, You're going to be a father. But I couldn't hit send. My jaw locked.

I figured, no matter what, Pierce should be the one to tell me these things himself. [Sounds good.] Right as I was getting ready to clock out, Quinn called, dragging me to IKEA with her. "Pierce is picking me up for dinner later," I warned her. "At least he has some shred of a conscience and didn't run straight to Celine like a lapdog." I didn't say a word.

The second I hung up with her, my phone rang. It was Pierce. "Sorry, Cleo. I have to wine and dine a client tonight.

Gotta raincheck on dinner." I dropped my gaze. "Okay." I ended up at IKEA with Quinn.

She was on a mission to find a kid's desk for her niece, so I wandered off down the aisles by myself. I rounded a corner. "Pierce, I don't want to change.

These flats completely ruin my outfit…" I stopped dead in my tracks. Celine was standing right there. And the man standing in front of her was Pierce.

The same Pierce who just told me he was working late with a client. Chapter 3 Pierce held a pair of soft, flat slippers.

Completely ignoring the stares of the people around them, he dropped to one knee in front of Celine.

With a grip that was both firm and gentle, he held her ankle and slipped off those redbottom stilettos. "You shouldn't be walking in heels for too long while you're pregnant." Celine murmured her protests, but she still obediently let Pierce swap her stilettos for the flats, a sickly sweet smile plastered across her face.

A few white housewives pushing their carts threw envious glances their way, whispering about what a considerate husband he was. "Pierce, you're going to be such a good father." Pierce paused, lost in some thought, before a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Yeah." A phantom blade twisted under my ribs.

I had said those exact words to Pierce once. Back when he first decided he wanted a baby with me, I had rambled incoherently about how we should decorate the nursery.

Pierce had pinched my cheek in exasperation. "If you try explaining it to an interior designer like that, nine out of ten will go insane." But a few days later, he handed me a set of drafted blueprints.

He had taken every single one of my scattered, messy ideas and pieced them together into a perfect sanctuary for a child.

My eyes had burned, my chest expanding tight enough to crack my sternum.

I had looked at him, dead serious, and praised him. "Pierce, you're going to be such a good father." He hadn't replied back then.

And now, here he was, confirming he'd be a good father to her child. My feet needed to move. I needed to leave.

If I stepped out and confronted them, the only one looking pathetic would be me, not Celine.

But Celine spotted me. "Cleo?!" Her eyes lit up as if she had just bumped into a longlost best friend, and she hurried toward me.

Pierce’s hand shot out to steady her waist. "Slow down," he warned, terrified she might trip. I was the pathetic one. Celine grabbed my hand, insisting on catching up.

My blood boiled. Pierce had lied straight to my face, yet he stood there meeting my gaze without a single flinch.

If he had shown even a flicker of guilt or panic, it would have been something. It would have proved that I wasn't entirely insignificant to him. I yanked my hand back.

I didn't use much force; I just wanted my skin away from hers. But the second I pulled away, Celine staggered dramatically in her flat slippers. Pierce caught her instantly.

He shot me a dark glare. "Cleo, Celine is pregnant." Whose fault was this? A harsh burn clawed up the back of my throat.

I clenched my fists, my nails digging so deep into my palms the skin turned white. I swallowed back the wet heat threatening my eyes, forcing it down with sheer willpower.

I refused to look like a broken mess in front of them. I forced my lips into a razorthin smile. "My mistake. I apologize.

Are we good here, Pierce?" It flashed me back to my very first job, when I was being brutally bullied by my coworkers.

At the time, we were prepping a multimilliondollar M&A pitch deck, but just two days before, someone found a massive glaring error in the financial data.

To save his own skin, the department head teamed up with the senior staff and pinned the entire disaster on me. I stated, over and over, that I hadn't touched those numbers.

But from upper management down to the junior associates, no one believed me. I was the designated scapegoat. I was suffocating under the injustice, but I was stubborn.

I refused to shed a single tear in front of any of them. It wasn't until I met up with Pierce later.

He took one look at my face and asked, "What's wrong?" If no one had asked, I probably would have buried it inside me for the rest of my life.

But the second Pierce asked, the dam broke. I sobbed, choking on my words as I babbled incoherently about the pitch deck.

Pierce just sat there, listening patiently, before wiping the tears from my cheeks. "Stop crying.

I'll never let anyone wrong you." A few months later, that same company was busted by the IRS for severe tax fraud.

Facing astronomical fines, they went straight into bankruptcy liquidation.

I found out much later that Pierce had quietly gathered the evidence and submitted an anonymous tip to the IRS.

Chapter 4 The memory snapped something in my chest, and the tears I’d been fighting so hard finally spilled over. It wasn't the humiliation of the moment that broke me.

I just couldn't process how easily someone could flip their entire script. He was the one who swore he'd never let anyone hurt me. And now?

I believed his sincerity back then, but sincerity was the most fleeting thing in the world.

Seeing the tears trace down my cheeks, the color finally drained from Pierce’s face, cracking his composure.

He dropped Celine’s hand and stepped forward to reach for me. "Cleo, I was just—" I jerked a step back, hiding my hands behind my back.

My skin crawled at the thought of his touch. "Don't touch me," I said. Pierce’s hand froze midair.

Celine threw me a look, then smoothly reached out, pressing his suspended hand down. "Cleo, I'm just Pierce's client now. I hired him to handle my divorce.

I just moved into a new place and needed furniture, so I asked him to help out." She paused, her voice dripping with careful consideration. "If this upsets you, if you think this is inappropriate, then Pierce and I can stop here for today.

Pierce, I’ll grab an Uber back. You take Cleo home.

Explain things to her properly, and don't lose your temper." Celine turned on her heel and walked away, her posture impeccably graceful. She was playing a brilliant game.

The accommodating, understanding victim always triggered a man's protective instincts. The one who stayed behind demanding answers was just the crazy, unreasonable wife.

Back at the apartment, Pierce shoved his phone in my face. "Celine is strictly a client. I haven't even added her on Instagram.

There is absolutely nothing going on between us." The exhaustion hit me deep in my bones. I had zero desire to look at his screen. I didn't scream, I didn't throw things.

I just shut down and ignored him. But he was the one who lost it. After I gave him the silent treatment all evening, his patience snapped.

He gritted his teeth, marching into the bedroom and yanking the duvet off my body. "Cleo, how long are you going to throw this tantrum?" He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "Celine literally left today just because she was afraid of upsetting you.

She’s pregnant, and she still stepped aside for you. Tell me, what exactly do you want me to do to make you happy?" My skin was burning, the room spinning around me.

Yet, a dry, bitter laugh clawed at my throat