Chapter 1

"I'm going to be a surrogate for Ryan."

Nicole dropped the bombshell with the same casual tone she used to announce she was picking up an extra shift at the hospital.

We were two weeks away from our wedding. Two weeks. The custom-designed invitations, the ones I'd spent a month agonizing over, were sitting in a box by the door, ready to be mailed.

"You're what?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. The clatter of the whisk I was holding echoed in our sterile, white Chicago apartment.

"It's IVF," she continued, not looking up from the medical journal she was reading. "It's not like we're sleeping together, Ethan. It's a platonic gesture. It was his father's dying wish to have a grandchild, and I owe him everything. Ryan needs this."

I stared at her, at the woman I had followed from our small Wisconsin town to this sprawling, indifferent city. The woman I had supported through every grueling year of medical school and residency, working double shifts at the restaurant to make sure she never had to worry about rent.

"And what about us?" I finally managed to say, the words feeling like gravel in my throat. "Our wedding? Our future? Our kids?"

She finally looked at me, her brilliant blue eyes devoid of any warmth. "We can postpone having kids. My career is just taking off, and this is important. It's for Ryan."

Ryan. It was always for Ryan. The son of her deceased mentor, a struggling artist who clung to Nicole like a parasite, using his father's memory as a weapon to keep her tethered to him.

A cold, heavy feeling settled in my gut. I had poured years of my life, my passion, and my loyalty into this relationship, and in one sentence, she had shown me I was nothing more than an afterthought. An obstacle.

"No," I said, the word tasting like ash. "Absolutely not."

Her face hardened. "It's not up for discussion, Ethan. I've already agreed."

The fight was brutal and short. It ended with me storming out of the apartment, the sound of her turning a page in her journal following me out the door.

I walked for hours, the city lights blurring through a haze of anger and heartbreak. When I finally collapsed onto a bench in some nameless park, I pulled out my phone. My fingers trembled as I opened Instagram.

Without thinking, I typed out a story, the words dripping with a bitterness that felt alien to me.

"Wedding in two weeks. Need a new bride. Any takers?"

I hit post. Most of my friends would see it as a dark joke. They all knew how ridiculously devoted I was to Nicole. They had no idea that devotion was a corpse I'd been carrying for years. I turned off my phone, not wanting to see the laughing emojis and sarcastic replies. I just wanted the world to be quiet.

For seven years, I had built my entire world around Nicole. I moved to Chicago for her, leaving my grandfather, my only family, behind in Wisconsin. I took a demanding job as a sous-chef in a high-end restaurant, not for my own ambition, but because the hours and pay allowed me to support her dream of becoming a surgeon. I cooked for her, cleaned for her, and loved her with everything I had.

And for what? To be told my future didn't matter as much as fulfilling a dead man's wish for his emotionally manipulative son. The pain was a physical thing, a crushing weight on my chest that made it hard to breathe. I had given everything, and I had nothing left.