Chapter 2

Ethan' s priority was clear. He cradled Sarah against his chest, his large frame shielding her from the worst of the wind. He murmured comforting words into her ear, his voice a low rumble that was lost to me in the blizzard' s fury. He adjusted his grip, ensuring she was secure, her head tucked under his chin. He was the hero, the rescuer.

I was just an obstacle he had already cleared from his path.

Lying in the snow, a wave of nausea rolled through me. The pain in my head was a dull, throbbing drum, and the sharp cramps in my belly were coming faster now. A dark, warm wetness was spreading through my pants, a terrifying sensation against the biting cold. Our baby. I was losing our baby.

"Ethan," I tried to call out again, but the word was a faint, pathetic croak. My throat was tight with unshed tears and despair. He couldn't hear me. Or maybe he wouldn't.

He moved with the confidence of a man who knew mountains, his boots sinking into the deep snow with each step. He was a hundred feet away now, then two hundred. A shrinking dark spot in a world of white. He was saving her. He was leaving me to die.

My body was a landscape of pain. My ankle was a swollen, useless weight. My head felt like it had split open. But the worst agony was in my womb, a deep, wrenching grief that was both physical and absolute. This was not just my life leaking away into the snow; it was the life of our child, a child he refused to even acknowledge.

With a surge of adrenaline born from pure terror, I pushed myself up onto my elbows. The world spun violently.

"I'M PREGNANT!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my lungs with all the force I had left. "ETHAN, I HAVE THE ULTRASOUND IN MY WALLET! I WAS GOING TO TELL YOU TONIGHT!"

The wind snatched the words away, but he must have heard something. He stopped. He actually stopped and turned. For a single, heart-stopping moment, I thought he was coming back. Hope, fragile and stupid, flared in my chest.

But then Sarah stirred in his arms. She lifted her head and said something to him. I couldn't hear her words, but her tone was sharp, cutting. I saw her gesture dismissively back in my direction.

Ethan' s posture changed. He straightened up, his shoulders squaring. He shouted something back at me, the words lost in the gale, but the meaning was clear in his disgusted expression. He saw my desperate plea not as a cry for help, but as a final, pathetic attack on Sarah.

He turned away again. This time, he didn't hesitate. He continued his march down the mountain, his pace quickening.

That was the moment I knew it was over. The last ember of hope died, leaving only a hollow, freezing emptiness. The shove, the abandonment-that was cruelty born of conflict. This, his deliberate choice to believe her over me, to accept her poison and leave me to my fate after I screamed the truth at him, was a sentence. He was my judge, jury, and executioner.

I collapsed back into the snow, the fight draining out of me. The pain in my head sharpened, and my vision started to blur at the edges. The white of the snow began to mix with encroaching darkness. I could feel my body shutting down, the cold no longer a sharp bite but a heavy, numbing blanket.

Time lost all meaning. I don't know how long I lay there. The blizzard raged on, burying me slowly, a flake at a time. My thoughts drifted. I thought of my father, his quiet, steady love a distant warmth. I thought of the nursery I had started designing in my head, with soft yellows and pictures of friendly animals. I thought of the life I had so carefully built, a life that had just been shattered by the man who was supposed to be my partner in it.

He chose her. He was safe with her now, probably in a warm room, wrapping her in blankets, giving her hot tea. And I was here. The darkness at the edge of my vision closed in, swallowing the last of the light. The feeling in my limbs faded to nothing. The last thing I felt was a single, hot tear freezing on my cheek.