I Believed His Noble Excuse For IVF, Only To Uncover His Secret Affair Chapter 03

I Believed His Noble Excuse For IVF, Only To Uncover His Secret Affair Chapter 03

Julian took a phone call on our wedding night and left.

I had assumed that whatever else happened, he’d show up on time the next day and come home with me for the reception.

What came instead was a cold message.

He asked me, like it was nothing, to push the reception back.

And his reason was that Kath was dying, and he couldn’t wait to make her final wish come true: seeing three generations under one roof.

It was absurd.

He had walked out on his wife on their wedding night and ignored a reception we had locked in six months earlier.

He was constantly with another woman, planning to have a child with her, and somehow expected me to accept it as perfectly normal.

For my parents’ sake, I had let myself imagine that if he pulled back from the IVF and drove through the night, we might still have something.

Instead, he never answered, and then he said all of that on a video call.

That was the moment it died in me.

After the three days were over, I went back to Chicago.

I got to my own front door and heard laughing inside.

Kath was in a wheelchair, and Ruby and Julian were making her laugh. A photo of that moment would have looked like a warm family portrait.

“Elena, you’re back?”

Ruby noticed first and came bouncing over to greet me, and Julian caught her wrist.

He scolded her without meaning it. “You’re about to be a mother and you’re still bouncing around like a kid.”

“I haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

She stuck her tongue out, and her face went pink. “Stop treating me like a child. Elena’s going to laugh at me.”

I stood there without any expression and watched the two of them act like I wasn’t even there.

“Lena, give me a chance to take care of you. Let me spoil you like a kid for the rest of your life.”

The promise was still in my ears, and the person being spoiled like a kid had been swapped out.

Ruby reached to take my arm, and I stepped aside.

Her face went awkward, and something wounded came up in her eyes, and Julian’s temper caught immediately.

“Ruby thinks of you as a sister. Is this how you treat her? Where are your manners?”

I met his eyes, honestly surprised. “When did my mother have a second daughter without telling me?”

His brows pulled together, and before he could speak, Kath laughed warmly. “Elena, isn’t it? Look how beautiful you’ve gotten. I haven’t seen you since you graduated high school.”

She took Ruby’s hand and then pulled mine over to it. “Ruby’s carrying Julian’s baby now, and I’m getting old, so from here on the two of them are going to be your responsibility.”

She went on and on with instructions like she was reading out a will, and it had Ruby and Julian tearing up.

When I didn’t react, Kath switched to blaming herself. “Elena resents me. I know she does.”

“It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t wanted to hold a grandchild before I die, Julian and Ruby would never have done the IVF. I should never have brought it up. I…”

She lost her breath, put a hand to her chest, and started coughing, and Julian rubbed her back while glaring at me.

“She’s this sick and you’re still standing there being difficult? Do you have a conscience?”

“Tell her right now that you’ll take good care of Ruby and the baby!”

“And the doctor says she’ll do better recovering at home, so I’m bringing her here to live with us. Hiring an aide is expensive and I don’t trust them anyway, so quit your job and take care of the two of them for a while.”

I stared at the man in front of me, the one I had loved for ten years, and he had never been so foreign to me.

It was as if something had eaten through his reason. The man who used to argue everything on its merits was now selfish and stupid.

“No.”

I said it flatly because arguing with somebody like that was a waste of time. “If you want to quit, quit. I’m not giving up my career for any person or any reason.”

“And this is my house. I bought it before we married, so it’s separate property. You moved people in without asking me, and I could call the police over it.”

He probably hadn’t expected me to hold that hard a line, and the color went out of his face.

“Elena, does it have to be like this? We just got married. Are you going to tear our marriage apart with your own hands?”