The Wife He Forgot to Love Chapter 05

The Wife He Forgot to Love Chapter 05

On the third day of my hospital stay, Ethan started showing up every day.

He brought tomato soup made by the family cook and handled his work from the outer sitting room.

He tried to talk to me, tried to explain, tried to win me back.

I met it all with silence.

Vivian was the wedge between us. There was no going back.

Ethan stopped taking her calls in front of me, but I could occasionally hear him speaking in hushed tones out in the hallway.

On my discharge day, he drove me home himself.

Back to that house I’d once been so hopeful about. Everything looked the same, and nothing was the same.

I moved straight into the guest room.

Ethan stood at the door, pain in his eyes. “Eve, do you have to do this?”

“I need rest.”

I closed the door, shutting him out.

I started contacting lawyers about the divorce.

The attorney was my college classmate, Quinn Shaw.

After hearing my story, she gave me a level-headed analysis.

“Getting divorced isn’t the issue. But splitting assets is complicated. Ethan’s company equity structure is complex, and the post-marital appreciation will take time to untangle. Plus, if he digs his heels in, it could drag out.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I can wait.”

I pulled myself together and reached out to the old band friends I used to play with.

In college, I’d secretly joined an underground band on bass—it was my only outlet from the stifling, straight-laced life I was expected to live.

When I got together with Ethan, and especially after we married, I’d distanced myself from those friends to fit the Ms. Hartwell mold, and went back to the piano my parents wanted.

Now I realized I hadn’t spent much time at all living for myself.

But on my first day back with the band, I sensed something was off.

My colleagues looked at me with pity and hesitation.

A friend pulled me aside and showed me her phone.

The local tabloid Page Six had broken the story first: during Vivian’s playoff prep, Ethan had shown up at her training facility multiple times, even traveling with the team to away games.

Worse yet, on the day of my miscarriage, TMZ had snapped Vivian leaving the very hospital where Ethan was.

The headline screamed: “Marriage on the Rocks? Women’s Soccer Star Eyed as Homewrecker?”

The comments were going off:

“**
Heard the wife lost the baby… How brutal.
**”

“**
Mr. Hartwell and that soccer chick have been childhood sweethearts, right? The wife was just an arranged match.
**”

“**
Why was Vivian at the hospital? Staking her claim?
**”

I read the words and blurry photos, forcing myself to breathe deep so I wouldn’t completely lose it.

So while I was lying in that hospital bed, losing our child, in my most agonizing, helpless moment—his precious Viv had actually come to see him.

I grabbed my phone and marched straight to Ethan’s office.

No appointment, but the front desk knew who I was and didn’t dare stop me.

When I pushed open his office door, he was mid-meeting with some senior executives.

He looked up, clearly caught off guard, then waved the others out. “Leave us.”

They filed out and closed the door behind them.

It was just the two of us in the room.

I held up my phone screen—the photo of Vivian leaving the hospital.

“Explain this.”

My voice was ice cold.

Ethan’s brows knitted tightly.

“She heard somewhere you were hospitalized and showed up looking for me. I just talked to her downstairs for a few minutes to send her away. I was afraid she’d upset you if she came up.”

“So she was there,” I said, latching onto his words.

“While I was unconscious from surgery, she came to the hospital. And you went down to see her.”

“Eve, I just—”

“Just what?” I cut him off. “So you admit it?”