Chapter 14
He looked at my stomach again.
I saw something ugly move through his expression.
Jealousy.
Grief.
Possession.
Maybe all three.
“How long have you been with him?”
“Stop.”
“I just want to understand.”
“You want information.”
“I want to understand how you’re standing here five months pregnant when we spent years—”
He stopped.
There it was.
The wound he had no right to touch.
I felt my hands tremble.
“We spent years losing pregnancies,” I said quietly. “That does not mean I failed.”
“I didn’t say you failed.”
“You let the world say it.”
His face went still.
“You could have stopped those stories.”
“I don’t control the press.”
I laughed.
“You called three editors personally when they underestimated your first acquisition price.”
“That’s different.”
“You threatened to pull access from a financial magazine because they called you lucky.”
“Khloe—”
“But when they said our marriage failed because I couldn’t give you a child, suddenly the mighty Julian Duval had no control over the press.”
His silence answered for him.
My voice dropped.
“Dalia told me what you said.”
His eyes sharpened.
“What did she say?”
“That you told her I couldn’t have children.”
“I was simplifying something extremely painful.”
“You were rewriting it.”
“I didn’t want to discuss our miscarriages with her.”
“Then say they were private.”
He looked away.
“Say I deserved privacy. Say we both suffered.”
“Say the marriage ended for reasons that belonged to two people. But you didn’t.”
“You made me the broken one because it protected you.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“It is exactly what happened.”
His voice hardened.
“I stayed through three miscarriages.”
The sentence landed between us.
Stayed.
As if I had been an illness.
As if remaining married to me while I lost our children had been some noble sacrifice.
I looked at him.
He knew immediately what he had said.
“Khloe, I didn’t mean—”
“You stayed?”
His face drained.
“You think I don’t remember that bathroom?”
He lowered his voice.
“Please.”
“You were checking your phone.”
“Not here.”
“You had a flight.”
“I know.”
“I begged you not to leave.”
“Khloe.”
“And you told me we had a company to run.”
“Stop.”
His voice broke.
For the first time in years, I saw shame.
Real shame.
But I had learned something important during the two years without him.
Someone else’s shame was not the same thing as my justice.
I stepped back.