Chapter 3
“Khloe, look this way!”
“Is that Khloe?”
“Oh my God—Khloe!”
Then someone saw my stomach.
The volume doubled.
“Khloe, are you pregnant?”
“How far along are you?”
“Gabriel, is the baby yours?”
“Khloe! Khloe! Look here!”
I wanted to recoil.
Every instinct I had built during my marriage screamed at me to cover myself, protect the information, control the exposure.
Instead, I straightened.
My dress was black velvet, cut simply across my shoulders and designed to fall cleanly over the curve of my pregnancy.
I had considered wearing something looser.
Then I had hated myself for considering it.
Why should I disguise a child I already loved because Julian Duval might be uncomfortable seeing proof that my life had continued without him?
Gabriel leaned toward me.
“Keep moving?”
“Yes.”
His hand settled lightly against my back.
Not possessive.
Steady.
We walked.
Inside the ballroom, nearly three hundred people stood beneath enormous crystal chandeliers.
Money had its own atmosphere.
You could feel it in places like that—not simply wealth, but the certainty of people accustomed to having their decisions become other people’s reality.
Bankers.
Founders.
Politicians.
Philanthropists.
Fashion executives.
Old-money families who pretended not to notice the cameras.
New-money founders who made sure cameras noticed them.
I knew half the room.
At least, I had once.
Conversations began dying as we entered.
Heads turned.
One after another.
I could almost feel my old identity waking up in their faces.
Khloe Duval.
The wife.
The vanished woman.
The miscarriages.
The divorce.
The humiliation.
And now—
Pregnant.
With Gabriel Lancaster.
I saw Julian before he saw me.
He stood near the center of the ballroom with Dalia.
She was radiant, I had to admit.
That surprised me.
For two years, I had imagined meeting her and feeling hatred.
Instead, looking at her, I mostly felt tired.
She hadn’t been in our bathroom when I lost our third pregnancy.
She hadn’t stood in the doorway checking the time while I bled.
She hadn’t called the lawyer.
She hadn’t written the statement.
Julian had.
Dalia was saying something to an older man beside them.
Then Julian glanced toward the entrance.
He saw Gabriel first.
His posture changed slightly.
Then he saw me.
His smile froze.
For one strange second, I saw the man I had known before any of this.
The Northwestern graduate student who lived on vending-machine coffee.
The twenty-eight-year-old who had once fallen asleep beside me while I rewrote the pitch deck that made his career possible.