Chapter 6
He never corrected them.
At the time, I didn’t care.
I thought marriage was the opposite of keeping score.
When he sold his first company for twenty-two million dollars, he came home carrying Chinese takeout because every good restaurant was booked.
I was barefoot at the kitchen counter, still answering emails.
He put the cartons down.
Then he dropped to one knee.
I laughed because I thought he was joking.
He wasn’t.
“Khloe,” he said, holding out a ring with hands that were actually shaking, “you’re the reason any of this works.”
I stopped laughing.
“Julian—”
“Build the rest with me.”
I cried before I answered.
“Yes.”
I believed that promise for almost a decade.
In the beginning, maybe he did too.
That was the hardest part to admit.
It would have been easier if Julian had always been cruel.
He wasn’t.
He became cruel slowly enough that I kept mistaking each new version of him for temporary stress.
There was always another launch.
Another acquisition.
Another board crisis.
Another flight.
Another interview.
Another room full of men he needed to impress.
At first, when he repeated one of my ideas without mentioning where it came from, I felt proud.
We were a team.
When business magazines called him a genius for a restructuring plan we had mapped out together at two in the morning, I bought three copies.
When one interviewer asked whether I was involved with the company and Julian laughed, saying, “Khloe’s the only person I trust enough to tell me when I’m being an idiot,” I took it as recognition.
Over time, the joke changed.
First, I was his brain trust.
Then his sounding board.
Then his wife who “had great instincts.”
Then simply Mrs. Julian Duval.
I noticed.
I told myself it didn’t matter.
Then we decided to have a child.
That was when everything I had ignored became impossible to ignore.
The first pregnancy ended at nine weeks.
Julian cried with me.
I remember that.
I need to remember that.
He sat on the bathroom floor and held me until my legs stopped shaking.
Afterward, he cancelled two meetings.
He brought soup home.
He read articles about miscarriage statistics.
We told each other it was terrible but common.
We would try again.
The second pregnancy lasted twelve weeks.
By then, I had already imagined the nursery.
I had a hidden folder of crib photographs on my phone.