Chapter 0127
Chapter 0127
Hannah
“You’ll be fine.”
Those words felt like daggers twisting deep in my belly. My mouth opened and closed all on its own, too stunned to utter a single coherent word. Hell, I could barely even form a coherent thought, let alone express it out loud.
I knew that Noah and I had our glaring problems, but… he wasn’t staying? After I had fallen like that? He was just going to tell me that I would be ‘fine‘ and then run away like the air we shared in this room was poison?
Finally, despite the pain, I managed to push myself up onto my elbows to fix Noah with a withering glare. “You’re leaving?” I asked incredulously. “Right now?”
He nodded. “Yeah. The doctor said you’d be fine with a little rest, so… I have somewhere important to be.” He glanced at his watch again. “I really need to go, Hannah.”
I let out a loud scoff. “And where, pray tell, would you be going?” I asked, my voice a low croak. “It’s a Saturday. Don’t go trying to tell me that you have meetings today, because I know you don’t.”
Noah stared at me unblinkingly for a few moments. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he stood there, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides. Finally, he uttered, “I have to go to the hospital.”
“What? Why?” I blurted out, raising my eyebrows.
“Because… Zoe is there.”
All at once, it felt as if my bed had just tilted upside down and had dumped me into space. I felt like everything was whirling around me, a fresh wave of pain lancing through the back of my neck and my shoulders.
So he was going to be with Zoe. Of course he was. I should have known better.
“Zoe…?” I growled, feeling my fingers curl into fists around my bed sheets. “Why?”
“Her appendix burst,” he said simply. “I need to be there for her. She has to have emergency surgery.”
Suddenly, I was shooting up to a full sitting position despite the fact that doing so made me feel like I might throw up just from the pain. My eyes widened into saucers, secretly hoping that real daggers might actually shoot out of them and impale this horrible man.
“You’re incredible, Noah,” I growled. “Your wife is lying here in bed after falling down the stairs, not to mention that I’m-”
The words suddenly died in my throat, and I quickly shut my mouth. I had almost divulged the truth to him once again-that I was pregnant. Goddess, how badly I wished to see the look on his face if I did tell him. And for a moment, I almost did. I longed for that satisfaction, even if it did nothing more than make him feel like shit.
But I didn’t say it. Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
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Chapter 0127
“I’m disappointed in you,” I finally finished. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me here. For her.”
“She’s in the hospital, Hannah,” he said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “A burst appendix is no joke, and her son is terrified. I need to be there for her. She’s… She’s my friend.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “And I’m your wife,” I snarled through my bared teeth, my upper lip
curling back into a sneer.
Noah merely blinked at me. “Are you?” he asked. “Because the way I see it, we’re just two unwilling participants in a sham of a marriage until the divorce is finalized.”
At that moment, a ringing in my ears began. I could practically feel my blood pressure rising, which was likely not making my condition any better, so I breathed deeply through my nose and laid back on my pillows.
“You disgust me sometimes,” I growled, looking away.
Noah let out a deep sigh. “Look, I waited until you woke up, didn’t I?” he asked. “The moment I heard about your fall, I came running. I called the doctor myself.”
“Is that supposed to make you a gentleman or something?” I bit out. “That’s, like, the bare minimum.”
For a few seconds, Noah opened his mouth to say something else. But then he shut it again, his jaw clenching until he seemed to come up with something better.
“I have to go,” he finally said. “Zoe’s surgery is-”
“Just go. Get out of my sight.”
I didn’t even dare to look at him–I didn’t dare to voice my true thoughts. That I, his wife, was sitting here, pregnant, with a fucking head injury. And that I hated every fiber, every bone, every sinew in that body of his and yet I needed him here.
No. I just stayed quiet until he finally left. Only then did I finally let out the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
As I laid there in my quiet bedroom, the hot tears that had been prickling at the corners of my eyes finally began to spill over. I didn’t bother wiping them away, instead allowing them to leave warm trails down my cheeks that slowly dried into a sticky paste.
Of course he would go to her; why had I ever expected any different? Why had I ever thought, for even a moment, that I was the only woman in our relationship?
Finally, I rolled over to face the window. The dull pounding in my head remained, worsening by the minute. I glanced over to see a bottle with painkillers next to the bed, but I didn’t bother taking them.
!
In a strange, pathetic sort of way, I liked the pain; it kept my mind off of other things. Because if I could just focus on the pain, counting each pulse in my head like a clock, then eventually enough time would pass and I wouldn’t be lying there thinking about how much I hated my husband and how worthless I felt.
One thing was for certain, though: now, more than ever I knew that I wanted to divorce him.
Maybe there had been moments in recent history when I had questioned that. Maybe, just maybe, I had allowed myself to try and see past his aloof exterior, convincing myself that perhaps he wasn’t as bad as I thought. That maybe he was just misunderstood, or that he didn’t know how to express his love for me.
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Chapter 0127
That maybe we could work things out. That our child could grow up in a home with two loving parents, and that we didn’t have to get divorced.
But now I knew for certain how meaningless I truly was in his eyes. No man who ever loved his wife would run to another woman to provide her comfort, not when his wife was lying injured in bed.
But then again, I had never been as important as Zoe. Not even from the beginning had Noah ever seen me as more than a drop in the bucket that was his love for her.
Yeah, well, Zoe could have him.
Because I certainly didn’t want him anymore.
