Nothing else there 1

Aria’s POV

* Thirteen years ago *

The pregnancy test has been riding shotgun for three days.

Wrapped in tissue paper like a gift. Sitting on the passenger seat while I drive to my husband’s office at 9PM on a Tuesday, because Dominic has worked late every night since last week and I miss him.

It’s that simple and that embarrassing — I miss my husband.

I miss the way he pulls me close when he walks through the door, the way he says my name. He’s been distracted lately. Coming home later than usual, kissing my forehead with his mind somewhere else.

Perhaps it’s the new acquisition. The company is demanding, and Dominic gives everything to the business. Yet there’s still a sickening thought that lives in the back of my skull, but I don’t let it sharpen.

He loves me. He married me. That’s the whole story.

He’s just working hard to give me and our future baby everything. Nothing else there. No one.

And God, I know how much he wants a son. Has wanted one since before he wanted me — once on one of our dates he talked about the Carraway family’s name and legacy like he was reading aloud from blueprints he’d already filed.

I sat across from him with my Goodwill dress and my one good pair of heels and thought: this man knows exactly where his life is going.

And he chose me to go there with him. Out of everyone, he chose me.

That still makes my chest warm when I think about it.

The girl from the two-bedroom apartment, the scholarship kid of a lonely hardworking mother… and Dominic Carraway. A billionaire heir, powerful CEO who got down on one knee and said ‘you’re the best decision I ever made.’

Sounds like a fairytail, right?

Now I’m finally pregnant, and I can’t stop picturing his face when I tell him.

Not the boardroom face — the real one. The one from our first date when I made a joke about his tie and he looked at me like I’d invented something new. I want that face. I want him to press his hands against my stomach and say ‘we’re going to be parents.’

When I finally arrive and step out of the elevator, his assistant’s desk is empty.

I pass it and my throat tightens, because I sat in that chair eighteen months ago. Before any of this. Before the internship became a secret relationship with my boss. Before the secret became a wedding ring.

I remember the beginning like a film with the color turned up.

He needed reports delivered to the fourteenth floor and I was the one who volunteered. He looked up from his desk, and I swear the air shifted.

I should have delivered the reports and left. Instead I sat as he told me to. He asked me where I grew up and I told him the truth. He listened like my life was interesting instead of unfortunate. Nobody had ever done that before.

By the time I left his office two hours had dissolved and I couldn’t remember the name of the reports I was supposed to deliver.

Four months later he proposed right in this hallway. One knee between the copier and the water cooler. Ridiculous and perfect. I said yes before he finished the sentence because I already knew — this man could give me every single thing I’d spent my whole life without.

I pass the assistant’s empty chair and smile, because within minutes he’s going to know he’s a father.

His door is not fully closed as I reach for the handle and hear his voice — low and warm, a register I know from the darkness of our bedroom. Then another voice, a woman’s. Half-laughing, half-whispering.

“You’re terrible,” she says, and there’s a rustling sound. Fabric. Movement.

“Am I?” Dominic’s voice is playful in a way that makes my stomach drop.

“The worst.” A soft laugh. “Though I have to admit, you’re very convincing when you want something.”

“I usually get what I want.”

“I’ve noticed.”

My pulse hammers in my ears. The rational part of my brain scrambles for innocent explanations. Just a colleague, a late meeting, nothing suspicious about voices and laughter in a closed office that late.

But my hand won’t move. My feet won’t step back.

“What if your wife finds out?”

“She won’t. She doesn’t think like that.” Dominic answered easy and almost amused. “Not past her own little bubble, never has. It’s actually one of her more… endearing qualities.”

The words hit me like a fist to the sternum and my lungs just stop.

She. Your wife. Me.

The one who doesn’t think like that — except here I am. Hand on his door, pulse slamming so hard I can feel it behind my eyes. The tissue paper crinkles as my hand involuntarily tightens around the pregnancy test in my pocket.

Finally, I got the courage and pushed the door slightly open.

Through the gap, I see the familiar line of his shoulders in that charcoal suit I helped him pick out last month. He’s standing at his desk, and for a split second relief floods through me—he’s just working late, like I thought, like he said.

Then he leans forward and I see her.

Blonde hair spilling over the edge of his desk. Long legs wrapped around my husband’s waist. Hands gripping his shoulders as he kisses her with an urgency I haven’t seen directed at me in weeks.

My hand finds the doorframe. The wood is solid under my palm—the only solid thing left in a world that’s tilting sideways.

I should look away. Should step back. Should do anything except stand here watching my husband’s hands slide up another woman’s thighs. Watching him kiss her throat, watching her arch into him like they’ve done this before.

Like they know each other’s bodies. Like this is routine.

Then the blonde sees me and her face cycles through three things. Surprise, recognition, and then the one that will stay with me longer than any of this. Pity.

This woman on my husband’s desk looks at me the way you’d look at someone who showed up to a party no one told them was cancelled.

“Dom,” she whispers, but it comes out strangled. Panicked. “Dominic, stop…”

“What?” He’s kissing her collarbone, oblivious.

She taps his chest, nodding toward the door, and he turns.

Shirt untucked. Belt loose. And his face… his face doesn’t break. Doesn’t crumble. Doesn’t do any of the things a caught man’s face is supposed to do.

It rearranges. Smoothly. The way a screen refreshes. Damage control. The same expression I’ve watched across boardroom dinners when a deal tilts and he’s already three moves into the recovery.

“Aria.” He steps away from the woman toward me, palms up. “That’s not what you think.”

That sentence. Delivered with his belt hanging open and a woman buttoning her blouse five feet behind him. As if what I think is the problem here. As if my eyes are the thing that’s wrong with this picture.

I look at him. At the office where he proposed. At the desk where she was sitting. At the tissue-wrapped test in my coat pocket, pressing against my hip like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me yet.

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“Let me explain.” He takes another step. “Come on, baby.”

Baby.

I press my hand flat against my stomach unconsciously.

The baby doesn’t know yet. The baby doesn’t know anything yet — not the fluorescent buzz overhead, not the marble floors, not the way their cheating father says their mother’s name when caught.

Not what I’m going to do next.