Ashley giggled. “I just hope it’s not too awkward. Poor thing.”
Poor thing. The words hit harder than any insult. That day, something inside me shifted. Jason hadn’t just left me – he wanted to humiliate me. I refused to let him succeed.
Six months later, at a business conference, I met Ethan Bennett. A self-assured tech entrepreneur, he listened more than he spoke and valued people, not what they could give him. When I shared my past, he said something no one else had:
“He didn’t leave you because you couldn’t have children. He left because he couldn’t bear to be with someone who might realize she deserved better.”
We fell in love deliberately, building instead of clinging. He proposed while we folded laundry – a simple, ordinary moment and I said yes. When we tried for a baby, I braced for disappointment. Life surprised me: I was pregnant, not with one, but four children—Ava, Noah, Ruby, and Liam. Ethan cried louder than I did at their birth. Our home was chaotic, noisy, joyful: everything I thought I’d lost was now ours.
So when Jason’s second baby shower invitation arrived, addressed to Olivia Carter, I smiled. I went, not as the broken woman he thought I was, but with Ethan and our four children.
The party was polished and superficial, the kind of gathering Jason loved. We arrived in a clean, unflashy SUV. The moment I stepped onto the pavement, conversations froze. Jason’s champagne glass slipped and destr0yed. Ashley’s smile froze. Guests muttered, staring at my children.
“Olivia?” Jason rasped.
