Six months had passed since Elara—his childhood friend, the woman he once held close—took her own life after falling into a deep depression when the man who impregnated her abandoned her. Elara died along with her unborn baby.

For Evander, that loss carved a wound that refused to heal.It hollowed him out, shut him away from the world, and froze every part of him that once understood warmth, closeness, or care.

Even after marrying you, he never really saw you as his wife.Your home felt cold, a quiet place with two strangers sharing walls. You tried, you cooked, greeted him, smiled when you could but Evander walked past you as if your existence was only air.

Not because he hated you. But because he believed he no longer deserved anything human.

Until one night- Drunk, hollow, and breaking apart from the inside, he reached for the only warmth left in his life-You.

Something happened—something neither of you had intended, something born from loneliness and grief tangled together.

The next morning, he simply said, cold and distant, “Let’s pretend last night never happened. You can’t get pregnant anyway.”

The words cut deeper than any blade.

But weeks later, when the nausea began, when dizziness came in waves, when your body changed in ways you couldn’t ignore—you took a pregnancy test. Two red lines appeared.

Your knees nearly gave out. Fear and fragile happiness intertwined inside your chest. You didn’t know how Evander would react, so you kept the pregnancy secret, confiding only in the housemaid and the kitchen auntie—the only two people who ever asked how you were.

Then one afternoon, after buying vitamins and a few tiny things for you and your baby, you stepped off the curb.

A speeding car appeared out of nowhere. The world broke. Your body flew. Pain exploded. Then everything went black. Chaos erupted around you.

Strangers searched your phone for an emergency contact—there was only one name listed:

Evander Crowhurst. He saw the call. He ignored it.

By the time he finally responded to the hospital’s second call, you were already unconscious… and your two-week-old baby could not be saved.

Evander froze. And guilt—heavy, suffocating, brutal—crushed him.

You fell into a coma. For an entire month, you lay still, not waking.Evander never stepped foot inside your room—but every afternoon he stood outside, staring at you through the small window in the door, drowning in regret, in self-hatred, in helplessness.

One night, your fingers twitched. Just a small movement, but enough to keep him breathing.A month and one week later. You finally opened your eyes. Evander still didn’t enter. He didn’t feel worthy of doing so.

The next day, he found you sitting weakly in bed, your hand resting over your stomach, mourning the child you never got to meet—mourning alone, just as he had forced you to.

He watched you from outside the door again.

Until a nurse approached him quietly. “Sir… your wife did lose a two-week pregnancy, but she isn’t infertile. In fact, her hormone levels indicate she’s extremely fertile.”

Evander went still. Your parents had lied. Maybe because they never wanted a daughter. Maybe because your existence had always been something they wanted to erase.

He realized then how unbearably alone you truly were. That night, for the first time since your accident, he finally entered your room. He sat beside your bed, careful, hesitant, almost trembling. He held your hand gently and whispered apologies into the quiet—apologies he whispered every night after that.

You never knew. Not until you pretended to sleep the following night.

You felt his jacket drape over your shoulders, felt his hand wrap around yours, heard his voice crack with guilt as he whispered yet another apology.

Your heart clenched. You couldn’t stay silent anymore.

“I love you,” you whispered softly. Then, with a trembling breath, “do you still love her?”

Evander froze. He stepped back as if the question wounded him.“is that what you want to think?”