Próbował publicznie zawstydzić swoją byłą żonę, która spodziewała się dziecka, na swoim ślubie — ale nie miał pojęcia, kim się stanie…

“Maybe it’s not meant to happen,” he’d say, and the way he said it made me feel like I’d failed him.

Then finally—after six years of trying—I saw two beautiful lines.

I remember my hands shaking. I remember sitting on the edge of the bathtub with the test balanced on my palm like it was fragile glass.

I remember whispering, “Oh my God,” and laughing and crying at the same time.

I ran to Derek’s office, breathless.

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

He looked up from his laptop, blinked once, then nodded like I’d just told him the dry cleaner was ready.

“That’s good,” he said.

That was it.

No hug. No relief. No joy.

But I told myself he was processing.

I told myself it would change things.

I thought Derek would soften, that we’d become a real family.

Instead, he became colder.

As my belly rounded, his touch disappeared.

He stopped kissing me.

Stopped putting his hand on my back when we walked into rooms.

When I tried to curl into him at night, he shifted away.

One evening, when I stepped out of the shower and caught him staring at my body, I thought—finally.

But his mouth twisted.

“You’ve let yourself go,” he said.

I froze.

“I’m pregnant,” I whispered.

“And?” he snapped, like pregnancy was an excuse I was using to be lazy.

Then he said the words that still echo in my bones:

“Your pregnant body disgusts me.”

I started sleeping on the edge of the bed.

I started walking on eggshells again.

And I started feeling something else too—something I didn’t want to admit.

Fear.

At seven months pregnant, I was working from home because I was too exhausted to go into the office. The swelling in my feet made shoes feel like punishment. My back ached constantly. My body felt like it belonged to someone else.

Derek stayed out later and later.

He’d come home smelling like cologne that wasn’t his.

He’d shower immediately, like he needed to wash something off.

One night, I woke to the soft glow of his phone.

He was turned away from me, shoulders tense, thumbs moving fast.

I asked, “Who are you texting?”

He didn’t turn around.

“Work,” he said.

But his voice was too smooth. Too prepared.

The next day, while he was in the shower, I saw his phone on the kitchen counter.

My heart pounded so hard I thought I might wake the baby.

I picked it up.

I shouldn’t have.

But something inside me already knew.

The messages were intimate. Sexual.

My hands shook as I scrolled.

And then it got worse.

So much worse.

Because the flirting wasn’t with some stranger.

It was with Amber.

My cousin.

I felt like the air left my lungs.

I leaned on the counter, nauseous, trying to breathe.

But Derek walked out, wrapped in a towel, and saw me holding his phone.

He didn’t panic.

He didn’t plead.

He just looked at me like I’d bored him.

“Put that down,” he said.

The calmness in his voice was the most terrifying thing.

Later, when I was six months pregnant, I found his laptop open in his office.

I know I shouldn’t have looked.

But something told me I needed to see.

The screen was still on. Email thread after email thread.

And what I found didn’t just confirm the affair.

It shattered my entire world.

They hadn’t just been flirting.

They’d been together for over a year.

Over a year—while I was injecting hormones into my skin, crying in bathrooms, trying to build the family Derek pretended to want.

The messages between them made me physically sick.

They mocked me. Called me pathetic. Called me desperate.

Amber wrote about my “sad little hope” like it was entertainment.

Derek responded with emojis, like my pain was a joke.

They laughed about how stupid I was. How I had no idea what was happening right under my nose.

But the worst part—the part that still makes my blood run cold—was their plan.

Amber typed:

“Once that baby comes, we’ll be free of her.”

And Derek wrote back:

“We’ll get full custody. I’ve already talked to my lawyers. She’ll have nothing.”

I stared at the words until they blurred.

They weren’t just betraying me.

They were planning to take my baby.

My child.

The one I’d fought so hard to have.

Derek wanted the baby, but not me.

And he wasn’t starting his plan now.

He’d been quietly building a case against me for months.

I saw it in the emails—little notes to friends and family about how “Paisley’s hormones have been making her unstable.” A comment about how I’d “snapped over nothing.” A suggestion that he was “worried” about my mental state.

He was creating a narrative where I was unfit to be a mother.