Pregnant When My Husband Chose Her Over Me

The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter, two pink lines stark against white plastic. Six weeks. I pressed my palm against my still-flat stomach, feeling nothing but the wild flutter of my own heartbeat.

Adrian's baby.

The thought should have terrified me—we'd only been married eight months, and his memory was still returning in fragments—but instead, warmth spread through my chest. He'd been so gentle since the accident, so devoted. My former academic rival, the man who'd once made my blood boil with his smug superiority, now made me breakfast and called himself my "house husband" with that crooked smile.

I needed to update our insurance. Add the baby. Make it official.

The city clerk's office smelled like old paper and fluorescent lighting. I slid the marriage certificate across the counter, the one with the ornate border and our signatures intertwined. The clerk, a woman with reading glasses on a beaded chain, barely glanced at it.

"I need to update my insurance information," I said. "Add my husband and—" I touched my stomach. "We're expecting."

She typed something into her computer. Frowned. Typed again.

"I'm not finding a marriage record for Gracelyn Kennedy and Adrian Hunter."

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. "That's impossible. We were married last January."

She picked up the certificate, held it to the light. Her expression shifted—not confusion anymore, but something worse. Pity.

"Ma'am, I'm going to need to scan this."

The machine whirred. She studied the screen, lips pressed thin.

"I'm very sorry," she said quietly. "This certificate is a forgery. The seal is invalid. There's no corresponding record in our database."

The words didn't land at first. They hovered in the air between us, refusing to make sense.

"That's not possible."

"It's a high-quality fake, but—" She turned the monitor toward me. Red text flashed across the scan. INVALID. FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT. "I'm truly sorry."

I drove home with my hands locked on the wheel, knuckles bone-white. The certificate sat in the passenger seat, mocking me with its elegant calligraphy.

Adrian was in the kitchen when I walked in, wearing the apron I'd bought him as a joke. Something with tomatoes simmered on the stove. He looked up, that warm smile already forming.

"You're home early. I'm making—"

I threw the certificate on the counter between us.

He froze, wooden spoon dripping red sauce onto the granite.

"Explain this."

His face went carefully blank. "Grace—"

"The clerk said it's fake. The seal is invalid. We're not married, Adrian."

He set down the spoon with deliberate precision. "I can explain—"

His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and something shifted in his expression—a door closing, a wall rising. The warmth drained from his eyes.

"I need to take this."

"Adrian—"

But he was already turning away, phone pressed to his ear. "Carly. Yes, I—" His voice dropped, formal and distant. A voice I'd never heard him use. "No, I understand. I'll handle it."

Carly.

C.B.

My fingers found my father's ring beneath my shirt,