“I can’t do this anymore, Mel,” he said flatly. “You’ve changed. I’m not attracted to you anymore.”
I remember standing there — stretch marks, postpartum exhaustion, disbelief. “You mean after everything—”
For weeks, I barely functioned. I couldn’t look in the mirror. My body felt like a stranger’s. My soul felt like it had been traded away. But I still had Jacob. I had to get up.
I took a job at a women’s health clinic — part-time at first, then full-time. Helping other women somehow helped me. I started therapy, wrote in journals, tried to reclaim the pieces of myself Ethan had stripped away.
Months later, I got a call from Jamie — one of Ethan’s coworkers. “You won’t believe this,” she said, laughing. “HR found out how he used his wife as a surrogate to pay off his mom’s debt. Word got around. They fired him. And guess what? He’s back living with his mom.”
I didn’t gloat. I didn’t need to. I just felt… released.
Later, I heard he tried dating again. It didn’t last. The women at his office warned each other about him. His perfect image had finally cracked.
Meanwhile, I began rebuilding.
A kind nutritionist at the clinic encouraged me to heal — not just emotionally, but physically. With her help, I started walking, eating better, feeling again. Slowly, I began to recognize the woman in the mirror.
Then came a call I didn’t expect — from Hazel’s mother, Victoria.
