The Heartbreak Gambit

He said he loved me, wishing me a long, long life. But while I was in labor, he literally made a bet with his side piece—gambling on if I’d leave the delivery room dead or alive.

Chapter 1

Before the surgery that nearly killed her, Nora Reed learned that her husband had bet his mistress she would survive it.

The first thing Nora Reed heard when she woke was Chloe Bennett laughing.

It was a soft laugh, almost careful, the kind someone might use in a hospital room when she wanted to seem sweetone that made people want to protect her.

Nora lay still beneath the blankets, her body heavy with pain medication and the memory of pain that medication could not touch. The monitors beside her bed made patient, indifferent sounds.

“The doctor said there could be memory problems,” Chloe murmured.

A man shifted in a chair near the window. “He said there could be. Not that there will be.”

Ethan.

Nora knew his voice before she opened her eyes. For seven years, it had been the voice that found her in crowded rooms, the voice that called her when she stayed late at work, the voice that had promised, more times than she could count, that she would never have to face anything alone again.

Now it sounded tired. Irritated. Afraid of being caught.

Chloe said, “I’m only saying, if she really doesn’t remember, then we won’t have to keep pretending we’re careful. We could stop acting like strangers every time she’s around.”

The silence that followed was not a refusal.

Nora’s fingers tightened beneath the blanket.

Before the emergency surgery, before the blood and the shouting and the frantic blur of people wheeling her toward an operating room, she had seen Ethan’s phone on the counter outside the maternity ward.

She had not meant to look. His screen had lit up. Her name had been in the message thread.

Chloe: You really think she’ll make it?

Ethan: She will. She has to.

Chloe: Bet?

Then a string of laughing emojis, followed by words Nora had read three times because her mind would not accept them.

Nora read them three times.

Make it through the delivery, or die with the baby.

Ethan had bet that Nora would live.

He had written, She’s my wife. I love her. I want her to live a long time.

As if aA man could wager on a woman’s life and call the side he chose love.

Nora had stared at the phone until a contraction seized her. She had not had time to confront him. There had been no time for anything except terror, blood, and the hard white lights above the operating table.

Now she had woken to Chloe asking whether Ethan wanted to flirt with her in front of Nora’s bed.

Her husband let out a long breath. “Chloe, this is not the time.”

“I said if.” Chloe’s voice softened into a pout. “You’ve been taking care of Nora for months. You deserve to be happy too.”

Nora opened her eyes.

Ethan was on his feet before she focused. He looked thinner than she remembered, his dark hair uncombed, his shirt creased as though he had slept in it. For one sharp, stupid moment, relief moved through her. He had stayed. He looked worried.

Then Chloe rose from the chair beside him, smoothing her dress. Her hand had been resting on Ethan’s knee.

“Nora.” Ethan crossed to the bed. “You’re awake.”

He reached for her face.

Nora turned away.

His hand froze in the air.

Chloe watched her closely. Chloe was younger than Nora by nearly a decade, bright-eyed and polished, with the same restless energy Nora had once carried everywhere. Ethan had told Nora that Chloe reminded him of her college self. Back then Nora had taken it as an awkward compliment.

Now she understood it had been a warning.

“Do you know who we are?” Chloe asked.

Nora looked from Chloe to Ethan. She knew exactly who they were. Her husband. His mistress. The two people who had stood somewhere outside an operating room and made entertainment out of whether she and her child would survive.

Her throat burned. She could have said Ethan’s name. She could have asked him why. She could have screamed until a nurse came running.

But Ethan’s face was open in a way she had not seen in months. Not honest. Expectant.

Chloe leaned closer. “Nora?”

An idea came to Nora with no grace and no plan.

It was simply there: a door cracked open in a burning house.

She shook her head.

Chloe’s eyes lit.

Ethan looked at Nora for a long moment. Then he swallowed. “We’re your friends,” Chloe said quickly. “You had an accident. We brought you here.”

She slipped her arm through Ethan’s. “And this is my boyfriend. Ethan Hale.”

The room went still.

Nora watched Ethan’s jaw tighten. He could have stopped it. He could have told Chloe to leave. He could have said, My wife knows me. He could have done any number of decent thingsmade any denial.

Instead, after one breath too long, he put his hand over Chloe’s.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’m Ethan.”

Nora let her face remain blank.

Inside, something old and tender finished breaking.