To My First Love, With Regret - 109

While Ethan tried to organize his racing thoughts, the woman buried herself back in the armchair. Wrapping her hands around her throbbing head, she asked in a tone of utter exhaustion.

—Why do you think I haven’t married for nearly ten years? Being the heir to Kentrell, the marriage proposals never stopped.

It was true. Ethan, who had watched Eve’s every move for the past decade, knew this better than anyone. He had been prepared to sever the limbs of any other male who dared approach, but he had never needed to. Eve had always been the first to step forward and coldly reject them—even the proposals perfectly suited to the status of a Lady of Kentrell—choosing to let her prime years slip away.

The riddle he could never solve was answered with a single, hollow sentence that fit the puzzle perfectly.

—Because I cannot give them what they want: a successor for Kentrell.

Yes. If that was the case, everything made sense.

—Every time you asked, I told you it was a safe day. Every single day, from autumn until winter. Didn’t you find that strange?

It had been.

—I noticed you looked suspicious. But you never once asked why. I suppose… it didn’t matter to you. Men are just beasts, satisfied as long as they don’t have to restrain their instincts.

Even this—her inexplicable attitude—now made sense. If Eve was a body that could not conceive…

—To think you intended to take responsibility if I had a child. I’m so honored I hardly know what to do with myself.

She let out a sharp snort of a laugh, then reached out to pat his frozen cheek. It was a gesture of mock praise, making her derision feel all the more cutting.

—But Ethan, the day you have to take responsibility for me will never come. Never.

Yes, I suppose so.

But no. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be.

Though his head accepted the logic, his heart still rejected the reality of Eve’s infertility. Though the face of this chillingly lonely woman said she was entirely alone, Ethan simply could not admit that the sole hope growing in that womb had been nothing but a delusion.

—But you couldn’t eat, and you were retching and dizzy.

Eve let her eyebrows droop as if she took pity on a man who couldn’t let go of his lingering obsession.

—Ethan, the symptoms of pregnancy aren’t that different from a drunkard’s hangover.

A hangover. That ridiculous word struck Ethan like a blow to the back of the head, and a surge of rage flared up.

To think I was deceived by a mere hangover.

Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to blame Eve. This was entirely a fantasy created by his own blind greed for a child. The one who had deceived him was none other than himself.

—Then… just since when have you been unable to have children?

But was this deception truly a mirage he had built alone?

—Don’t tell me… it was from the very beginning?

By ‘the beginning,’ he meant the time when she had seduced his nineteen-year-old self with the sweet promise of bearing a successor for Kentrell. If that had all been a scam, she was a woman not even worth pitying, infertility or not. Evelyn Sherwood would be nothing more than a villainess who played with his pure heart.

Perhaps that would have been better.

—No. Ever since I lost your child.

Better than the cruel truth.

—You… had… my child?

Ethan was so shocked he couldn’t even string together a simple question, but Eve nodded with a calmness that was almost cruel. Then, she delivered her verdict like a judge standing before the gates of hell.

—I miscarried from the shock after you left me.

He was the villain.

—The doctor said it would be difficult to conceive again. And he was right. Since then, my cycles became rare… and though you never used protection these past few months… the child that was conceived in a single month back then has shown no sign of appearing now…

Eve’s confession did not reach Ethan’s ears. He had sunk deep into an abyss of despair, like foam breaking upon the surface of the water. He wanted to rise above the surface and hear her voice, but he couldn’t. A single sentence had ensnared him like a swamp and wouldn’t let go.

—I miscarried from the shock after you left me.

After you left.

At those words, time wound backward. Ethan was dragged back ten years, onto the cliff on a freezing autumn night.

He saw a woman standing there, her black hair fluttering wildly in the piercing wind. Her face, pale and bloodless, looked like a corpse’s, but the moment she faced him, those dying eyes had filled with life.

Back then, he hadn’t understood why she was so glad to see him. He had only gnashed his teeth at the shamelessness of the woman who had come chasing after the man she herself had discarded.

—Ethan!

Eve’s scream, which he had ignored with the iron resolve never to be fooled by that cunning traitor again, had been as desperate as someone standing on the threshold of life and death. He had dismissed it as a calculated seduction purely for her own gain, but…

To think it was actually a distress signal, a plea to save the child she held in her womb that night.

Ethan struggled with all his might to recall her lower abdomen, a part of her he hadn’t spared a single glance toward that night. He needed proof that there had never been a child in the first place. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to endure this horrific reality.

—…Lies. It’s all a lie.

His unconscious murmur was closer to a plea.

—If only it were a lie… how happy I would have been….

Eve groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead—not to hide her pain, but to ensure he didn’t catch the sharp, cold calculation gleaming in her eyes.

—Why do you think I slept with the man who abandoned me again? Because my desire was stronger than my pride? Yes, I suppose if the longing to reclaim a lost child is a desire, then that’s what it was….

When you deconstruct the truth to reassemble it, gaps are inevitable. Eve filled the holes between the pieces with plausible lies, painting a perfect portrait: Evelyn Sherwood is infertile.

—Do you know why I hate Chantal? Because I covet my own family name? Then why… why would I cherish the child of the woman who actually took my family from me so much?

This time, she slowly raised her head to meet Ethan’s eyes.

—I am… jealous of Chantal.

She wanted him to see the tears gathered in her eyes. She wanted the crimson lie that followed to be even more convincing.

—If our child had been born safely… he would have been about Tony’s age. If the child I lost had resembled me, wouldn’t he look exactly like that? Sometimes, I fall into the delusion that Tony is our child. How pathetic I must be….

Now, every time you look at Tony, you will think of our child, and you will find yourself unable to kill him.

As if unable to bear the weight of her remorse, Eve’s eyelids slowly closed, and the tears that had been brimming finally overflowed, cascading down her cheeks. In that moment, Ethan felt as if he were being swept away by that same flood; tears welled up in his own throat.

Suppressing his surging emotions, Ethan sank into despair. The mere fact that he sympathized with Eve’s tears meant he believed her confession. He had essentially confessed to himself that he was the murderer who killed his own child.

No.

Ethan shook his head violently.

It’s a lie. Infertility, our child being dead… saying such nonsense… after showing no sign of it all this time….

Just as he tried with all his might to dismiss the facts he didn’t want to believe as a poorly written novel and let out a scoff, a sudden memory surfaced, making it impossible for him to even breathe, let alone laugh.

Had Eve really… shown no sign of it?

—I am… jealous of Chantal.

Eve’s confession felt too familiar to be a hastily fabricated lie. It resembled something Ethan himself had said once.

—A woman so jealous of another woman with a child because she can’t have one herself?

That was his own thoughtless interpretation of a painting showing a hen brooding over eggs.

Back then, Eve had bitten her lip until it bled, glaring at him as if she wanted him dead. At the time, he hadn’t understood. He hadn’t known why that woman—who had nothing to do with the painting—acted as if she were the one being insulted by his clumsy analysis.

Now, he knew.

He knew that the stone he had carelessly thrown, unaware of her situation, had struck and burst Eve’s festering wound.

And from now on, that wound belonged to Ethan as well. Like Eve, he would become a somber bird in a dark coop, rotting away while longing for a light he could never reach.

My child. The part of me lost forever.

Finally unable to bear the weight of his tears, Ethan’s head dropped. Eve, who had been waiting for this exact moment, wiped the tears from the back of her hand and stood up.

—Seeing you suffer from the delusion that I’m pregnant makes me realize just how crazy I was…. Thanks to you, I’ve come to my senses. Thank you. I appreciate the proposal, but let’s act as if it never happened. Since there is no child.

Eve pulled off the engagement ring Ethan had forced onto her finger. The way she shoved it back into the ring box in his hand—which had fallen to the floor—was as heartless as crushing a finished cigarette into an ashtray. To this man, an engagement ring that could no longer fulfill its purpose would be as worthless as a cigarette butt.

The moment she returned the ring, Eve brushed past him without a hint of regret. Ethan didn’t stop her. When she reached the door and looked back, he was still kneeling in the same spot, his head bowed.

Like a loser.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to call him a clown who had swung his spear at empty air. To think the castle he had spent ten years trying to seize was nothing but an unreachable mirage.

Serves you right.

Behind the back of the helpless man whose revenge had run aground, Eve finally donned her smile of victory like a crown.

Ethan Fairchild, you will never take Kentrell from me.