Betrayed by My Husband, Desired by a Stranger

Grace pov

"Spread your legs slowly, Grace!"

I lay on the soft examination bed with my eyes closed, fingers instinctively twisting the sheets. This was already the third time, and yet I was still nervous.

I held my breath. Every muscle in my body tensed involuntarily. Then something cold and hard forced my vagina open — a long, rigid instrument pushing through, past my cervix.

My body felt feverish. My breasts swelled until they ached. I wanted to come. I wanted Eric to fuck me hard.

"All done, Grace! Stay flat for twenty minutes, then you're free to go."

My eyes snapped open.

I was in a hospital.

Ten days of follicle-stimulating injections, and today was the day my doctor had scheduled the trigger shot.

But why did my body keep slipping into these sexual hallucinations? Was it because Eric hadn't touched me in so long?

I lay perfectly still, one hand resting gently over my abdomen — dotted with the fine puncture marks of countless needles.

A fragile hope filled my chest. I wanted so badly to conceive Eric's child this time. I wanted all of this pain to finally be over.

When the twenty minutes passed, the treatment room had emptied.

I straightened my clothes and decided to stop by Dr. Jerry's office before heading home — I needed to ask about the worsening swelling in my body.

I was about to knock when voices drifted through the door.

"Do me a favor — when Grace comes looking for me later, just tell her I'm not in, okay?"

"Why, Jerry? She's already been through so much."

"Look, the thing is — it's not that Grace can't get pregnant. It's that my buddy Eric doesn't want her to. They've been lacing her injections with a heavy dilutant. It'll throw her hormones into chaos, but I promise you, this is the last time Grace will ever set foot in this hospital. Because Eric's true love is back."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I stumbled. My outstretched hand froze in midair.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My heart felt like it had been fed into a meat grinder — the pain so crushing I couldn't breathe.

My mind went completely blank. I turned to leave — and stopped.

Not far down the corridor stood my husband. The man who had always claimed to love me.

He wore his usual immaculate black suit, not a single crease out of place. But cradled against his side was a soft, beautiful woman.

She had on a red dress that skimmed her hips, and her face — smooth, rosy, flawless — looked like something sculpted for a Barbie doll.

The moment I recognized her face, a sharp pain lanced through my chest.

It was Isabella. My stepsister.

We weren't related by blood, but we'd always gotten along well enough — or so I'd believed.

When I was six, Isabella wandered off and got lost. My father and stepmother blamed me. From that day on, warmth was something I never found in that house.

When Isabella was finally brought home, every good thing the family had to offer flowed to her. The attention. The resources. Everything.

So I became an athlete. I thought if I achieved something, my parents might finally be proud of me — that I could earn my place in that family, find some tenderness there.

Now I understood it had all been wishful thinking.

The memory tightened my fingers until they went white. Something lodged in my throat. I couldn't breathe. I watched Eric guide Isabella down the corridor and pressed myself into the corner.

"Bella, the doctor said it's only a minor vaginal tear and it's healing well. Grace is coming home after her injection this afternoon — she's an athlete, she knows about these things. Why don't you let her take a look?"

Eric knew I had a hospital appointment today. And yet here he was, walking these halls with Isabella on his arm. Rage ignited in my chest — then turned to ice.

"Thank you, Eric," Isabella said.

"There's something else I should tell you. A few days ago, Grace's coach called — something about next season. I picked up."

"You answered her phone?"

"Mm. I told him Grace had already decided to leave the team. I said there was no need to call again."

Eric's brow furrowed.

"Isa, that wasn't your call to make."

"Are you blaming me?" Isabella let out a soft laugh. "If it weren't for her back then, I never would have gotten lost in the first place—"

"You acted impulsively," Eric said — but the hardness in his eyes softened into something unmistakably tender.

I stood there as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.

So the coach had called.

He'd tried to reach me. And I never knew.

I thought back to a few days ago, when I'd arrived at the rink forty minutes late. That morning I'd gone to the hospital first for my injection. I'd bitten down and made no sound when the needle went in — but afterward I'd crouched in the treatment room bathroom and retched for a long time. By the time I reached the rink, my teammates had already finished their warm-up.

Coach had been standing at the boards, watching me. He said nothing.

But I fell three times that day.

He blew his whistle and called me over.

"Grace."

He looked down at my stats sheet, his voice level. "You already know what your numbers have been looking like."

I said nothing.

"You're the fastest winger on this team. When you joined three years ago, I told you that you had the potential to make the national squad."

He closed the folder.

"But right now you can't even keep up in internal scrimmages. You've missed a third of our training sessions, and in the other two-thirds, you're a different player out there on the ice."

His voice carried a quiet resignation. "I know you're married now. You have your own life. But hockey doesn't wait. You're twenty-six, Grace. If things keep going like this, your name won't be on next season's roster."

I had stood at the boards that day in my heavy gear, sweat and tears running down my face together.

My teammates glided past on the ice. The clean, sharp sound of blades cutting the surface rang out — distant, like it belonged to another world.

"Honestly—"

Isabella's voice dragged me back to the present.

"She's at the hospital three times a week. Every other hour she's either at the rink or sleeping it off. Eric, how have you put up with this for years?"

Eric's brow creased.

"Grace has her own ambitions. I can't stand in the way of that. I want to see her shine in her own world — same goes for you. And what happened between us that night — I'll take responsibility."

"Responsibility?" Isabella's voice dropped. "Aren't you afraid Grace will find out?"

"Find out what?"

Every nerve in my body pulled taut as I listened, because I no longer knew whether I could survive another blow.

"Find out that you had your brother spike her injections with a heavy dilutant." Isabella's voice fell to almost a whisper. "Or find out that your marriage certificate is a fake."