Time did not slow down for anyone else.
By the time Jasmine entered her second trimester, the city she had left behind had already rewritten her absence into something convenient.
At Acland Group, her name was no longer spoken in meetings. Her office—once carefully arranged, immaculate—had been cleared and reassigned. In its place stood efficiency, silence, and a narrative that excluded her entirely.
Keith made sure of that.
"Personal matters should not distract us," he told the board, voice measured, expression composed. "The transition has been completed."
No one asked what transition meant.
They nodded. They moved on.
From the outside, his life looked uninterrupted—record profits, expanded contracts, polished interviews. The divorce had become a footnote, a brief curiosity the media quickly replaced with the next story.
And yet, something was wrong.
---
Keith noticed it in small, inconvenient ways.
He noticed it when he reached for his phone at night and found no one to text. When a deal closed and there was no one whose approval he instinctively sought. When the penthouse felt less like a fortress and more like a museum.
Too clean. Too empty.
"She always hated the echo in here," he muttered once, standing alone in the living room.
The thought irritated him.
Jasmine had chosen this. She had made the scene. She had walked away.
That was the story he repeated to himself until it almost sounded true.
---
The other woman—Lila—didn't help.
She was present in all the ways Jasmine had once been absent: visible, attentive, agreeable. She laughed at his jokes. She asked about his day. She never challenged his decisions.
And yet—
"You seem distracted," Lila said one evening over dinner. "Is everything okay?"
Keith looked up sharply. "Of course."
She smiled, but there was calculation behind it. "You still think about her."
He set his fork down. "This isn't about Jasmine."
Lila's smile thinned.
It was always about Jasmine.
---
In a quieter city, far from boardrooms and headlines, Jasmine's world continued to narrow and deepen.
She had begun to show—not enough to be obvious to strangers, but enough that her clothes fit differently. She adjusted without complaint, choosing comfort over concealment. There was no one here she needed to explain herself to.
At work, her supervisor noticed first.
"If you need flexible hours," the woman said gently one afternoon, "we can adjust."
"Thank you," Jasmine replied. "I will."
No probing questions. No assumptions.
Respect.
---
On weekends, Jasmine walked the park paths slowly now, mindful of her balance, her breath. Children ran past her, shrieking with laughter. Parents called after them, voices full of practiced concern.
She watched without longing.
Only intention.
She sat on a bench and placed both hands over her abdomen, the motion no longer tentative.
"I'm ready," she whispered.
The child did not answer.
But the quiet felt companionable.
---
That same evening, Keith stood in his office, staring at a familiar signature on a document from months ago.
Jasmine Towers Acland.
He didn't remember the last time he'd seen her write her name.
"She didn't take anything," the investigator said over the phone. "No jewelry. No assets she could have claimed."
"Why?" Keith asked.
A pause. "Because she wasn't planning to come back."
The words struck harder than Keith expected.
He ended the call and poured himself a drink he didn't finish.
For the first time, a question surfaced that unsettled him far more than anger.
What if she hadn't left to punish him?
What if she had left because she no longer needed him at all?
---
In her apartment that night, Jasmine turned off the lamp and lay in the dark, breathing evenly.
She did not know what stories were being told about her.
She did not care.
What mattered was growing steadily within her—unseen, protected, untouched by the world that had failed her.
And with every quiet day that passed, the distance between who she had been and who she was becoming grew wider.
That distance was not empty.
It was freedom.