Chapter 1

My water broke on the bathroom floor, and my husband's mother stepped over me to answer the phone.

"She's in labor," Victoria Ashworth said, sounding bored. "Once the baby's out, we'll finalize the divorce papers. Make sure the lawyer is ready."

I clutched my belly, contractions ripping through me like lightning, and screamed for help. Victoria glanced down the way someone looks at a stain on the carpet.

"Stop being dramatic, Elara. The driver will take you to the hospital. Weston is busy."

Weston. My husband. The man who had begged me to carry his child when no other surrogate would match his rare blood type. The man who had held my face in his hands at the courthouse and whispered, "I'll take care of you. I promise."

That was nine months ago.

The driver dropped me at a public hospital, not the private one listed in my prenatal file. I was wheeled into a room with flickering lights and a nurse who looked overwhelmed. Nobody called Weston. Nobody called anyone.

Fourteen hours of labor. Alone.

When my daughter finally came into the world screaming, I sobbed and reached for her. The nurse placed her on my chest for exactly eleven seconds before Victoria walked in with two men in suits.

"That's the Ashworth heir," Victoria said. "Take her."

"No—" I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn't cooperate. Stitches. Blood loss. My arms were shaking. "She's my daughter. You can't—"

Victoria placed a document on my bedside table. "Clause 14 of your surrogacy-marriage contract. The child belongs to the Ashworth family upon delivery. You've fulfilled your purpose."

One of the suited men lifted my baby from my arms. She was so small. So warm. Her tiny fingers had just curled around my pinky.

"Please," I begged. "Let me hold her one more time—"

"Weston has already signed the divorce filing," Victoria continued, ignoring me completely. "You'll receive the agreed-upon 50,000 dollars. Your things have been removed from the estate."

She placed an envelope on the table. Thin. Just a check and a new copy of who I was to them: nobody.

I watched them carry my daughter out the door. Her cry echoed down the hallway, getting softer, and softer, until it was gone.

I lay in that hospital bed, hemorrhaging, and no one came to check on me for two hours. When a nurse finally did, she turned pale and called a code. I heard the words "severe postpartum hemorrhage" and "losing her" before the world went black.

The last thing I saw was the fluorescent light above me buzzing, flickering, like it couldn't decide whether to stay on.

I died at 3:47 a.m., twenty-six years old, in a hospital hallway because they couldn't get me into the OR fast enough.

And then I opened my eyes.

The ceiling fan above me was spinning slowly. I was lying on the bed in Weston's guest room—the room he'd assigned me when I moved in, because his bedroom was "private."

My phone screen read: March 3rd.

Six months before my due date.

My hand moved to my stomach. The bump was there. Small. Second trimester.

I was alive. I was back. And I remembered everything.