Maybe Leo wasn’t the one for me. Maybe I had to search elsewhere…but just as close.

I checked in with my emotions and only one resounding offer echoed throughout.

Yes. Yes. Yes. “Yes,” I said.

Nico just hummed, kissed my hair and ordered me to sleep.

Earlier in the night I had my heart broken, but instead of bleeding out, I had encountered another, willing to piece all those severed parts back together.

I fell into sleep with a new sense of hope and opportunity.

Chapter 1

Medical Malpractice

GABRIELLA

Forty-three years old…

A small smile graced my lips as I finished preparing the extravagant dishes on the kitchen bench.

I had prepared a feast of all my husband’s favourite foods since tonight was the night he was finally coming home.

Nico was a renowned plastic surgeon and chose to challenge himself by accepting a secondment abroad for two months.

I had every intention to go with him, but our work schedules never aligned. I was the leading paediatrician at the local hospital and by the time I dealt with one crisis, two more managed to pop up.

With such demanding jobs our schedules clashed often, but this was the longest I had ever been without him.

I missed my husband terribly.

His bad jokes that aged poorly. His smoky cologne that he hadn’t changed since college. And those laughing wrinkles that deepened around his eyes. They were always there when he was with me.

We had a good life, filled with joy.

Unable to resist I sent him a message for the millionth time that day.

“Forty minutes till I see you, honey. I planned the biggest surprise for you.”

“Can’t wait, babe. Surprise? Tell me it involves you…with nothing on.”

It wasn’t me. But it was someone.

I tucked my phone away sporting a huge grin; I wanted everything to be perfect. I busied my excited mind by finding things to tidy, which had me flicking through the mail that had been neglected for far too long.

I skipped the advertisements then caught on a letter addressed to Nico. A second ticked by as I tried to work out why this sudden sense of reckoning came over me.

I recognised the logo in the corner since I had so much trauma associated with the image alone.

A pink heart with a baby handprint in the middle. One Care Fertility Clinic.

For years we had tried to get pregnant.

A baby was the one thing I truly, deeply wanted above all else, and I was denied. We explored other options, but Nico didn’t want a child that was not naturally conceived or was not biologically linked to both of us.

That was a hard period in our marriage and for my own personal wellbeing.

Despite countless investigations, there was no reasoning for why we were unsuccessful. They said it was unexplained infertility. And that took a toll on me.