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That night, I lay in bed with my hand resting over my growing bump.
Eli’s new train model sat on the nightstand beside me, the tiny locomotive gleaming under the lamplight. He had insisted on showing me every piece before going to sleep, excitement flickering in his eyes in a way I hadn’t seen in weeks.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I whispered softly to the baby inside me.
“I won’t let you grow up thinking chaos is normal. I won’t let Eli believe this is what family is supposed to look like.”
My fingers traced small circles over my stomach.
“I have to find a way out… eventually.”
The room stayed silent.
No answers.
No plan.
No savings.
Just the slow, steady thump of life growing inside me… and the weight of two boys depending on me in a house that felt like it was closing in around us.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Every single day.
Chapter 18
Hadley
Ron’s call came two days ago.
No greeting. No small talk. No fake politeness to soften the blow. Just his voice barking through the speaker like I was a contract clause that had started malfunctioning.
“Photoshoot Friday. Two p.m. Courtyard. Cal, you, the teen, the bump. Soft family spread. Magazine wants a behind-the-scenes baby announcement to shut down the scandal noise and clean up Cal’s public image. You’re doing it.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, pressing the phone so tightly against my ear it left an ache long after he finished speaking.
“I don’t want cameras near Eli,” I said quietly.
“Too bad,” Ron snapped. “Contract says cooperate with PR obligations. You don’t, we pull financial support. Tutors gone. Security gone. You deal with paparazzi climbing the gate alone. Your choice.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the black screen, my reflection staring back like someone I barely recognized. My hand slid automatically to my stomach. The bump shifted slightly beneath my palm, a slow roll that always startled me, like the baby was reminding me that none of this was performance. None of this was staged.
We were real.
And we were trapped inside something carefully manufactured to look like love.
......
Friday arrived like a bruise blooming under skin, slow, inevitable, tender in all the wrong ways.
