The words sit between us.
Heavy.
Real.
She stares at me.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
A breath leaves me that almost sounds like a laugh.
“We just found out,” I say. “When I woke up.”
Her expression shifts again, shock melting into something softer, something warmer.
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Lia…”
I nod slightly, my hand resting unconsciously over my stomach.
“I’m just over six weeks.”
She leans back in her chair, processing it, her gaze flicking briefly to my stomach and then back to my face.
“So what does this mean?” she asks quietly.
“It means nothing changes,” I say, more certain than I expected to sound. “We’re still together. All of us. We’re going to raise this baby together.”
She studies me for a long moment.
“Well,” she says slowly, a small smile pulling at her lips, “I guess that makes me an aunt.”
Emotion hits me again, softer this time, warmer.
“Of course it does.”
She reaches for my hand, squeezing it gently.
“Jesus,” she mutters. “Okay. So… we’ve got a hen’s day to plan. And now a baby shower.”
A laugh slips out of me, mixed with something else, something lighter than anything I’ve felt since I woke up.
“Looks like it.”
And for the first time since I woke, something almost feels normal.
thirty-five
Jackson
The hallway outside Lia’s room feels like it’s holding its breath.
It isn’t quiet in the way silence usually is, because there’s still movement, still nurses passing, still the low hum of a place that doesn’t stop just because your world did, but everything about it feels suspended anyway, like time has slowed just enough to make every second stretch longer than it should.
I haven’t sat down.
I tried once, long enough to realize that being still makes it worse, makes everything catch up too quickly, so now I’m pacing instead, back and forth across the same few steps like if I keep moving, I won’t have to feel the way my chest tightens every time I think too hard about what’s on the other side of that door.
Zach leans against the wall, arms folded, his focus fixed somewhere ahead of him, but I can see it in the way his jaw shifts slightly every few seconds, the way his fingers flex and still again, that he’s not as steady as he looks.
