Duke's voice through the door. Quieter than I expected.
"Yeah."
The door opened. He came in.
He was still in his uniform. His sleeves were pushed to his elbows. His hands were in his pockets. He walked to the foot of the bed and stopped.
He looked at me.
The quiet between us ran long. I could hear the monitor, the ventilation, the muffled sounds of the floor outside.
Then he said it.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I had the line ready. I'd been writing it in my head for nine months, revising it, stripping it down until it was clean and weightless. A sentence I could hand him without handing him anything underneath it.
"Keeping the baby was my choice," I said. "You don't have to be responsible for her. I'm not asking you for anything."
He looked at the floor. His hand came up to the back of his neck, and he held it there for a beat, gripping the muscle, like the words he wanted were caught somewhere between his throat and his mouth, and he was trying to work them loose.
"That's not why I'm asking," he said.
"Then what are you asking?"
A moment passed. The hand came down from his neck, and he looked at me. The charm was gone. The grin, the deflection, the room-reading posture I'd catalogued for three months of wedding planning. None of it was on his face. What was on his face was a man standing in a hospital room trying to say something true, and the truth was harder for him than anything I'd watched him do in the months I'd known him.
"I would have wanted to know," he said.
"We had an agreement."
"Fuck the agreement. This wasn't part of it." His voice didn't rise. It got quieter, which was worse. "I would have wanted to know that you were carrying my child."
My child.
The words landed in my chest and stayed.
Nine months I'd carried this alone, and in nine months, I'd built a version of Duke Rhodes who would hear the news and step back. Who would say something kind and noncommittaland leave. That was the version I planned for. That was the version I didn't tell, because not telling him meant I never had to watch him choose the door.
The man at the foot of my bed was not that version. The man at the foot of my bed had saidmy childlike the words cost him something, and he was still standing there, and I didn't know what to do with a version of Duke Rhodes I hadn't built a wall for.
"What are we doing here, Duke?"
"I'm asking you to let me be a part of this child's life."
I looked at him. He was still at the foot of the bed. He hadn't come closer. He hadn't moved toward the bassinet, toward me, or toward anything that would let him claim more space in this room than I was willing to give him. He was standing where he stood and asking.
Duke Rhodes was not a man who stayed. He was the man this town knew as charming, fun, light on his feet, lighter with his goodbyes. I'd heard his name in the same sentence as half a dozen women in three years, none of whom lasted past a season. He was Tuesday nights, easy weekends, and the goodbye at the end of it. My daughter was not going to be the thing he tried because it seemed like the right thing to do, and then walked away from when the trying got hard.
"I don't know, Duke." I met his eyes. "Are you ready to be a father?"
He went still. The question landed, and I watched it hit him. He didn't reach for the grin or the deflection. He stood there with his hands at his sides.
"I'm not," he said.
I nodded. I believed him. That was the problem.
He looked at the floor. His jaw worked. He looked at the bassinet for the first time since he walked in, and I saw hiseyes go to the small shape under the striped blanket. Whatever crossed his face, he didn't try to manage it.
