“I’ll be right back.” The doctor scurries away, probably to avoid the awkwardness she caused.
“Did you know you were pregnant?” I breathe out.
Roxy looks the same. Exactly the same. And yet, nothing is.
Something in my chest shifts, sharp and irrevocable. I look at her, and see more than the woman who challenged me, tempted me, dismantled me piece by piece.
I see gravity. Continuity. Consequence.
A future.
It’s not the word pregnant that changes her. It’s the way it changes me.
Because suddenly, every path I’ve taken, every plan, every grudge, every carefully nurtured revenge, feels small. Temporary. Like crutches I no longer need.
This matters.
In this moment, right now, the differences between us cease to exist. And without any conscious decision, any calculation, any deliberation, I’m thinking about showing up.
About doing something right instead of proving someone else wrong.
“You really think I would have been so careless if I had known?” Roxy says quietly. She closes her eyes, dragging in a breath like she’s bracing for impact. “Jesus.”
The words land like a fracture.
My brief, fragile surge of certainty falters. Not because I doubt this, but because I don’t know how she feels about it. About us. About the possibility that just detonated my world.
“Am I the father?” The words tumble from my mouth, the underlying doubt tainting the moment.
She snorts. “I wish I knew.”
It’s like she stabbed me with a poisoned arrow. Shedoesn’t know who the father is? How many men has she been sleeping with?
“Fuuuuck,” I growl, and leave before I say or do something I would regret. There has been enough of that already.
The pain reverberates through my knuckles, up my forearm, into my elbow where it tingles red and angry.
Motherfucker.
Unlike my arm, the wall I punched seems unaffected. I lower my forehead to the cold plaster, letting the sting anchor me.
“Sir.”
I more sense than see the security guard.
I push off the wall. The uniformed man in front of me looks at me with compassion.
“I’m okay.”
He glances at the wall that survived my outburst better than my hand. “Maybe take a walk outside.”
I nod, turning toward the elevator. With a shaky, bruised hand, I reach for the button, but I can’t press it.
It feels wrong to walk away from her. I don’t know if the baby is mine. And yet… I already do.
Not as a fact, but as a truth that settles deep in my bones. Terrifying, and somehow right.
The idea that this child could be mine doesn’t scare me. It claims me.
