“No.”
She blinks once. “That’s what you’re calling this? Being honest?”
“Yes.”
Her jaw tightens. “You knew the entire time and didn’t say a word, and that’s your version of honesty?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?” she demands.
“Because telling you wouldn’t return him.”
Her face goes still. Wrong answer. Not untrue. But still wrong.
“No,” she says, sharper now. “Don’t do that. Don’t reduce it to just him.”
I don’t move.
“It wouldn’t have returned him,” she continues, voice rising despite herself, “but it would have returned me.”
Silence. There are wounds a man recognizes only when another person names the thing he stole. I stole her knowledge. Her timing. Her choice.
She takes a breath, but it doesn’t steady her. “If I had known,” she says, and now the words come faster, less controlled, “before I stayed, before Rory came here and offered me a way out, before I made that decision?—”
She stops. Her hand moves to her stomach again.
“Before this,” she says.
“Yes.”
The word is too small. All words are. She looks at me like she wants to tear the answer out of me.
“You let me build a life on a lie,” she says.
“No.”
Her head snaps slightly. “No?”
“I let you build it inside one.”
The distinction lands. She stares at me. For a second, I think she might laugh.
“God,” she says, shaking her head, voice breaking at the edges now, “you’re awful.”
I nod.
“And worse,” she continues, “you actually believe that makes a difference.”
“It does.”
“To you,” she fires back. “Only to you.” She looks down for a moment. “You took that from me,” she says, quieter but not softer. “You took the moment where I could have known what I was choosing. You don’t get to decide that didn’t matter.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t.”
She scoffs. “You acted like it didn’t.”
“Yes.”
