Page 208 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

The thought strikes with such force that I stop in the hallway.

I should get in the car, drive back to the hospital, walk into her room, and sit beside her until morning. I should hold her hand. I should tell her I’m scared, but not of her. Not of the baby. Not of the future.

I should tell her she isn’t alone.

My hand goes to my keys.

I don’t move.

The hospital room comes back too vividly. The beeping. The IV. Addy’s face pale against the pillow. Her hand on her stomach. The doctor’s voice. Pregnant. Observation. Ultrasound in the morning.

Then another hospital, another call, another woman I loved somewhere I couldn’t reach in time.

Megan was gone before I arrived.

I didn’t get to hold her hand. I didn’t get to tell her to stay. I didn’t get to bargain with her or physics or whatever cruel equation decides when metal fails and bodies break and lives split into before and after.

I got a report, wreckage, experts telling me pilot error while I stood in a room full of men who’d never seen Megan fly and listened to them turn her final moments into a mistake.

My knees nearly buckle. I grip the edge of the console table and lower my head.

Not again.

Captain whines.

“I’m fine,” I say.

The dog doesn’t believe me. Sensible animal.

I make it to my office and close the door, not because I want privacy from anyone, but because I need a barrier between myself and the life outside it. Oliver asleep. Addy absent. My family expanding before I’ve even understood that I have one again.

Family.

The word is dangerous. It offers too much. It can be taken too easily.

I sit at my desk, but I don’t open the laptop. Instead, I stare at my phone. Addy’s contact is on the screen.

I could call.

No. She needs rest. She’s probably sleeping.

I left her there.

Yes, Oliver needed me. Yes, the doctors said she was stable. Yes, I told her I’d come back first thing.

But I left.

And Addy has been left before.

By Bryce. At the airport. In public. With no apartment, no plan, no safety net. She told me enough pieces for me to understand the wound, and tonight I pressed my thumb directly into it.

My stomach turns.

I scroll through my contacts and find Luci.

She answers on the fourth ring, voice rough with sleep and suspicion. “If this is Bryce, I’ve learned new words since last time.”

“It’s Ethan.”