Page 171 of Hidden

I had cried until there was nothing left in me but exhaustion. And still, somehow, tears continued to come.

My fingers tightened around the scan picture in my lap, crumpling the edge before I quickly smoothed it out again,panic lancing through me at the thought of damaging it. It was ridiculous, really. There was no future where I would be tucking this into a baby book, no future where I would be pulling it out years from now, smiling at how tiny our child had once been… no future where I got to keep any of this.

And yet I still couldn’t bear the thought of ruining it.

The image blurred as fresh tears welled. I blinked them away, but another escaped anyway, sliding hot down my cheek and dropping onto the paper. I cursed softly under my breath and dabbed it away with the sleeve of my jumper, my vision swimming once more as I looked at the little shape on the scan.

Our baby.

I pressed my lips together so tightly they hurt.

For one stupid, reckless moment at the clinic, I had let myself believe in him again. Not just in us—in him. In Luke. In the boy who had once kissed my knuckles and sworn he’d never let me go. In Vienna, who had sat beside me so still and watchful, his hand on my thigh, his eyes fixed on the screen with a look so raw and unguarded that I’d had to look away before it broke me.

He had looked at that tiny flicker like it already belonged to him.

And perhaps that had been my real mistake. Not getting pregnant. Not falling in love with him all those years ago. Not even meeting him.

No, my mistake had been allowing myself, just for a second, to imagine that the universe might be kind enough to let me keep something.

It wasn’t.

It never had been.

Dragging in a shaky breath, I lowered the scan picture to my lap and scrubbed both hands over my face, trying to steady myself before I was sick all over the floor. I felt hollowed out. Flayed open. Every thought I had seemed to come back to him,to the look on his face as my father tossed that bag at his chest, to the way he had stood there so still, as though if he moved even an inch, he would shatter in front of everyone.

Vienna had not fought back.

That was the part I couldn’t stop replaying.

Any other man in his position would have launched himself across the room. Any other biker would have met humiliation with violence. But not him. He had just stood there, looking at me as though he no longer recognised the shape of the world, and somehow that had been infinitely worse. I think I would have preferred him screaming. I would have preferred hatred. I would have preferred him calling me every filthy name he could drag up from his soul, because then at least I would know where I stood.

But Vienna had looked at me like I was something he still couldn’t quite let himself believe in. Like some part of him was still waiting for me to say it wasn’t real.

A sound left my throat then, small and broken, and I folded over myself, pressing the heel of my hand hard against my mouth to stop the sob from escaping and carrying through the house.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t think about him and the baby and the bag and the look in his eyes all in the same breath, or I really would choke on it.

Forcing myself upright again, I reached for the glass of water on my bedside table, only to realise it wasn’t there. My gaze caught instead on the desk across the room, on the pale envelope sitting in the middle of the wood.

For a moment I just stared at it, too tired to make sense of what I was seeing. Then my stomach tightened. I got to my feet too quickly, dizziness sweeping through me hard enough that I had to grab the bedpost to steady myself before crossing the room.

There was no name written on the front. Nothing to identify it at all. Just a plain cream envelope, sealed neatly and placed so deliberately in the centre of the desk.

My fingers shook as I picked it up.

Inside, I found another scan picture.

The one I had watched him slide into the inside pocket of his cut before we left the clinic. The one I had known, somehow, he would keep on him.

My breath caught.

Tucked behind it was a small silver charm, delicate and bright even in the dim light of my room. It was a pram. Tiny, detailed, ridiculous in how sweet it was. The sort of thing that should have made me laugh through my tears if the ache in my chest wasn’t so severe.

A baby charm.

For the bracelet of “us”.

The sight of it undid me more efficiently than anything else that night had managed. My knees weakened, and I sank down into the desk chair before they could give out completely, clutching the scan picture in one hand and the charm in the other like I might somehow anchor myself with them.