Page 51 of The Endless Want

Where that choice leads… I’m not sober enough to know. But I know exactly who I’ll be thinking about until the sun rises.

CHAPTER 14

Ailish

Mackenzie comes down the next morning with two training bags over her shoulder, exactly like she said she would, and nobody so much as looks up.

She drops them inside my office, shuts the door with her heel, and says, "Talk."

So I do. I get about six words in before she crosses the room and sits on the edge of my desk, close enough that I have to say the rest of it quietly, and when I finally get the word out she doesn't gasp or reach for me or make it bigger than it already is.

"You haven't taken it," she says.

"No."

"Then we're taking it. Not here." She's already thinking. "Not in a building where somebody empties your bin."

Which is how I end up at my own apartment that night, for the first time in five weeks, because Mackenzie went to Liam and asked for it as a favor and Liam said yes without asking her why.

Two guards escort me up. They sweep the place and stand outside, and the silence inside the unit is startling, like a void I've been missing without realizing it. No footsteps. No men on radios. No Liam pacing.

Just me. And the small paper bag on my dresser like a detonator.

I've been ignoring the nausea for weeks. Telling myself it was stress, or lack of sleep, or too much coffee. Telling myself I'm strong enough to push through anything. But strength doesn't stop your hands from shaking when you finally open the bag.

I take it into the bathroom. The tile is cold under my feet, and the overhead light hums faintly, almost metallic. I’ve spent so long running from this moment, but standing here, alone for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I realize there isn’t anywhere left to run.

My reflection in the mirror doesn’t look like me. My cheeks are pale. My eyes look darker. My lips are pressed so tight they almost vanish.

I look like someone bracing for a blow.

“Just do it,” I whisper to myself.

My fingers fumble with the wrapper. The test feels too small. Too plain. Too fragile to hold the kind of answer that could change everything.

When it’s done—when I place it on the sink counter—I can’t look. I turn away, heart pounding in my throat, muscles coiled tight. I grip the edge of the counter until my knuckles ache.

The seconds stretch, thick and oppressive.

I force myself to turn and look.

Two lines.

Not faint. Not a trick of the eye. Not a maybe.

Positive.

My knees nearly buckle. “No,” I whisper, backing away from the counter as if the test itself is dangerous. “No, no, no—” But denial doesn’t wash the lines away. The room tilts. My breathing fractures. The world narrows to a silent scream inside my skull.

Pregnant.

A child conceived in a moment of fear and adrenaline and desperation and something else neither of us could name even now. A moment that shouldn’t have happened—and yet did, with a force that stripped me bare.

My hands fly to my mouth as the spiral hits me full force—fear, dread, confusion, grief, longing, anger, love, shame, hope, terror—all swirling like a storm I can’t outrun.

I stumble out of the bathroom, clutching the phone before I realize I've even picked it up. She answers on the first ring. She's been waiting on it.

"Positive," I say.