Page 12 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

But she could survive anything for the little baby growing inside her. What had made the floor drop a second time—because apparently the universe felt one wasn't enough—was telling her boyfriend.

She'd picked a calm and quiet moment at his apartment, while eating his favorite takeout, and laid it all out: the lab error, the intended parents walking, her decision to keep the baby. She'd even prepared for pushback. She was a woman who made pro-con lists for fun so she had responses for every fear and concern he could voice.

What she had not prepared for was the expression on his face. It wasn’t horror exactly or even anger. It was just a slow, careful rearranging of his features into something she could only describe as politely inconvenienced. Like she'd told him the restaurant they'd planned on going to was closed and they'd have to find somewhere else to eat.

" A baby's a lot," he'd said, with the tone of a man who believed he was being helpful.

“I’ve dealt with a lot before.”

“What about med-school?”

“It’s always going to be there,” she said and a part of her cried inside at the loss of a dream she’d had for most of her life.

Then his expression went beyond shock—it registered somewhere close to disgust. “You’re going to put everything on hold and give up Cornell to be a mom?”

“Cornell can wait.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’m not ruining my life for something I told you was a mistake to begin with.”

“I know. Shit happens, but it’s how we deal with it that counts. Together, we can handle this,” she’d added, hating how much pleading laced her words.

He'd carefully put his fork down in the way people set things down when they're about to say something they've been rehearsing.

"I didn't sign up for this, Sutton."

"Nobody signs up for it. That's kind of how life works."

"That's not fair."

"Fair?" She'd laughed silently. "The lab used the wrong sample, the couple walked, I'm nineteen and pregnant and alone, and you're worried about fair?"

He'd had the decency to look uncomfortable—not enough decency to stop talking, but enough to soften his words.

"My plan is kids around thirty-five. We’ve had this conversation and I thought we were on the same page. This is a lot to put on someone."

"I'm not putting it on you. I'm telling you what’s happened. There's a difference."

"Is there? Because from where I'm sitting, you've already made the decision and you're just letting me know how my life is about to change."

He hadn’t been entirely wrong. She had made the decision the second the caseworker slid the paperwork across the table and Sutton had felt something in her chest go absolutely, immovably still. But she'd thought—stupidly, as it turned out—that her boyfriend would make the same decision. That he'd sit with it for a minute, maybe two, and then look at her the way people looked at each other when things got hard and say, “We’ll figure it out together.”

Instead, he’d said, "This isn't working.”

“You said I love you. We’ve both said I love you, but you said it first. Isn’t love supposed to be about sticking together through the hard times?” Sutton had said quietly, her heart breaking with every syllable.

"Love is also about compromise and I do love you.”

“Just not enough to stick with me.”

He hadn't answered which was the only answer she needed.

She'd picked up her keys, her dignity—or what was left of it, which wasn't much, but it was hers—and walked out.

Good riddance, said every version of herself, including the ones who cried about it.

The thing was—and this was the part she'd never said out loud—it hadn't broken her heart so much as confirmed something she'd been quietly afraid of since she was five years old and her mother didn't come back from dropping her off at a fire station: that when things got complicated, people left. That she was the kind of situation people walked away from, not toward.

Which was why she'd spent the last three years proving that theory wrong, one sleepless night at a time.