Page 17 of Priest

Being cheated on, I could not.

If he wanted Sadie, he could have ended us. If she was the one he wanted to build around, he could have said that before he put me in a room full of people and made me watch him announce her baby like I was nothing.

I am not nothing.

And my baby will not grow up in the shadow of another woman beside him.

A few days later, after the ER takes everything I have and still demands more, I come home to my new apartment and let the quiet settle around me.

I move through the rooms slowly, barefoot on cool floors, brushing my fingers along windowsills that haven’t learned me yet. This place is still waiting for memories. That’s both comforting and strange.

In the bedroom, I open a box labeled BOOKS and pull one out at random, setting it on the nightstand. Then another. I pause when I reach the bottom, surprised by how few things I actually brought.

The old phone lies facedown in the bottom of the box.

I haven’t pulled it out. I haven’t powered it on. I don’t have a reason to.

Mostly, that’s true.

Every so often, a memory slips in uninvited. The way Priest’s voice dropped when he said my name. The way he watched my hands the first time I stitched a cut at the clubhouse, like he was trying to memorize the moment without admitting it mattered.

I let the thoughts pass.

You didn’t leave because you didn’t love him, I remind myself.

You left because you heard enough to know where you stood.

I sit on the edge of the bed and let the truth of that settle.

I loved him.

Maybe some part of me still does.

But I won’t stay with a man who gives another woman a future while keeping me tucked away in the space between his rules. I won’t raise my child beside someone else’s claim on him. Not after he stood in front of that club and made her baby sound like his joy while I stood there carrying the one he didn’t even know existed.

I can survive heartbreak.

I will not survive making myself small enough to accept that.

My hand drifts to my stomach.

Barely there.

Barely real.

“You’re not a mistake,” I whisper. “And neither am I.”

The words loosen something in my chest.

The hurt stays.

So does the breath around it.

I stand and walk to the window, looking out at the quiet street below. A couple passes by, laughing softly. Somewhere nearby, music plays through an open window.

Life keeps moving.

“So do you,” I say aloud.