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The door clicks shut.

Silence stretches for a beat.

“I saw your Facebook post.” Veronica says, not even looking at me as she sits on the exam table. “You’re really going to marry her?”

“Yes I am.” I mutter, watching her carefully as I try to figure out where this is going to go.

She finally looks me in the eyes. “Even though you’re having a baby with me?”

I sigh, rubbing a hand over my jaw. “Yeah.”

Veronica’s mouth tightens. “Well, I don’t want her around our child.”

I huff out a short breath. “She’s going to be my wife. She and I have a child together. We live together. What exactly do you expect me to do?”

“You can spend time with our baby at my house,” she says, that smug little edge creeping into her voice.

“No. Veronica—boundaries. I’m not doing that.”

Before she can push it, the door opens.

The sonographer walks in, clipboard in hand, cheerful as she greats Veronica. “Hey mom! I’m Rebecca, I’ll be your sonographer. Is this Dad with us today?”

“Yes, it is.” Veronica glares at me—daring me to say differently—before laying back on the table and lifting her shirt.

I stay in the chair next to the bed, arms crossed tight as I watch Rebecca get everything prepped. The gel squelches as she applies it, and the screen flickers to life. The steady whoosh of the heartbeat fills the room.

“Is this your guys’ first?” Rebecca asks, moving the wand.

“Yes,” Veronica says.

“No.” I say at the same time.

She glances between us. “Blended family?”

I exhale through my nose. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Rebecca nods and keeps going, measuring and pointing things out.

When we get to the gender question, Veronica jumps in fast.

“I’d like to wait,” she says quickly, shooting me a sharp look. “We’re doing a reveal party.”

I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I want to know now. I already told you that.”

“No,” Veronica cuts in, her tone sugary but her eyes hard. “It’s supposed to be a surprise. That’s the whole point of the party.”

I let out a short, humorless laugh. “I told you I’m not going. So why the hell should I have to wait?”

Veronica’s smile tightens into something sharp and brittle. “Because it’s my pregnancy, Simon. You don’t get to take that from me just because you don’t want to be involved.”

I swallow the retort that wants to claw its way out. Blaire’s voice echoes in my head, reminding me this isn’t about me. I force my shoulders to loosen, even though every muscle feels like it’s vibrating with frustration.

“I’m not trying to take anything from you,” I say, keeping my voice low and measured even as the heat rises in my chest. “I just want to know now. This isn’t only about the party. I could get emergency deployment orders at any minute. I’d want to know before I had to leave. I didn’t get that with Theo.”

The words hang in the air between us, and the second they leave my mouth I’m surprised by how true they feel. The last time I got pulled out on short notice was right before Blaire’s anatomy scan. Usually I get a couple weeks’ notice before a deployment, but the military doesn’t always care about what’s going on in your personal life. The idea of that happening again—missing a big moment during a pregnancy, if this does turn out to be mine—sits uncomfortably in my gut. Unease twists with something heavier: guilt. Because it feels like I’m betraying the life I’m trying to build with Blaire by giving even an inch of space to this.

Veronica studies me for a long moment, her expression shifting from smug to something colder. “You’re really going to use your job as leverage?”