I step back like she hit me. Like the word itself was a fist to my gut.
“What?” I manage, but my voice barely works.
“I’m pregnant, Knox.” Her chin trembles now, but she lifts it higher. “I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.”
My pulse stutters. The blood in my veins goes ice cold.
No.
No. No. Not this. Not again.
My body moves before my mind can catch up. I take another step back, fingers curling into fists.
“How do you even know?” I ask. My voice is taut, but I can’t stop it. “Are you sure?”
Her mouth parts, confusion flickering across her face. “What?”
“This timing, Josie, everything’s been chaos lately. Savannah showing up, the press, the mess with the restaurant, are you sure this isn’t just…”
I stop myself, barely. But the words are already there between us. Poison in the air.
Her face crumples.
“Oh wow,” she whispers. “You think I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say that,” I snap, but even I don’t believe it.
I can feel the old scars tearing open, one by one. Savannah’s voice in my head, fake tears, the positive test she waved in front of me like a trap. The press conference. The fallout. The betrayal.
This feels the same.
Too familiar.
Too dangerous.
Josie doesn’t yell.
Doesn’t cry.
She just goes quiet.
That scary, heartbreakingly calm kind of quiet that makes my stomach churn like I swallowed a bucket of nails.
She looks at me like she doesn’t even recognize the man standing in front of her.
“Okay,” she says softly. Not a whimper. Not a sob. Just a word, so even and hollow it echoes. “That’s all I needed to know.”
“Josie.” I step forward, heart in my throat, but she shakes her head.
“I thought you deserved to know,” she says, voice still eerily steady. “I thought you’d want to hear it from me. That maybe…” Her lips twitch like she’s fighting back. “Maybe you'd care. Maybe we’d figure it out. Together.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
She huffs a breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Wait, please,” I say, reaching for her.
But she takes a step back. One step, but it feels like a mile.
