“You’re still here,” his boss, Robert, interrupted.
“I know,” he replied, shooting him a glance. “Time seems to have slipped away on me.”
Robert scowled. He wasn’t a fool. In his sixties, he’d been reading people for over thirty years, and Logan couldn’t help but feel that, in the moment, Robert was staring at him through a looking glass, analysing each silent clue of his mind.
“What’s going on with you?” he finally said, pulling the seat from under the desk to sit down. “You’ve been distracted lately.”
“I’m—” Logan cut himself off. If he lied, Robert would see it. “I’m going through a break-up,” he said instead. He could manage a half-lie and get away with it. Robert wouldn’t answer questions if he sensed an element of truth; it wasn’t in his nature to.
“A break-up? I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”
Logan shrugged, the weight of his emotions pressing harder against his chest. “It wasn’t anything serious, more like a friendship,” he explained. “There was something there, and now…now, there isn’t. That kind of thing.”
“She must have been more than a friend for it to be affecting you so much,” Robert paused and leant back in his chair, studying him. “Whether you like it or not, it seems to me, you’ve got it bad.”
“I really don’t.”
Robert sighed, slow and deliberate, like he’d seen this exact conversation play out before. Maybe he had, just with different people. “Have you always been this way?”
Logan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You’re very stubborn, Logan. You always have been. Do you want to know what I’ve learned about stubborn people?”
He phrased it like a question, but Logan knew he wasn’t going to wait for an answer.
“That resistance, that mentality you have,” he continued, “that need to prove to everyone that you’re invincible—it’ll kill you in the end. We are nothing without our emotions, Logan. The minute you force yourself to shut them off, you risk losing the one thing that makes us human.”
Robert had a point, and deep down, Logan knew it. A man could hide behind forced smiles, weave lies into his words, pretend the weight of the world hadn’t settled on his shoulders. But the eyes always give the truth away.
“Whoever she is, don’t let her be the one that got away,” he added, biting his lip. “You know as well as I do, an unsettled mind isn’t a healthy one.”
He left, and Logan sat there, lost in his thoughts. Suddenly, he felt small, like that young boy again, sitting on the floor of the pub, watching his mother give away her love without a second thought. She swore it had been all for him, and each pound sheearned would give him a better life, but he knew more now. His mother had been lonely. In strangers' beds and one-hour flings, she’d starve it off long enough to convince herself she hadn’t lost the beauty of her youth. And then, as time passed and reality came calling, she’d rationalise her actions as healing. Her logic was broken, and although it took him years to figure it out, so was she.
Did that mean he was, too?
He knew better than anyone that there’s an unspoken, emotional pull between two broken souls—and he’d sensed that damaged connection in Daisy from the moment they met. Maybe, buried beneath the confusion, that’s all it was: a desire to fix her. To show her that the world may be broken, but that doesn’t mean she has to be. Perhaps, like with his mother, he wanted to prove that love is sacred, that she didn’t have to give it away. Then again, maybe he was just a hypocrite. After all, twice engaged and once married, he wasn’t exactly the best example.
XIX
DAISY
Daisy tried to keep some semblance in the hours that followed. It would’ve been easier to cancel her midwife appointment, to lie in bed and draft a list of future possibilities. But whatever lay ahead in the coming days, one thing remained unchanged: there were three of them in the picture, not two.
“I bet your husband is excited,” the midwife said to Daisy as she checked her later that morning. “I suspect she’s going to come any day now.”
She swallowed hard, the memory of the morning's conversation lingering in her mind. She’d always feared something would happen to Callan, but it wasn’t just the feeling she’d been afraid of—it was worse. So much worse.Like something in her, something soft, pure, and completely unguarded, had been ruined.
People talked about these things in the abstract, as if change were just a concept, something inevitable and theoretical. They never explained how it felt when it actually happened, when it seeped into the fabric of life and tore through everything, leaving the shape of your world unrecognisable.
If the midwife noticed her silence, she didn’t mention it. But then, why would she? They weren’t familiar, not really. Her usual midwife had been called away for an unexpected delivery, and she’d only met this one once before.
“Now, I’d suggest you take it easy over the next few days,” the midwife said. “Call us if you notice any signs of labour. I see you’ve been having Braxton Hicks for the past few weeks; real labour might feel the same at first. The difference is, unlike the ‘fake ones,’ they’ll build in intensity.” She moved to the right side of the bed, reaching for the blood pressure cuff. “A lot of first-time mothers think it’s like the films, that your water breaks, and suddenly, it’s all happening. In my twenty years as a midwife, I can tell you, more often than not, it isn’t like that.”
Daisy nodded, watching the midwife wrap the cuff around her arm and pump it tight. The woman’s expression shifted slightly.
“You’re reading a bit high this morning,” she murmured, almost to herself. She measured again, then unstrapped the cuff. “Would you mind doing a small urine sample for me?”
In theory, Daisy could’ve explained. She could’ve told the midwife she’d had a stressful morning, that her heart had been stuck in her throat since she’d woken up. But she wasn’t ready to share it—not with her, not with anyone. So, she gave the sample, and whatever the midwife saw in it seemed to put her at ease.
