“And I’ve always wondered,” I continued, “if I could even have biological children. Because I don’t have any family medical history. I don’t have a map. I don’t have?—”
A tremor hit my voice, and I hated it.
Micah’s thumb moved once, a small stroke against my skin like reassurance.
“You don’t need a map,” he said.
The certainty in his voice almost broke me.
“You say that like it’s simple,” I whispered.
“It is,” he said, and then his gaze sharpened. “And it isn’t. But it’s real.”
I blinked hard.
My body, my stupid heart, reacted to his steadiness like it was water in a drought.
“I’m not religious,” I said, because the thought had been circling my mind in a way that felt too honest to ignore. “I mean—my family talks about God sometimes, gratitude, being blessed. But I’ve never been the kind of person who thinks everything happens for a reason.”
Micah watched me like he could tell I was circling something important.
“But,” I said, “I do think … some things happen and then you have to decide what they mean.”
He nodded once.
“And being adopted,” I admitted, “has made me … weird about choice.”
His brow furrowed. “Weird how?”
I stared at the slice of sun on my wall. The dust glittering.
“I didn’t get to choose my beginning,” I said softly. “I got to choose what I did with it. I got to choose who I became. I got to choose to believe I was wanted, not tolerated.”
Micah went very still.
“And sometimes,” I said, voice barely above a whisper, “I think if something happened—if I got pregnant—I don’t know if I could see it as a mistake.”
Micah’s eyes sharpened.
“You’d want to keep it,” he said, not as a question.
My throat tightened.
“I think I’d want to let … nature decide,” I admitted. “Like fate. Like something outside me making a choice I didn’t have to force.”
The words sounded strange out loud, even to me.
Micah’s face went unreadable.
“Joy,” he said slowly, “that’s?—”
“I know,” I interrupted, cheeks burning. “It’s a lot. And it’s not logical. But it’s true.”
Silence.
Downstairs, someone laughed again. Life kept moving, completely unaware it was carrying my world on its back.
Micah’s gaze stayed on mine for a long moment.
