I feel my eyes start to sting again, and I try hard to blink them away, but it’s useless. Tears roll down my cheeks, hot and humiliating, but I keep walking like nothing is happening. A sob catches in my throat, and I clamp my jaw so tight my teeth ache. I make it half a block before I stop at a curb. My chest is heaving, and I can’t breathe because my lungs feel too small. My hands shake as I drag my phone out, screen blurring under my thumb because I’m crying too hard to see it properly.
I don’t even think. I just hit his name. It rings once. Twice. The sound is loud in my ear, intrusive. He picks up immediately. “April?” The way he says my name is alert, sharp, already reaching for control — makes something in me crack clean through.
I try to speak, and a broken sound comes out instead. A sob I can’t swallow.
“April,” he says, voice changing instantly. Softer, lower. “Hey. Hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I—I can’t—” My breath jerks. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force air into my lungs. “I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be calling you, I just?—”
“Where are you?” he asks, calming me like his hand is on the nape of my neck.
“I don’t know,” I choke out, looking around briefly before seeing someone staring at my broken state as they pass. I look down again. “I left Angela’s and I—I’m walking and I can’t?—”
“Breathe,” he says, and there’s steel under the softness now, a command wrapped in care. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Do it with me.”
I hate that it works. I hate that my body listens to him like it’s trained. “My sister—” I manage. “She said—she asked if it wasstill about the money or if it’s about you, and I—I didn’t have an answer fast enough and she?—”
“You do have an answer,” he says quietly.
The tears keep pouring. I swipe them away with the back of my hand and it just smears across my cheek. “I can’t keep emotions out of this,” I blurt, words tumbling, ugly and desperate. “I can’t. I told myself I would and I can’t, and it’s—it’s messing me up, Anthony.”
There’s a pause. Not the cold kind. The kind where he’s choosing every word carefully. “I know,” he says.
Two words, and my throat tightens so hard it hurts. “You—” I suck in air again. “You know?”
“I’ve known,” he says, voice steady.
I press my knuckles to my mouth to muffle another sob. That’s so much worse.
“I’m coming to get you,” he continues, matter-of-fact, like he’s already standing up, already grabbing his coat. “Text me your location.”
Panic spikes for a different reason, sharp and immediate. “No—Anthony, no, you’re at work. You can’t just?—”
“I can,” he cuts in.
“You shouldn’t leave,” I insist, voice shaking. “You have meetings, you—the board will ask questions, you can’t just walk out because I’m—” I swallow hard, trying to reframe it and minimize it. I want to make myself smaller. “Because I’m having a moment.”
“I don’t care,” he says, and the bluntness of it hits like a physical thing. “I’m coming.”
“Anthony—”
“April.” He says my name again, calming, anchoring. “Send me your location.”
I close my eyes. My chest rises and falls too fast. “I don’t want to be a problem,” I whisper, the words raw.
“You aren’t,” he says, and there’s no hesitation, no impatience. Just certainty. “You’re carrying my child. And you’re alone on the street crying. I can’t let that happen. Not if I have any say in it.”
My throat tightens at the way he says it, like it’s not a claim, but a responsibility he’s already accepted. “Okay,” I croak.
“Okay,” he echoes, already moving. “Stay where you are. Go inside somewhere if you can. Coffee shop, lobby, anything. Don’t wander.”
The command in his tone steadies me even as it makes my stomach flip. “I’m fine,” I try again, reflexively. “I can get myself?—”
“You don’t have to,” he says, and the softness returns, threaded through the control. “Not today.”
I swallow and the sound is loud in the quiet air around me. I realize I’m still standing at the curb like I’ve been rooted there, phone pressed to my ear, tears drying cold on my cheeks.
“Text me,” he says. “Now.”
