If I go in there now, what happens? I apologize. I hold her in the dark and we pretend the wound is closed, and tomorrow morning we wake up and the same goddamn argument is sitting there waiting for us. She’ll want me to do things her way, and I know I have to do them mine.
There is no winning tonight, not for either of us.
And the last thing I want to do is continue the fight and risk widening the rift between us.
My hand drops to my side.
I make myself turn and walk away, even though it feels like I have to sever a part of myself to do it.
11
AVERY
My hand slides acrosscold sheets before I'm fully awake, reaching for him the way I've reached for him every morning since we started sharing this bed. Muscle memory. Need wired so deep it doesn't wait for consciousness.
My fingers find nothing but smooth, untouched fabric. His pillow still holds its shape from yesterday's making. The shape of absence.
He didn’t come to bed last night.
The penthouse is quiet. I don’t need to step out to the hallway to know I’m alone. Nick will have left for the office hours ago.
Now I regret closing the door in anger when I retreated to our bedroom. Not that he even knows. He was still talking to Beck when I turned off the light. That’s probably for the best. I wouldn’t have wanted him to see that I cried myself to sleep.
We've survived worse than one terrible fight. The secrets we kept from each other, my lies, his obsession and the lengths he took to indulge it. Our breakup, followed by the awful year we spent apart. We survived all of it. We always come back to each other.
I have to believe we'll survive this too. But right now, in this moment, his absence hurts. I feel the ache low in my chest, pressing against my ribs.
I've grown accustomed to waking tangled with him, his heartbeat the first sound of my morning, his skin warm against mine, his hands already moving over me before either of us is fully conscious. My body has learned to crave his weight, his warmth, the way he pulls me against his chest like I'm the only thing anchoring him to the world.
And he's not here. The bed feels too big. Too cold.
He didn't come to me. Didn't try to bridge what broke between us. I wanted him to fight through the distance, to prove that his love was stronger than his pride.
Instead, he gave me space I never asked for.
I sit up slowly, and the world tilts without warning.
Nausea slams into me—sharp, violent. Not the occasional twinges of queasiness I've felt lately and brushed off. This is something else entirely. Urgent. Undeniable.
I barely make it to the bathroom before my entire body heaves.
The cold tile bites into my knees as I lean over the toilet. Nothing comes up. I couldn't have swallowed any food past the knot in my throat last night, but my body doesn't care. It convulses anyway, stealing my breath until I'm gasping, trembling, wrung out.
When it finally passes, I stay there for a moment with my forehead pressed against my arm, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Stress, I tell myself. Everything that happened yesterday finally manifesting physically.
The explanation feels thin even as I think it.
I pull myself up from the marble floor and move to the sink on unsteady legs. Cold water on my face helps. The shock of it cuts through the fog. I reach for my toothbrush, going throughmotions that feel automatic, grounding myself in routine because it's the only thing I can control right now.
And somewhere in that mechanical rhythm, a thought surfaces. Quiet at first. Then impossible to ignore.
When was my last period?
My cycles have never been reliable. Stress throws them off. Any kind of emotional upheaval can make my period late. I've never been someone who could mark a calendar with certainty. But I find myself counting anyway, trying to remember when I last bled.
I’m easily a week later than I should be. Ten days? Maybe more.
Oh, God. Is it possible?
