Reid
The door doesn’t slam, and there’s no screaming.
She just quietly retreats into her room as I stare after her, the soft pad of her bare feet swallowed by the floorboards and the click of her door pulling shut.
I’m left standing here, like I just took a puck to the ribs and haven’t quite figured out how to breathe around it yet.
The living room feels different now, as though something sacred’s been broken open, and I’m standing inside the wreckage of it. Her keys are still on the counter. One of her shoes is tipped sideways next to her coat on the floor. The gap beneath her bedroom door glows faintly with light.
I scrub a hand over my jaw, but it does nothing to cut through the echo of her voice in my chest.The words don’t sound any different the second time in my head, or the third. There’s no distortion, or chance I misheard her.
She’s pregnant.Pregnant.
I didn’t see the signs, but maybe I should’ve. She’s been distant, pulled tight, pulling away. But I figured it was just a tense mix between the playoffs and her work, the stress of both our schedules. I didn’t think…
Jesus.
And she just declared it as though she’s been holding it in so long, it cracked her open just to say it.
My hands are still half-curled at my side. I don’t remember if I was reaching for her, but I think I was. She moved away from me on instinct, as though she needed to shield herself from how I might react.
I glance back down the hallway, and every part of me wants to move—to knock, to follow, to fix.
But I don’t, not because I’m angry. I’m not. And I’m not confused, apart from in that ‘everything’s shifted and I don’t know what comes next’ kind of way.
I know she needs space. And I get it. Why she told me like a confession instead of a conversation. Why she closed the door.
She didn’t run fromme; she ran from the weight of it. And fuck, that hits harder than if she’d screamed at me, because all I want is to hold this with her.
I walk the hallway slowly, my steps barely making a sound. The light spilling from under her door feels fragile somehow, a line I shouldn’t cross.
Pressing my palm to the wall beside the doorframe, I splay my fingers out to ground myself. Or maybe I’m just reaching for her without meaning to.
“I’m not leaving,” I say, my voice a low murmur through the wood.
There’s no response, but I don’t expect one.
“You don’t have to talk yet. I just…” My chest tightens, and I exhale. “I’m here.”
And then I stay, waiting. Because this moment—no,she—matters too fucking much not to.
She’s in there, probably curled up tight and silently thinking that if she holds still long enough, nothing can reach her.
The part that kills me isn’t the silence, though. It’s what it means. That she thought I wouldn’t care, or that I’d care in all the wrong ways. That I’d flinch and tell her it’s not great timing, or I’d panic. Think she was trying to trap me, or that this would keep me tethered to her when I don’t want to be.
Which is so fucking ironic, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to tether myself to her this whole damn time.
And that pisses me off.
Not because I deserve better, but becauseshedoes. Because at some point before me, the world taught her this was how it would go. That men leave, and women pay. That strength is silence, and she needs to brace for disappointment.
I lean my shoulder against the wall and exhale, letting my eyes close. She didn’t shut me out; she shuteverythingout, so the hurt couldn’t reach her first.
But I’m not leaving, not unless she tells me to.
The door clicks open a few minutes later with a soft creak and the quietest shift of air as her silhouette appears in the frame. Her head’s tilted down, and she turns quickly, hair falling like a curtain around her face.
She doesn’t say anything, just quietly moves back over to her bed. A silent invitation.
