She squealed, then slapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. “Okay. Take this.” She shoved the test at me. “Get in there. I’m dying to know if I'm going to be a godmother or not.”
She held my bag while I slipped into the stall.
Three minutes later, I stood there staring at two stripes.
Positive.
I was pregnant.
A cold rush tore through me. How could I have been so stupid?
Was this what people meant when they said one choice could change your entire future?
I had worked so damn hard, overcame every obstacle, and I was finally close to the finish line.
Would the symptoms get worse? Would I even make it through my master’s program?
There was no way I could leave the US and go to the UK to chase my dream, not while carrying Avit’s baby.
Avit.
I exhaled shakily. Things between us were already a mess, but I’d seen the way he was with his family, how much he loved them, how much he valued them.
Would he finally see me as something other than a wife he was forced to marry out of necessity? Could this be the link that kept us together? Or the thing that tore us apart for good?
I closed my eyes and inhaled.
I could only pray he’d take this news well.
Chapter 19 - Avit
With a bouquet of white roses in my hand, I headed straight for the office the moment I stepped through the front door. I knew that’s where I’d find Sienna. She sat curled up in her chair, legs tucked to her chest, a teacup cradled between her fingers. Her eyes were on the laptop, but she looked a hundred miles away.
“Hey,” I said softly as I approached.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It didn’t light up her face the way it used to.
“Hey.”
I handed her the flowers. A spark flickered in her eyes, then disappeared just as fast.
“Thank you. How was your day?”
“It’s better now that I’ve seen you.”
She blushed, but even that felt muted.
“How are classes?” I asked, sitting beside her and powering on my laptop.
“Same ole, same ole.”
The last two weeks had turned our conversations into routines. Short answers. Little interest. Silence filling spaces that used to be easy and warm. What gutted me most was the absence of that soft sigh she made after I kissed her each morning. Now…nothing.
I kept telling myself her distance was stress—school, research, and now the endless hours she’d poured into cracking Oskar’s damn memory card.
So I made sure she took breaks. Once her classes ended early, I picked her up and got her out of the house—dinners, a picnic at the park, even a visit to Ninel one afternoon. And I tried to spoil the exhaustion out of her: perfumes, creams, jewelry, hoodies, the latest tech gadgets.
But no matter how much I gave her, she still felt like she was slipping further away.
