"And then?"
"And then we figure it out. Together." I pulled back to look at her. "Whatever comes, we face it as a family. That's what this is now. A family."
She stared at me for a long moment, and I watched the fear in her eyes slowly give way to something else. Not quite hope—she was too guarded for that. But something close.
"A family," she repeated quietly.
"You, me, and whoever this turns out to be." I pressed my hand against her stomach, still flat beneath my palm. "The three of us."
She laughed, a watery sound that was half sob. "This is insane. All of this. The marriage, the situation, now a baby. None of it makes any sense."
"Since when has anything about us made sense?"
"Fair point."
I pulled her into my arms, holding her tight against my chest. I could feel her trembling—or maybe that was me. Maybe it was both of us, two people clinging to each other while the ground shifted beneath our feet.
"We'll figure it out," I said against her hair. "I promise. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to do—we'll figure it out."
"You keep making promises you might not be able to keep."
"Then I'll die trying to keep them."
Chapter 20 - Keira
Three days since the pregnancy test, and I still didn't know what to feel.
I'd expected clarity. Some definitive emotional response that would tell me how to process this impossible situation. Instead, I woke each morning with a different feeling—fear one day, something like wonder the next, then back to fear again. My body was changing, even if I couldn't see it yet, and my mind couldn't keep up.
The nausea was the worst part. It came in waves, unpredictable and merciless, striking at random moments throughout the day. I'd be in the middle of a video session, nodding along to a patient's struggles, and suddenly I'd have to fight the urge to bolt for the bathroom.
Today, it hit during my session with Benjamin.
"—and my sponsor says I need to focus on the present, but I keep thinking about all the things I messed up, you know? All the people I hurt when I was using. How do you move past that?"
I swallowed hard, willing my stomach to settle. "Moving past it doesn't mean forgetting it. It means integrating it into who you are now. The person who made those choices isn't the same person sitting here today."
"But it is, though. I'm still me."
"You're a different version of you. A version that's been clean for eight months, that shows up for these sessions, that's doing the work." I paused, taking a slow breath. "The guilt you're feeling—it's actually a sign of growth. It means you recognize theimpact of your actions. That recognition is what keeps you from repeating them."
He nodded slowly, processing. I used the moment to reach for my water glass, taking a careful sip, letting the cool liquid calm my rebellious stomach.
We finished the session without incident, but by the time I closed the laptop, I was exhausted. The kind of bone-deep fatigue that made my limbs feel like they were filled with sand.
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, one hand resting on my stomach. Still flat. Still unchanged, at least from the outside. But I knew something was happening in there. Something that would change everything.
A soft knock at the door. "Come in."
Rodion entered, his eyes immediately scanning my face with that assessing look he'd developed over the past few days. "How was the session?"
"Fine. Benjamin is doing well." I opened my eyes, managed a small smile. "The nausea was manageable."
"Just manageable?"
"That's better than yesterday."
He crossed the room and sat on the arm of my chair, his hand finding mine. The gesture was becoming familiar—this casual intimacy, the way he reached for me like it was instinct. I still wasn't used to it. Part of me wondered if I ever would be.
