The memory surfaces slowly. “He told her…” My voice softens. “The illness has taken its toll. She’s recovered, but you should be prepared for the possibility that conception may not be viable.”
Kiren’s fingers tighten around mine. “They thought you might never have children,” he says.
“Yes.”
The quiet between us deepens.
“So, this baby is something I never believed I would have.”
Kiren’s hand slowly moves to my stomach. His palm rests there gently, almost reverently.
“Then we treat it like the miracle it is,” he vows.
His eyes lift back to mine. “And we protect it.” His fingers slide back to lace with mine again. “Together.”
For the first time since the warehouse, something inside my chest finally eases.
Kiren pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits beside me, one hand still wrapped loosely around mine. The adrenaline that drove me through the night has finally begun to fade, leaving behind a heavy exhaustion in my bones. At some point, my eyes close.
I’m not sure how long I sleep, only that when I wake, Kiren is still there, leaning back in the chair with his arms folded and hisattention fixed on the door as if he’s been guarding it the entire time.
A soft knock breaks the quiet. The nurse who examined me earlier steps inside, offering a small, reassuring smile.
“You can see your friend now,” she tells me gently. “She’s awake.”
Kiren stands immediately. He helps me sit up, one hand at my elbow as I slide my legs carefully off the side of the bed. The floor feels cold beneath my feet after the warmth of the blankets.
“I’m fine,” I assure him quietly when his grip tightens.
His expression suggests he doesn’t entirely believe that. But he lets me walk.
The room they’ve put Lila in is small, clean, and painfully calm compared to the place we came from. A monitor beeps beside the bed. The lights are dimmed low enough that the color has returned to her face somewhat, though she still looks exhausted and far too young for all of this. There’s an IV in her arm and a proper hospital dressing covering the wound at her side.
When she sees me in the doorway, her mouth trembles before she gets it under control. “Hey.”
I move to the chair beside the bed and sit. Kiren steps out into the hallway, giving us privacy.
Lila looks down at the blanket over her legs, then back at me, and the effort it takes her to hold my gaze makes my chest ache in a place I don’t want to examine too closely.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “For everything. For Jonathan. For trusting Ivan. For you getting taken because of me. For all of it.”
The words come unevenly, but each one is sincere.
I lean back in the chair and release a heavy breath. “I’m not ready to tell you it doesn’t matter,” I confess.
She nods once, like she expected that.
“But I’m here,” I continue. “And I don’t want to lose you. So, whatever this is after tonight, whatever our friendship looks like when we get there, we figure it out from here.”
Her eyes fill instantly. “You mean that?”
“Yes,” I say honestly.
The relief in her face almost undoes me.
A knock sounds lightly at the door before it opens again. Leo steps in first, then steps aside to let someone else enter. It’s Lila’s brother, Jonathan.
He looks terrible. Pale, hollow-eyed, shoulders rounded from guilt that has finally become heavier than denial. He freezes when he sees Lila in the bed and then me in the chair beside her.
