Every article says the same thing. For a woman her age, after six months of trying, you don’t wait around – you get tested. Not because something’s definitely wrong, but because if there is… you don’t waste what time you’ve got.
My decision’s made before I can talk myself out of it.
When she finally stirs awake, I brush her hair back and tell her quietly, ‘We’ll get tested.’
She looks at me, eyes blinking wide.
‘You’ll… you’ll get tested too?’
‘Of course I will,’ I say, throat tightening. ‘Whatever it takes, Tay.’
But the moment her eyes soften, the fear punches right through me:
What if it ain’t her?
What if it’s me?
Not her punishment… but mine.
She studies my face, and somehow, she sees it.
A small, sad smile tugs at her mouth.
‘And now,’ she murmurs, touching my cheek, ‘who’s being silly?’
23
TAYLOR
There’s something weirdly symbolic about sitting in a fertility clinic on the 2 January…
The start of a new year, where the start of so many lives begin.
Normally, I love it: all those crisp lists, new goals, the blank-slate energy. But this year’s already come wrapped in grey. The snow melted overnight, the rain washed it into slush, and the sky hasn’t brightened since.
I tell myself it’s just the weather. Just the lull after Christmas.
But the truth presses heavier:
I don’t want to let the dark mood settle, but it’s been creeping in anyway.
Having Ax. Loving Ax. Feeling something tense between us: not distance exactly, but strain. A strain shaped like hope, and fear, and months of trying for what I’ve wanted since the beginning.
Part of me is grateful to finally be getting answers.
Part of me would’ve preferred to live in blissful ignorance a little longer.
Blissful?my inner voice mocks,says the woman who got caught sobbing in the shower Boxing Day morning.
Is it any wonder Axel’s made it his priority?
Axel, who doesn’t Google anything unless it’s work-related, who treats instruction manuals like optional suggestions at best, throwing himself into fertility forums and specialist profiles like he would threat assessments and client dossiers. Then coming to me the day after Boxing Day with a neat, colour-coded shortlist of the top specialists in the country and telling me to pick one. Any one. And he’d sort the rest.
Not because research is his thing.
But because I am.
And so we’re here.
