This is me cracking open in a strange luxury bathroom while the two men I love try to hold me together with their hands and their hope.
I can already see the dominoes.Me leaving.Not even sure where.Me trying to build a life around a tiny person who didn’t ask for any of this.Me pretending I can do it alone because that’s what I do—until I can’t.
I swallow back bile and dread and the hysterical laugh trying to claw its way out of me.
They’re going to tighten their grip.They’re going to call it love.They’re going to mean it.
And I’m going to want it—want them—so badly it scares me.Because wanting them has always come with consequences, and now the consequences have a heartbeat.
This should be the moment we finally grow up from whatever we were.The moment we stop pretending we can keep pulling on the same thread without unraveling everything.
My heart breaks again anyway.
Maybe this is for the best.
We all know it was never meant to be.
ChapterSeventeen
Alberto
Dr.Ruiz leaves my apartment the same way she arrived—calm, competent, like she didn’t just toss a grenade into my living room and walk back into the hallway with a polite smile and a hefty bill.
The door clicks.
Silence rushes in behind it, thick and ugly.It’s worse than rotors.Worse than cameras.Worse than the sound of Vesper losing everything she had left into the porcelain while pretending she was fine.
This wholeI’m sick with a weird Nordic virusthing is more like she brought back a souvenir from ...who the fuck knows about the father.Is she dating someone?
That thought stalks the edges of my mind, snarling.Did she have a thing?A night?A mistake?A choice?
What was it?
I wouldn’t know.We don’t talk about it.We have an entire relationship built on brutal honesty ...and one bright, dangerous blind spot we refuse to touch.
She tosses out names sometimes—Patrick, Charlie, Devin—like they’re weather updates.People who pass through her life for a season or two, then disappear.She never gives me details.I never ask.
Because asking would mean admitting defeat, letting her go.I still have some weird hope that Callaway will find a wife and then Ves and I will finally be together.
Yet, the asshole might have that whole womanizer fame, but during all these years, there hasn’t been a girlfriend.
Vesper is in the guest room now, taking a shower.Dr.Ruiz insisted she lie down after the last round.She tried to joke her way out of it, like she always does—sarcasm as a weapon, self-deprecation as camouflage.
She did agree to shower, muttering something about washing off the airplane stink and the puke-adjacent misery, and I didn’t argue.I just nodded like I was normal and not one wrong breath away from ripping the world apart.
Cally paces near the terrace doors like a caged animal trying to cosplay as a man.He can sell charm for a living, but fear makes him twitchy.He runs a hand through his hair again—tenth time in the past couple of minutes, maybe more—then looks at me like he’s about to start a fight just to feel like he’s doing something.
“She’s pregnant,” he says.
Like saying it again will make it less real.Like repetition can turn a cliff into a curb.
I keep my gaze on the kitchen island.The test strip is gone—Dr.Ruiz took it—but I still see it as if it’s burned into the marble.Two lines.Two lines that just rearranged every orbit in this room.
“That’s what the test said,” I reply, voice low.“We still have to confirm.There’s the bloodwork.Then an ultrasound ...”The words tastes wrong in my mouth.So fucking clinical.“We need to make sure everything’s where it needs to be.”
Cally blows out a breath, harsh.“And she’s acting like it’s a parking ticket.”
“Because she’s terrified,” I say flatly.“She’s good at jokes.She’s not good at letting anyone see her scared.”
