Not hurt first. Anger.
Immediate, irrational, ugly anger.
Who the fuck is he? Why is he touching her? Why is she letting him?
My jaw locks so hard it hurts. My first instinct is to walk inside and put an end to whatever this is before the thought has time to become ridiculous.
Then the man shifts. Moves aside just enough. And I finally see her properly.
Not just her face. Not just the sweater. Her body.
The shape under the fabric. The curve of her stomach.
My mind blanks.No.
The thought isn’t even fully formed. It’s just impact. Shock so complete it wipes out everything else.
Zatanna is pregnant.
I stand there on the sidewalk staring through the glass like a man who’s been shot and hasn’t hit the ground yet. Therestaurant keeps moving around her. Waiters passing. Glasses clinking. The man stepping back and saying something she doesn’t quite smile at.
But all I can see is her belly. Rounded. Visible. Real.
I never imagined I would find her like this.
Not after tearing the city apart in quiet ways and loud ones, putting men on old addresses, old jobs, old names, following every thin trail until it vanished. Not after months of searching every place that made sense.
And there she is anyway. Casual as daylight. Standing in a restaurant I could have walked past a hundred times. As if the city had been hiding her in plain sight while I bled trying to drag her back out of it.
32
ZATANNA
For a second,I feel it.
That old, crawling sensation at the back of my neck. Like someone’s watching. Not just looking in my direction. Watching.
It comes out of nowhere, sharp enough to make me pause mid-breath. I glance toward the window.
Nothing.
Just rain-slicked glass, reflections from the street, a couple passing under one umbrella, headlights smearing across the wet pavement. No one standing there. No familiar face. No dark suit. No impossible man staring at me through the glass.
My heartbeat takes a second to settle.
Pregnancy has made me weirdly alert about everything. Sounds, smells, people getting too close. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s eight months of carrying a child while trying not to think too hard about who his father is and what that means.
Or maybe I’m just tired. As always.
“Hey,” Jake says. “You with me?”
I turn back to him and force a smile.
Jake is leaning against the counter with a takeout coffee in one hand and his messenger bag hanging off one shoulder, all messy curls and producer glasses and the kind of concerned face he’s been making at me for months now. He shouldn’t have stuck around. Not after I vanished. Not after I stopped recording for him right when my voice was bringing in the most money it ever had.
But he did.
Strangely supportive does not even begin to cover it.
