I straightened up, set my jaw, and looked myself in the eye. “No more tears,” I said, voice flat. “You already know how this goes.”
The mirror didn’t answer. It just stared back, impassive, waiting to see if I would blink first.
I didn’t.
I should have gone back to bed, or at least to the kitchen, where the leftover takeout and half-eaten chocolate bars waited for my midnight shame spiral.
Instead, I stayed. The overhead lights hummed, a relentless neon that made my head throb in time with my pulse. I perched on the edge of the tub, still in my suit pants from work. The porcelain was freezing through the fabric, numbing my thighs. I pressed my knees together and waited for my heart to stop racing.
In my hand, my phone vibrated, a silent alert that someone somewhere needed me to reply. I ignored it, staring instead at my own reflection in the chrome faucet.
One phone call. That’s all it would take.
I knew the number by heart: my doctor, the one on retainer for the Steele family’s embarrassing medical problems. He’d done my stitches after the ski accident in Aspen. He’d patched up my older brother Barrett more times than a Formula One pit crew. He specialized in discretion and invoices with extra zeroes.
I hovered my thumb over the number.
I imagined the conversation. “Hi, I need to schedule a procedure. No, I can’t come to the office. No, my family can’t know. Yes, I’m sure.” He’d take care of it. A car would arrive, blacked-out windows, a nurse with no name. By morning, there would be no trace.
Just a new, emptier kind of ache.
The thought made my stomach turn—not the pregnancy nausea, but a different, deeper sickness. Something cold and ancient that crept up my spine and told me to run.
I put the phone face-down on the edge of the tub and stared at the grout lines on the wall. They weren’t perfectly straight. I’d never noticed before.
I thought about the baby inside me—no bigger than a thumbprint, but already more alive than most of the people I’d ever met. I pictured its heart, tiny and determined, beating away in the darkness. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel it: a second pulse beneath my own, stubborn and impossible.
My other hand drifted to my belly again, flattening against the soft, unfamiliar curve. There was a gentleness to the motion I didn’t expect. Like I was apologizing for something I hadn’t even done yet.
Another vibration from the phone, this time a text from Barrett. “Dad wants to know if you’re coming for the board dinner tomorrow. He’s getting impatient. Don’t be late.”
I imagined the look on my father’s face if he ever found out. The contempt. The cold, glacial disappointment reserved for things that couldn’t be fixed with money or power. He’d always seen my omega status as a defect, an evolutionary dead end. I’d overheard him telling Barrett once, “At least you’re a real man. That one’s just a... well, you know.”
Yeah, I knew.
If I had the baby, if anyone found out, there’d be no end to it. The PR team would swing into action, the lawyers would have a field day, and my life would collapse into a spectacle of shame and legalese.
But for the first time in years, I felt something like resolve. Not hope—not yet—but the ghost of it.
I closed my eyes, drew a shaky breath, and remembered the other scar, the one on my left wrist. The family never talkedabout that, either. After the hospital, Dad had flown me to a “wellness center” in Switzerland, where the only rule was no questions. I learned to hide the mark, but it itched in winter, especially when I was sad.
I ran my thumb across it now, a nervous tic.
I thought about the thing inside me, the tiny scrap of a person with my DNA and maybe his eyes and maybe his hands. I thought about what it would mean to give it up, to let it be erased before it even had a chance.
And I thought about Macon, the one person who made me feel substantial instead of invisible. Even if it was only for one night.
I let out a sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. I pressed my palm to my belly and rocked forward, folding over myself. “You’re safe,” I whispered, the words sticking in my throat. “I won’t let him touch you. I won’t let anyone.”
I stayed like that for a long time, hunched and shaking, until the sun started to leak into the sky outside my window, turning the white tile pink.
* * * *
There’s a peculiar clarity that comes with knowing exactly how fucked you are. The panic recedes, replaced by a kind of hyper-lucidity—a state I’d only ever achieved once before, during a final exam at Columbia after three nights on Adderall and red wine.
This time, the stakes were higher.
The morning after the bathroom epiphany, I made myself a cup of strong coffee and set up shop at the desk in my living room. The space was a museum of austerity: one glass desk, a leather chair, a half-dead ficus from a failed attempt at “greening” the place. No photos, no souvenirs, nothingsentimental except the goat meme calendar on the wall, which was already two months behind.
