I didn’t answer.
Reek didn’t either.
Miss Carla, being smarter than both of us in that moment, pretended that silence was normal. “Doctor will be in shortly,” she said, then let herself out.
The second the door shut, the room went too quiet. I stood there for a second with my back to Reek, trying to act like I wasn’t about to crawl out of my skin. Then I started undressing.
By the time I stood there in my bra and panties, there was no hiding it anymore. My stomach wasn’t just a little secret bulge under oversized shirts now. It was a real baby bump.
I could feel him staring. I didn’t turn around, but I felt his eyes hitting the curve of my stomach and staying there. I kept my expression as blank as I could while I pulled the gown on, but inside, I was burning with shame. I knew that all he was thinking was that he was staring at a mistake, a trap, and evidence of everything he never wanted.
I tied the gown, climbed onto the table, and sat there with the paper crinkling under me while he took the chair by the wall.
We just sat there in silence that was as agonizing as listening to nails scrape across a chalkboard. Reek completely avoided me and put all of his attention on his phone. The only sound in the room were the reels he was watching on Instagram.
A few minutes later, the door opened and my doctor came in with her usual bright energy.
“Well, look at you,” Dr. Harrison said, smiling the second she saw me. “Ava Reynolds, you’re pregnant!”
I tried to sound happy. “Sure am.”
She glanced at Reek. “Hi. Dad?”
I purposely stayed silent to see if he would have the decency to answer or just be a rude asshole.
He cleared his throat and just nodded a greeting.
She washed her hands, asked me the usual questions, and started the exam.
This felt painfully intimate because this should’ve been a sweet moment between two people getting ready for a baby. Instead, it was agonizing. Every question, every touch, and every second of Reek sitting there in silence made the room feel too uncomfortable, with Reek sitting there so close and still so far away.
Dr. Harrison pressed gently at my stomach and talked me through what she was doing. She told me my uterus was measuring where it should, made notes, then grabbed the Doppler.
“Let’s hear this baby,” she said.
The room filled with static first. Then that fast little heartbeat kicked through the speaker. In Thailand, that heartbeat sounded like a sweet melody. Now, it sounded like doom, because I knew Reek despised it.
Against my better judgment, I looked at him. Just for a second, something cracked through that hard expression of his. It wasn’t complete interest. But it was a brief flicker that made him look less angry and more… caring.
Then it was gone so fast I almost thought I imagined it.
11
TARIQ “REEK” HORTON
The second that heartbeat filled the room, something in me split open. That fast little sound bounced off those white walls and hit me somewhere I wasn’t ready for. It was real in a way nothing else had been, in a way I couldn’t avoid.
But, instead of leaning into it, I panicked. My heart grew harder. After, I could hear another sound from years ago. I could hear a radiator hissing in my grandparents’ raggedy house and my own breathing rough from a fever while I laid under some thin blanket on their couch. I had to be about nine by then. My mother had been gone for a year and never came back, not even for a weekend or holiday. I remember lying there sweating through my shirt, too weak to move, listening to my grandmother in the kitchen.
“That medicine cost too much money. He’ll be alright in a few days.”
Then later—
“That boy always need something. I’m sick of it.”
Then later—
“If his trifling mama wanted him taken care of so bad, she should’ve taken him with her.”
