Chapter 11
Lucia
The test sitson my bathroom counter like an accusation. Like proof. Like a tiny piece of plastic that somehow carries more weight than anything Marco ever let me have.
I pick it up three times a day, like the lines might fade. Like my eyes will finally decide they imagined it. Like reality will get embarrassed and quietly retract itself.
It doesn’t.
Two pink lines, stubborn and bright.
The first day, I told myself I’d think about it later.
The second day, I realizedlateris a lie people tell when they’re trying not to drown.
So I sit on the edge of my bed with my knees pulled to my chest, my apartment quiet around me, and I stare.
Outside my single window, the sky changes in slow, indifferent gradients. Late afternoon bleeds into evening. Streetlights flicker on like it’s automatic, like no one had to earn another day. A man walks past with a grocery bag and a calm face, and envy hits me so sharply, I almost laugh.
How do people just… live? Like their bodies aren’t alarms. Like their choices don’t have teeth.
My hand drifts to my stomach. It’s still flat. Still mine. Still ordinary in a way that feels almost insulting. But my palm lingers, like my body already knows what my mind keeps trying to negotiate.
A baby.
A baby means money and time and appointments and a name on forms. It means being seen. It means showing up places, giving information, leaving traces behind you like breadcrumbs someone else can follow. It means needing help. It means being tired and sick and scared and still getting up to do it, anyway.
It means raising someone inside a world that has never once been gentle with me.
And then I think about hands. Not Marco’s. I don’t let my mind go there unless I have to. Marco’s hands are a catalogue of flinches I’m still trying to unlearn. Pressure just shy of bruises, control shaped like affection, the way he touched me like ownership was love and my body was something he’d already paid for.
I think about the stranger’s hands instead. The careful way he held my face like it mattered. The way he waited. The way he didn’t rush me into anything I didn’t choose. The way he stopped when he could’ve taken. The way restraint felt like safety, not punishment.
And that’s when the fear shifts. Because I’m not afraid of being pregnant. Not really. I’m afraid of what happens when this pregnancy ties me to a man with the kind of power you don’t accidentally carry.
What happens if he’s gentle only when he doesn’t want anything? What happens if a baby turns my body into leverage? What happens if he becomes another Marco… only quieter about it, smarter, better dressed?
My stomach rolls, and I have to swallow hard. I stand too fast, and the room tilts. My vision blurs at the edges for a second. I breathe through it, one hand braced on the kitchenette counter like I’m keeping myself upright with willpower alone.
I can do this. I can.
But wanting to do it isn’t the same thing as knowing how.
* * *
By the end of day two, I’m so full of thought, I feel hollow.
There’s only one person I can call. One person I trust not to turn this into a spectacle. One person who won’t ask why I stayed as long as I did, or tell me what I should’ve done, or talk to me like I’m stupid for being human.
Marcia.
My sister’s name sits in my phone like a small, dangerous light. Because calling her means being known. And being known is what Marco used against me every time he wanted to tighten the cage.
I stare at the screen until my thumb stops shaking enough to move. Then I hit call before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the second ring. “Lu?”
Her voice cracks something open in me immediately. The sound of the one person who still feels like mine, even after everything.
