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Right now all I can think is⁠—

Please, God. Not her.

Not my best friend.

Not my sister in everything but blood.

Not Reese.

I don’t know how long I sit there.

Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour. Time’s slippery in trauma, dripping through the cracks of my fear like it knows better than to stay still. I just keep staring at those cold, automatic doors like maybe if I look hard enough, Reese will walk back through them. Whole. Smiling. Making a joke about how dramatic we all are.

But they stay closed.

And I stay shaking.

Then I hear it—rushed footsteps, the familiar rumble of Fletch’s voice cutting through the chaos. “Where is she—? Mya⁠—”

I stand just as he rounds the corner, both twins strapped to his chest and back like some desperate, sleep-deprived superhero. His eyes land on me, wide and frantic—and the second he sees the blood on my shirt, he freezes.

“Baby,” he breathes, voice wrecked.

I don’t even try to hold it together. I launch myself at him, burying my face in his neck the moment his arms wrap around me. He smells like formula and cold air and comfort, and the minute I feel his hands splay over my back⁠—

I break.

Not in pieces. Not in slow, quiet shatters.

I collapse.

Every ounce of fear, grief, confusion and raw, unfiltered panic I’ve been choking back tears free from my chest in one violent, ragged sob.

“She was—she’s—Fletch, she didn’t even tell me,” I whisper through the tears. “She was pregnant and I didn’t know. How did I not know?”

He holds me tighter, his chin resting in my hair. “You couldn’t have known, Mya. She didn’t tell anyone. This isn’t your fault.”

“But I should have known.” My voice breaks again. “She’s my best friend.”

Fletch doesn’t say anything. He just rocks us slowly, the twins somehow sleeping through it all, their tiny breaths the only steady rhythm in a world that suddenly feels tilted.

A second later, Benji and Carson come jogging in, with Eli in his stroller, panic carved into every line of their faces.

“Anything?” Carson asks, breathless.

I shake my head.

“Jesus,” Benji mutters, running a hand down his face. “She didn’t tell any of us.”

“She told Thorin, though,” Carson says quietly. “Which means… it was real. This wasn’t just a scare.”

And God, that shatters something deeper.

Because if Reese had told him—if she let Thorin back in far enough to share that truth—it means she was hoping. It means she was ready to try. It means she wanted this.

And now?

Now we’re all just sitting here, waiting to find out if she lost something she never even let us see.