Reborn Pregnant: The Heir He'll Never Know

N P

knowing I was go

door that nobody on the other side would open. I remembered the sound of my own voice going hoarse from screaming. I remembered begging. I remembered the moment I und

fast the r

I loved. My hand went to my stomach before my mind caught up to my body, and I froze, waiti

flutter. F

n like I could hold the moment there by force. Three months. I still had three months before any of it began.

now. And nobody - not one living so

rt I intended t

ck. Somehow, impossibly, I was back on the exact morning everything had started comi

tever place you go when you die and don't stay

ed two things. I would call my grandmother before the sun went down.

it surprised him that I sti

m u

remembered burning in a pile of ash three months from now, and h

to talk,"

twice. I knew, before he crossed the room, that he would not sit down, that he would set it on the table between us like it was a business deal and not the end of five years, that he

instead of screamin

, that I wasn't already crying, wasn't already on my

id. "The papers are drafted. I ne

. This time I didn't ask. I already knew every answer he would give, and every answer would still be a lie stacked on top of a trut

ad, and I watched it land on him like

elevant to th

s not

my face about it for another six weeks before I found out the truth on my own, standing in a hospital corri

ourse he'd brought his own pen, the heavy silver one his grandfather had given him before he died, the one h

all, stupid, still-hoping part of me wanted him to notice that the woman in front of him wasn't behaving

like I'd done him a fa

ld him. "I'm sure you

. I knew better now. I watched him check his phone before he even reached the hallway, watched the corner

again with clear eyes instead of the shattered ones I'd had th

alread

nized because I made the same one myself an hour ago, alone, in a bed that wasn't going to be mine much longer. She wasn't showing yet. Not enough for a st

hout a flicker of shame, like the two of us occu

was no apology anywhere in

he looked at me the way you look at a chapter that's alread

not knowing how to survive this exact moment,

es drop, just once, to the hand resting on

too late to matter to anyone but me - was that I had a hand resting on the exact same place, on the exa

was p

was

f us was going