Page 104 of Slapshot Baby

I set my fork down.

"I'll think about it," I manage.

He nods.

And for one suspended, dangerous moment, I let myself see it.

Kai in the mornings, barefoot, coffee in hand, watching me get ready for work with that steady attention that makes me feel like the center of something permanent. His hand on my growing stomach.

He'd be the kind of father who shows up every time. The kind who reads bedtime stories in that low, steady voice until the baby falls asleep.

A man completely undone by me.

A man I could ruin with my vulnerability, and who'd let me.

The vision is so vivid it steals my breath.

Then the other version arrives.

Kai’s memories will come back. Four years flooding into a brain that's been filling with me.

He'll remember the man he was before the accident. The one-night stands. The women who came and went. He'll look at me and see the hookup from the gala.

He won’t leave the way my father did, with car keys and a grin and promises he'd forget before he reached the highway. He’ll leave the way a man leaves when he realizes he's been playing house with someone who was only ever supposed to be temporary.

And I’ll become the very thing I swore I’d never be: my mother, standing at the kitchen table with folded hands and empty eyes, waiting for a man who’s already gone.

My throat constricts. My skin goes hot, then cold, and something sharp and uncontrollable surges through my bloodstream.

"You can't ask me to blow up my life like that." My voice has turned hard. “How easy do you think moving to your place will be?”

His brow furrows. "Ava..."

"No, you don't get to sit across from me looking like that and offering me a life you might not even want six months from now."

"Why would I not want it?"

"Because you don't know everything, Kai. You don't know who you were before me. When you remember, you'll realize this is just gratitude dressed up as something real."

His jaw tightens. "That's not what this is."

"How do you know? You're missing four years of being a man I never met. What if that man comes back and decides the woman who reorganized his closet isn't worth keeping around?"

The words are acid leaving my mouth.

I hate them. I hate that they carry the particular venom of a fear I've been swallowing for months.

But I can’t stop myself. I’ve been getting more tired later, eating uncontrollably and getting fatter.

I can’t even tell the father of the baby about his child because I’m scared he’ll cut ties and the fake relationship we have will be gone.

"You're asking me to trust that you'll stay, and I don't know how to do that." The words come out raw. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I blink them back violently. "Take me home, please."

“Who left?” he asks gently—so gently my stomach tightens.

"Everyone who promised they wouldn't."

It's vague enough to be safe and specific enough to burn. The tears I've been fighting spill over. Two of them, hot and fast, track down my cheeks.