Page 173 of Slapshot Baby

The words suck out all the air in my chest.

This is what you earned. This is the price of every almost-told, every practiced speech you swallowed, every time you chose silence over the terrifying possibility that he might stay.

"The guest room is yours," he says.

"I want to go home."

"Fine. Give me your keys."

"I can drive."

"You had an emergency blood transfusion for a baby I didn't know existed until ten minutes ago. Give me the keys."

I change in the bathroom with the door shut, pull on my own clothes. Avoid his shirt on the floor because touching it will break whatever is holding me upright.

The elevator ride is silent. He opens the passenger door and waits until I'm seated before walking around to the driver's side and adjusting the seat.

We drive through the city as I watch the streets pass by and try to figure out exactly when we crossed the point of no return.

The hospital? The lake house? The first night I let him inside me, knowing full well whose baby I was carrying?

All of them. None of them.

Every single moment was the point of no return and I kept choosing one more day of his smile over the conversation that would end it.

He pulls into my driveway, cuts the engine, and sits there.

I reach for the door.

He's staring through the windshield. "Take your prenatals."

The tenderness inside the demand folds me in half.

I bend forward, my forehead nearly touching my own dashboard, a sound coming out of me that I can't control because this man just found out I've been lying about his child for five months and his first response is to make sure I take my vitamins.

I press my fist against my mouth. Nod. Open the door.

Inside, I shut the door behind me and stand in my dark hallway, both palms against the wood, forehead pressed to the frame.

I slide down to the floor. Pull my shirt up and place both hands on the curve of my belly.

The baby rolls. A slow, deliberate turn beneath my palms.

"It's just us tonight," I whisper.

But the word just catches in my throat and stays there, sharp-edged, because just us is exactly what I built with every secret I kept, and I have no one to blame for this silence but me.

30

KAI

Bringing Home the Win

Three days, and I still haven't moved her shampoo out of my shower.

It sits on the ledge next to my soap, cap slightly open the way she always leaves it. I pick it up every morning then put it back. I stand under water hot enough to scald and try to feel something other than the hollow Ava carved out of my chest.

Her toothbrush is in the holder. A hair tie on the nightstand. One of her flats kicked under the entry bench, the left shoe slightly crushed at the heel from the way she steps on the back when she's in a hurry.