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Another pause. Her breath shakes, and the pit in my stomach gets deeper.

“I’m pregnant.”

For a second, everything just… stops. The room feels too small, the air too thin. My brain fires off a dozen thoughts at once and none of them make it to my mouth. Pregnant. With my kid? Is she sure? Is this real? What does this mean for Theo? What does this mean for Blaire? For us? My free hand grips the edge of the dresser so hard my knuckles go white.

I swallow hard, throat dry. “Simon?” Veronica says again, voice trembling. “Did you hear me?”

Oh, I heard her. I just don’t yet know what the hell I’m supposed to do with it.

“Are you there?” she pushes.

I force air into my lungs. “How far along?”

“Six weeks, I think.”

Six weeks. I run the math automatically. That lines up with when we were still together… but she was on the pill. And we used condoms. Every single time.

“That’s impossible, we—fuck.” I clamp a hand over my mouth to stop my voice from rising. “I took a bunch of tests. I can send you pictures of them,” Veronica says, still sounding shaken. A few moments later my phone vibrates with a text: four positive tests lined up on her bathroom counter. All very, very positive. The sight of them hits like a gut punch.

“Are you sure it’s mine?” I say, quieter now, more controlled—because that’s the only way I can keep from shouting.

Her voice goes sharp. “I’m sure, Simon. You know I wasn’t sleeping around.”

I let out a slow, angry breath through my nose. “I want a paternity test.”

She scoffs so loudly I have to pull the phone away from my ear. “It’s your fucking baby, Simon.”

But my gut is screaming. Everything about this feels wrong. Too convenient. Too perfectly timed. Too damn similar to how things happened with Blaire.

“Have you been to an OB yet?” I ask tightly.

“No, I just found out today.”

“Make an appointment and let me know the date. I want to be there.”

“Do you think I’m making this up?” she snaps.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, staring at the wall like it’s responsible for all of this. “I think this is convenient timing and I want to make sure.”

She fires back instantly. “Did you make Blaire prove she wasn’t lying?”

My laugh is humorless, sharp enough to cut. “Blaire and I were together for nearly four years. I knew there were times we weren’t careful. You were supposed to be on birth control, and I always used a condom.”

“I’ll tell you when the appointment is. It’s your baby—deal with it.” And she hangs up.

My phone goes silent in my hand. I stare at it, the screen dark, the weight of those four pink lines pressing down on my chest like a boot. My pulse is still hammering, the taste of copper sharp on my tongue from biting the inside of my cheek. This isn’t what I wanted. I’ve spent the last two weeks quietly, carefully trying to earn Blaire back—showing up, staying present, proving I’m not the boy who ran. And now this. Another child. Another woman. Another secret that could destroy everything I’m trying to rebuild.

I sink down onto the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, phone still clutched in my hand. From the other side of the door I can still hear Theo laughing at something Blaire said, the soft clink of a spoon against a pot. The normalcy of it makes my stomach turn.

How the hell do I walk out there and act like nothing just changed? How do I look Blaire in the eye and tell her I might be bringing another kid into the world after everything I’ve already put her through? My hands are shaking. I press them against my thighs, trying to steady myself, but the dread keeps rising like floodwater. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t even know where to start.

***

I sit behind the wheel of my truck, engine off, staring at the grainy black-and-white printout in my hand. Six weeks—exactly like she said. The image is nothing more than a blurry oval, but it already feels like a noose around my neck.

My stomach twists. My gut keeps screaming that something doesn’t add up. Or maybe that’s just the part of me that needs it not to be mine so fucking badly it feels like begging.

“What are we going to do?” Veronica asks softly from the passenger seat.