Prologue
The pregnancy test was still on the bathroom sink. Two pink lines. Positive.
I stared at it until my eyes blurred. My fingers trembled as I picked it up again, praying I was wrong. But I wasn’t. I was pregnant.
My heart raced, my chest heavy, my hand pressing against my stomach as if I could already feel the weight of it. From the bedroom, Troye was still asleep, his breathing steady, peaceful. He had no idea that in a few hours, our lives would change.
We’d been living together again for months now. After everything—the years apart, the breakup, the silence—I thought maybe this time was different. We laughed, we cooked, we fought and made up. I almost let myself believe we were finally right for each other.
But last week shattered that illusion.
We were at a bar, drinking and joking, his hand warm on my thigh, his smile soft the way it used to be. For a moment, I thought maybe we were truly happy. Then I excused myself to the bathroom.
On my way back, I slowed when I heard his voice. Troye’s laugh mixed with the deeper tone of a man I didn’t recognize at first—until he said, “Still with her? Wow. Didn’t expect that.”
It was Gino. One of his old college friends.
I should have walked out and let them see me. But I froze, hidden by the corner wall, listening.
Troye chuckled, lowering his voice. “Yeah… we’re still… around. But come on, man, you know how it was back then. We were just kids, having fun. She was… good in bed, you know? Nothing serious. Just two adults messing around.”
My stomach dropped.
Gino laughed. “Damn. Didn’t think you’d stick it out this long. You almost sound serious now.”
Troye hesitated, then said quietly, “It’s not like that. It was never that serious. We just… got comfortable, I guess.”
The words stabbed into me harder than anything ever had. My whole body went cold.
I couldn’t listen anymore. I stumbled back into the bathroom, locked the door, and pressed my shaking hands against the sink until I could breathe again.
That was the night everything broke inside me. Because he hadn’t just once seen me as a bet, or a fling—he still did. Even now. Living with me, sharing a bed with me, smiling at me every morning. To him, I was nothing more than comfort. Nothing more than good sex.
And yet here I was, days later, staring at proof that I was carrying his child.
Two pink lines. A baby. His baby.
Tears blurred my vision as I gripped the test. I didn’t know what scared me more—the life inside me, or the fact that the man in my bed might never see me as anything more than a mistake.
