Chapter 2

I didn’t answer Owen’s last text.

While the doctor explained what would happen next, Tessa wrote down the warning signs for me. If the bleeding became heavier, if I developed a fever, or if the pain became unmanageable, I had to return to the hospital immediately.

When the nurse asked who would stay with me overnight, I gave her my sister’s name.

The form still listed Owen Reed as my spouse. A cramp tightened as I signed beneath it. I waited for the pain to pass before handing the clipboard back.

I didn’t have the strength to change his name yet.

We reached the house close to midnight. Tessa helped me upstairs, brought me water, and left the hospital’s number beside the bed.

“I’m staying,” she said.

“Owen will be home.”

She studied my face. “He’s already proved that coming home isn’t guaranteed.”

I had no answer. She took the guest room downstairs and told me to call if I needed anything.

At 12:47, the garage door opened.

Owen came upstairs quietly. His jacket hung over one arm, and a smear of blue frosting marked his shirt cuff.

He stopped when he saw I was awake.

“Elena, how are you? I texted again, but my phone died right after.”

“When did you see my first two messages?”

Instead of answering, he draped his jacket over a chair. “Beth’s house was loud. Kids were running around, and the music was blasting. I didn’t hear the calls.”

“I didn’t ask about the calls.”

His hand tightened around the back of the chair.

I turned my phone toward him. The first message showed as read at 7:32. The second at 7:41.

At 7:43, he had replied that he couldn’t leave.

“You saw them.”

“I saw that you were at the hospital. Tessa was with you, and the doctors had taken over.” He pulled the chair closer to the bed. “You said they hadn’t found the heartbeat yet. Sometimes early scans—”

“The baby is gone.”

The chair legs scraped across the floor.

Owen stared at me. “What?”

“The doctor confirmed it. There was no heartbeat. The baby stopped developing at eleven weeks.”

The color drained from his face. He stepped toward me and reached out, but I pulled my hand beneath the blanket.

“Elena, I didn’t know. If I’d known that was happening, of course I would’ve come.”

“I told you I was bleeding.”

“Bleeding in early pregnancy doesn’t always mean—”

“The nurse told you they couldn’t find a heartbeat.”

“She said they hadn’t found it yet.” He pressed a hand to his forehead. “I thought they were still running tests. Why didn’t you tell me it was an emergency?”

I looked at him.

Over three years, I had learned injection schedules, hormone levels, and every possible side effect.

Owen had learned that as long as a doctor hadn’t announced the worst outcome, he could treat my fear as something that might resolve itself.

Two months earlier, he had left our medication training to pick Maisie up from swim practice.

That night, he said there had been no point in staying because the nurse had already told me everything I needed to know.

Now he pulled the chair closer again.

“I didn’t mean to leave you alone. Maisie’s biological father hasn’t shown up in two years. When she saw me getting ready to leave, she panicked. Beth couldn’t calm her down.”

He said it with the certainty he used after emergency calls. Someone had needed him, so he believed his choice no longer required an explanation.

“So you promised to attend every birthday?”

His gaze shifted toward the window. “I was comforting a child.”

“She called you Daddy.”

“I can explain that.”

“To how many people?”

He shut his eyes, then opened them with an edge of impatience. “Do we have to discuss this tonight? We just lost our baby.”

We.

While I lay on an exam table, he had been wiping frosting from another little girl’s face.

I pushed back the blanket. Pain tightened low in my abdomen as I stood. Owen reached for me, but I braced myself against the bed and moved away.

“Sleep in the guest room,” I said. “Don’t touch me tonight.”

“Elena, I lost a child too.”

“You didn’t even come to find out whether our baby was still alive.”

His jaw tightened. He stood there like he was forcing himself to endure an unfair accusation.

“You had doctors,” he said. “Maisie only had me.”