Chapter 2
I knew exactly what he was doing. He was doing the math. Seven months pregnant. Six months since that final, rainy Tuesday in his kitchen. Six months since I had stood in a blue dress with mascara running down my face and asked, “Do you love me, Julian? Not need me. Not want me. Love me.”
And he had stood there, silent and beautiful and paralyzed by his own past, before finally saying, “I can’t give you what you need. I don’t know how to build a family.”
So I had walked out into the rain. And three weeks later, alone in my bathroom with a plastic stick shaking in my hand, I had learned I hadn’t walked out alone.
“Dr. Clara?” Chloe’s small voice pulled me back from the memory.
“Yes, honey?”
“You’re really pretty.” The child’s gaze drifted down to my stomach. “Are you having a baby?”
I smiled, though my chest ached with a dull, heavy throb. “I am. In about two months.”
“That’s so cool,” Chloe said, brightening slightly despite her pain. “I always wanted a little sister.”
Behind me, Julian made a sound so quiet no one else noticed. But I noticed. I had once known every microscopic shift in his breathing.
By ten o’clock, Chloe was settled upstairs in a quiet pediatric room with a cast on her minor wrist fracture and a clean neurological scan. The immediate adrenaline passed, leaving behind a heavy, dangerous silence.
I found Julian in the dim family consultation room at the end of the hall, standing by the window, both hands gripping the sill so hard his knuckles were white.
“Chloe is stable,” I said from the doorway. “She should be discharged in the morning.”
He turned slowly. The streetlights outside cast long, harsh shadows across his face. “Is it mine?”
The question was raw. Bare. Stripped of all his usual corporate armor.
My hand moved to my belly instinctively. “Your daughter needs you right now. Go back to her room.”
“Clara.”
“No.” My voice trembled on the single syllable, and I hated myself for the weakness. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to demand answers in a hospital hallway after one hundred and eighty days of absolute silence.”
His jaw flexed. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t look,” I fired back, the anger finally bleeding through my professional veneer. “I wanted you to fight for us, Julian. And you let me walk away.”
He looked as if I had driven a scalpel between his ribs. “I was a coward.”
“Yes,” I agreed softly. “You were.”
I turned on my heel and walked away before he could see the tears threatening to spill. I finished my shift in a total daze. When I finally reached my apartment building at two in the morning, bone-tired and emotionally hollowed out, I found a large, elegantly wrapped box sitting directly in front of my door.
May you like
There was no return address. Just a heavy, cream-colored card tucked under a black silk ribbon. I tore it open with shaking hands. The handwriting was sharp, feminine, and entirely unfamiliar.
Clara, some wars cannot be fought alone. Especially the ones involving him. Look inside.
