Chapter 21
April
The waiting room smells like antiseptic and old magazines.
I sit in a molded plastic chair, stomach doing slow, nervous flips, hands buried in the sleeves of my sweater.
I feel like a fraud, like someone’s going to call me out and say, you’re not really pregnant, you’re just pretending, get out of here.
When they draw the blood and run the levels, it’s real. Confirmed.
The nurse returns with a clipboard and a smile.
“Congratulations,” she says, like I’ve won something.
The word hits me like a wave I didn’t see coming.
Congratulations. Like this is a thing to celebrate.
Like I’m not quietly unraveling, sitting here alone, holding a piece of paper with numbers on it that mean everything and nothing.
I nod, swallow hard, and smile like I know how.
Pregnant. I’m actually pregnant. I should be happy.
Anthony was all over me last night, and the thing I was worried about most doesn’t seem to be an issue at all.
But that doesn’t mean I know exactly where I stand with him, and it doesn’t mean I can hide now.
I’ll show eventually. And I’ll have to tell Angela. I step outside, phone in hand.
Me:
Just left the clinic. Blood test confirmed it
Anthony responds fast, like he was waiting with his phone in his hand since I left this morning.
Anthony Voss:
Thank fuck. I’m glad. Really.
Are you okay?
I stare at the words longer than I should, trying to work out a response. I will be, I type, then delete it. I don’t know, deleted.
Me:
Going to Angela’s now. Then I’ll come to work. Try not to miss me too much
I don’t wait for his reply. The text is risky enough to make me want to, but my brain’s already decided that I have to tell Angela. Today.
————
Angela’s townhouse still smells of toast and strawberry shampoo, with an added hint of coffee this morning. My sister’s hair is up in a messy knot, an oversized t-shirt slung off one shoulder. Ava’s busy at the kitchen table, glitter-gluing something into oblivion.
“Hey,” Angela says, handing me coffee like she already knows something’s wrong. “You look like you saw a ghost.” I almost laugh.
We sit. Ava hums some song from a Disney movie while my shaky hands hold onto a mug. I don’t give myself time to chicken out, even though I have to force the words.
“Can we have a sister chat?” I ask, glancing once at Ava before watching Angela. I know better than to ask for an adult chat around Ava; she’ll just insist she’s a big girl.
Angela doesn’t hesitate. “Ava, sweetie, can you play in your room for a few while Auntie April and I talk?”
“‘Kay,” she groans, slipping from her chair and wandering down the hallway.
I wait until I hear the click of her door before I let myself say it. “I went to the doctor this morning.”
Angela’s eyes flash to mine, and immediately, I know I started with the wrong thing. She’s got too much medical trauma with her daughter for me to start with that. “You—”
“I’m pregnant.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. “…What?”
I don’t wait for her to fill in the blanks.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” I explain carefully. “My boss.”
Angela’s brow shoots up. “The one you hate?” she asks, her face morphing from surprise to anger. “The one who’s, like, twenty years older than you? That’s—”
“It’s not like that,” I rush. “He needed an heir. It’s complicated.”
“An heir?” she echoes, like I’ve started speaking in code.
I nod, fingers tightening around the mug. “There’s a clause in his business contract. If he doesn’t produce an heir, he loses the company. He asked me to be a surrogate? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”
Her face freezes. “What?”
“For money,” I add, like that makes it better. “To help with Ava. It’s why I’ve been able to—”
“So let me get this straight,” Angela interrupts, voice rising. “You’re not donating an egg, you’re not using someone else’s embryo, you’re literally pregnant with your boss’s child and calling it, surrogacy?”
The word cracks like a whip. “It’s not—”
“Oh my god, April.” She pushes her chair back. “Are you insane? He knocked you up and called it a business transaction? That’s not surrogacy, that’s manipulation dressed up in a fucking power suit.”
Heat floods my face. “It wasn’t like that.”
“He paid you.”
“I agreed.”
“Did you have a choice?” Her arms cross. “Did you feel like you could say no?”
I stand, flustered, and unprepared for the onslaught of questions. “He’s not like that. He’s taking care of everything.” Panic boils hot inside me as I force out explanations, trying to make her see. Why can’t she just see? Nicky sees, why is this difficult? “He’s—he’s good to me. Genuinely.”
Angela stares. “You’re defending him?”
“I’m just telling you it’s not what you think.”
She exhales like she’s trying not to scream. “So it was just for the money?”
My throat closes. “I don’t know anymore.”
Angela’s lips purse as she stares at me, the gears turning in her head. “What is it right now? For the money? Or for him?”
Silence, thick and heavy, descends. My throat tightens, the panic flaring hotter. “I have to go.” She calls after me, but I’m already at the door. I don’t look back.
————
I take three steps down the stoop, and my body forgets how to keep it together.
My vision blurs. My throat closes. My heart feels too big for my ribs, like it’s swelling and swelling until it’s going to split me open on the sidewalk like some stupid, spectacular accident.
I press a hand hard to my sternum as if I can physically hold it in place.
Angela’s words loop on repeat, merciless. For the money? Or for him?
I tell myself to be offended and angry. To march back in there and tell her she doesn’t get to interrogate me like I’m some teenager who fell for the wrong boy.
Things are allowed to be complicated. But, the truth is already crawling up my spine and perched on my tongue because the moment she said it, my body answered before my brain could lie. It’s about him.
I walk because stopping feels like dying.
I shove my hands in my pockets and move fast, head down, like if I keep my feet going, I can outrun the panic rising in my chest. Upper Manhattan slides past me brownstones with wrought-iron fences, a bodega with a cat in the window, a couple arguing on the corner, a stroller pushing through a puddle.
I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just going.
My phone is heavy in my coat pocket. I think of calling Nicky. The thought is a relief for half a second. Her voice, her bluntness, her laughter when I’m being dramatic and her sharp, clean advice when I’m being stupid. She’d tell me what to do. She’d tell me what this is.
Then I see her face in my mind when I admit to what she’d warned me against from the start.
I couldn’t keep my emotions out of it. I can already hear her, deadpan.
“April. Babe. Are you out of your fucking mind?” I can’t have another person look at me like I’ve fucked up.
I can’t admit out loud to anyone else that I failed.
That I didn’t keep it clean and cold and contained like I promised myself I would.
Because I tried. God, I tried. I tried to keep him at a distance.
To keep my body separate from my feelings and treat it like a job.
Then last night happened, and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
His bed. His hands. The way he held me after, like he forgot he was supposed to be made of steel.
The way his voice sounded genuine when he said he wanted me safe.
The way he asked me to move in like it was the most natural thing in the world, like I was already folded into the shape of his life.
It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. God, it did.
I feel my eyes start to sting again, and I try hard to blink them away, but it’s useless.
Tears roll down my cheeks, hot and humiliating, but I keep walking like nothing is happening.
A sob catches in my throat, and I clamp my jaw so tight my teeth ache.
I make it half a block before I stop at a curb.
My chest is heaving, and I can’t breathe because my lungs feel too small.
My hands shake as I drag my phone out, screen blurring under my thumb because I’m crying too hard to see it properly.
I don’t even think. I just hit his name. It rings once. Twice. The sound is loud in my ear, intrusive. He picks up immediately. “April?” The way he says my name is alert, sharp, already reaching for control — makes something in me crack clean through.
I try to speak, and a broken sound comes out instead. A sob I can’t swallow.
“April,” he says, voice changing instantly. Softer, lower. “Hey. Hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I—I can’t—” My breath jerks. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force air into my lungs. “I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be calling you, I just—”
“Where are you?” he asks, calming me like his hand is on the nape of my neck.
“I don’t know,” I choke out, looking around briefly before seeing someone staring at my broken state as they pass. I look down again. “I left Angela’s and I—I’m walking and I can’t—”
“Breathe,” he says, and there’s steel under the softness now, a command wrapped in care. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Do it with me.”
I hate that it works. I hate that my body listens to him like it’s trained. “My sister—” I manage. “She said—she asked if it was still about the money or if it’s about you, and I—I didn’t have an answer fast enough and she—”
“You do have an answer,” he says quietly.
The tears keep pouring. I swipe them away with the back of my hand and it just smears across my cheek. “I can’t keep emotions out of this,” I blurt, words tumbling, ugly and desperate. “I can’t. I told myself I would and I can’t, and it’s—it’s messing me up, Anthony.”
There’s a pause. Not the cold kind. The kind where he’s choosing every word carefully. “I know,” he says.
Two words, and my throat tightens so hard it hurts. “You—” I suck in air again. “You know?”
“I’ve known,” he says, voice steady.
I press my knuckles to my mouth to muffle another sob. That’s so much worse.
“I’m coming to get you,” he continues, matter-of-fact, like he’s already standing up, already grabbing his coat. “Text me your location.”
Panic spikes for a different reason, sharp and immediate. “No—Anthony, no, you’re at work. You can’t just—”
“I can,” he cuts in.
“You shouldn’t leave,” I insist, voice shaking. “You have meetings, you—the board will ask questions, you can’t just walk out because I’m—” I swallow hard, trying to reframe it and minimize it. I want to make myself smaller. “Because I’m having a moment.”
“I don’t care,” he says, and the bluntness of it hits like a physical thing. “I’m coming.”
“Anthony—”
“April.” He says my name again, calming, anchoring. “Send me your location.”
I close my eyes. My chest rises and falls too fast. “I don’t want to be a problem,” I whisper, the words raw.
“You aren’t,” he says, and there’s no hesitation, no impatience. Just certainty. “You’re carrying my child. And you’re alone on the street crying. I can’t let that happen. Not if I have any say in it.”
My throat tightens at the way he says it, like it’s not a claim, but a responsibility he’s already accepted. “Okay,” I croak.
“Okay,” he echoes, already moving. “Stay where you are. Go inside somewhere if you can. Coffee shop, lobby, anything. Don’t wander.”
The command in his tone steadies me even as it makes my stomach flip. “I’m fine,” I try again, reflexively. “I can get myself—”
“You don’t have to,” he says, and the softness returns, threaded through the control. “Not today.”
I swallow and the sound is loud in the quiet air around me. I realize I’m still standing at the curb like I’ve been rooted there, phone pressed to my ear, tears drying cold on my cheeks.
“Text me,” he says. “Now.”
I end the call and send him my location before I can talk myself out of it. He sends his own right back to me, two little blue dots on a map halfway across Manhattan, but moving steadily closer.