31. Chapter Thirty-One Jade
Chapter Thirty-One: Jade
T he tang of bile stung the back of my throat, and I swallowed hard.
Across from me, Ellie’s brows knitted with concern as she watched me push around the untouched food on my plate.
I was supposed to be telling her, but I was chickening out. The nausea wasn’t making it easy for me to focus.
“Jade, you sure you’re okay?” Ellie asked, her voice a mix of worry and suspicion.
I mustered a weak smile, feeling the lie slip out easier than I expected. “Yeah, just this flu bug that’s been going around. It’s really got a hold on me.”
“You might need to go to the doctor,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “I got a…I should probably go home. I need to rest.”
Ellie wasn’t convinced, but she nodded, reaching across to squeeze my hand. “Text me when you get home, alright?”
“Will do,” I promised, though my thoughts were already racing ahead. I needed space, time alone to digest the news that had upended my life—news I couldn’t yet share, not even with Ellie.
Even though I really wanted to.
I hailed a taxi outside the restaurant, grateful for the anonymity it provided. The cabbie glanced at me in the rearview mirror, but I paid him no mind, my fingers scrolling aimlessly over my phone’s screen. It was a futile attempt at distraction; my mind was a whirlwind of what-ifs and how-abouts.
Home came too soon, or perhaps not soon enough. I stumbled into the sanctuary of my bedroom, letting the door click shut behind me. The bed called out to me—a soft, inviting expanse where I could lay out all my tangled thoughts.
“List,” I murmured to myself. A list would make sense of the chaos. Pros and cons, simple and clear. It was the scientist in me craving order amidst the emotional storm.
My phone buzzed, a jarring sound against the silence of the room. Dante. His name lit up the screen, and a surge of something—fear, excitement, longing—fluttered through me. But I ignored the call, let it fade to voicemail. There were more pressing matters at hand, like figuring out the logistics of a life growing inside me, tied to a man whose very existence threatened to unravel mine.
I would have to face him. But first, I would have to face this.
“Okay, Jade,” I whispered, steeling myself. “Time to face this head-on.”
I settled on the edge of the bed, the organic cotton sheets rustling beneath me. The pen felt heavy in my hand, like it was more than just ink—it was a lifeline to clarity. I drew two columns on a fresh page of my notebook, labeling one “Pro” and the other “Con.” Through the cracked window, the city’s breath sent a hum that mingled with the cacophony in my head.
“Pro,” I started, pressing the tip of the pen against the paper as if it were a sacred act. “This might be the right time to have a baby.” I wrote it down, my fingers tightening around the pen. Thirty-two years old and the ticking of my biological clock was not something even I, with all my scientific knowledge, could silence.
There were other pros. Surely, there were other pros. But my hand hovered above the paper and I couldn’t will it to move.
“Con,” I scrawled under the word on the opposite page, my eyes narrowing as I focused on the word that felt like a judgment. The skyline outside my window blurred into a sea of sparkling lights as my mind wandered to the sterile environment of my lab. “Research demands my full attention.” The truth of the statement settled in my chest, heavy and undeniable.
No, I needed more pros. I was sure there were more.
“Pro: Could actually be fun,” I added, allowing myself this one concession to levity amidst the gravity of my situation. The pen danced across the paper now, less burdened by the weight of practicality.
“Con: The danger,” I whispered, the word slicing through the quiet of my apartment. My hand trembled as I wrote, not wanting to acknowledge how deep into Dante’s world I might be pulled. How could I reconcile the life growing inside me with a life entwined with…whatever the fuck Dante was entwined with? I wasn’t stupid, nor naive. I had just not wanted to take it into account. I had been having too much fun with him.
But now there was someone else’s life to consider.
Someone who needed me to protect them no matter what.
“Con: Potential for...chaos.” That was an understatement. The unpredictability of being connected to someone like Dante, it was all-consuming. I swallowed hard, considering how my child’s life would be shadowed by threats and secrecy.
A soft snort escaped me as I remembered Dante’s sculpted jawline, the way his dark hair fell effortlessly across his forehead. With a wry smile tugging at my lips, I scribbled on the ‘Pro’ side, “Dante’s genes might create a very good-looking child.” I shook my head slightly at the absurdity of such a superficial thought, but it was an undeniable fact; the man was attractive, painfully so.
Fuck. I really had to tell him.
If I chose to keep the baby, Dante needed to know the truth.
I set the pen down, my list far from complete. But in that moment, I realized no amount of pros and cons could make this decision for me. It was about more than science or safety—it was about what I wanted my life to mean, what legacy I wanted to leave behind.
The sounds of the city rose up, the distant clamor somehow soothing. I wasn’t alone in my indecision; the world outside was full of people making tough calls every day. I just had to decide which call was right for me.
I stared at the list, my stomach tightening into a knot. The list of cons could have filled this entire notebook, and yet I knew my decision had already been made.
“Pro,” I said, though I didn’t write it. “I’m already attached. Wait, is that a con?”
I leaned back against the headboard, my hand gravitating to my abdomen. It was still flat, practically unchanged to the eye, but it harbored a secret—a burgeoning new existence. The air around me stilled, thickened by the gravity of what I was about to acknowledge.
Eyes closed, I took a deep breath, steadying myself against the swell of emotions. A faint smile, one that scarcely dared to manifest, played across my lips. “Okay. Fuck the list. I choose to keep you,” I whispered into the silence. The words, tentative yet resolute, filled the room and encased my heart in a vow.
This decision, born out of chaos, injected me with an unforeseen vigor. Pushing up from my bed, I made my way to my office—a fancy name for a desk I kept in the corner of my bedroom.
I approached the desk that bore the weight of countless hours of research. Papers strewn about, notes scrawled in my meticulous hand, books with dog-eared pages marking breakthroughs and ideas—all of it now secondary to the strategy I needed to devise for my unexpected future. One by one, I shuffled through the documents, reordering my life’s priorities. The crisp rustle of paper punctuated my movements as I sectioned off areas of focus: prenatal care nestled beside gene therapy, childcare books propped up against molecular biology texts.
“Okay, Jade,” I muttered to myself, plotting out the practical steps for both the pregnancy and my ongoing projects. “You’re a damn good scientist. You can figure this out.”
And just like that, plans began to take shape. Time lines, budgets, contingency protocols—my mind buzzed with the logistics of combining motherhood with my career’s demands. But beneath the surge of efficiency, a tender undercurrent hummed—the realization that my life was no longer solely my own.
The evening sky darkened outside, the early signs of nightfall casting shadows across my workspace. I glanced at the clock, noting how the hours had slipped by unnoticed. For the first time in years, my research didn’t consume every waking thought.
“Okay,” I said as I flipped through the pages of one of my textbooks. “Okay. Guess I’m having a baby.”