Chapter 21
Nathan
I slip into the bathroom before walking into my office, closing the door behind me like I’m hiding something.
The mirror catches the smirk I’ve been fighting since I left the bakery.
My shirt’s half-tucked, my tie hanging loose.
I fix both, trying to look like a man who didn’t just lose control in a storage room.
Cold water runs over my hands, but it does nothing to cool the heat under my skin. I can still taste her. Feel her fingers digging into my shoulders. The sound she made when I pressed her against the wall keeps replaying in my head. I shouldn’t be thinking about it, but I am. Every damn detail.
I laugh under my breath and shake my head. Get it together, Reign.
I grab a paper towel, dry my hands, and toss it into the trash. That’s when I see it.
A white stick. Two faint pink lines. I freeze.
For a second, it’s like the air gets sucked out of the room.
A pregnancy test. Here. In the trash.
It’s not hers. It’s not mine. But unease crawls through me anyway.
Is this a sign?
Am I being smart right now? Have I ever been?
I can’t stop thinking about it—how easily one moment of carelessness could change everything.
By the time I leave the bathroom, that stupid grin is gone. But my pulse is still hammering. I walk into my office, drop into the chair, and don’t even touch my laptop.
The journal sits there, waiting.
I stare at it for a long moment.
This is exactly the kind of thing I’d normally pretend didn’t mean anything. Exactly the kind of door I’d normally keep closed.
I don’t.
I reach for the journal instead.
And as the pen hits the page, I’m already back there, back to the day everything almost changed.
I’d counted every ring of her phone since sunrise.
Seven calls, eleven unanswered texts. That had never happened before. Maddison was the one who couldn’t stand the smallest pause in a conversation.
By late afternoon, I’d memorized the curve of the ceiling crack above my bed. Bishop would call it paranoia; I called it instinct. Something was wrong.
I grabbed my car keys and bolted downstairs.
Maddison’s driveway was the first stop. Empty. Garage closed. Porch light off.
I tried the little coffee shop she loved, the soccer fields behind the middle school, the creek that ran past the old mill. No sign, just summer heat and the distant throb of cicadas.
An hour slipped by. Then two. My phone battery blinked low. Panic gnawed at the edges of every thought.
One left turn later, I was coasting down Oakridge Drive when a flash of silver stopped my heart. Her mom’s SUV—I knew it from the bumper sticker with the name of Maddison’s school stuck crookedly above the trailer hitch—parked in front of a low brick building I’d never noticed before.
Purple letters on the glass door read PLANNED PARENTHOOD.
I pulled into the grocery lot across the street, killed the engine, and stared through the windshield. Adrenaline drummed so loud, I almost couldn’t hear the traffic.
Pregnant? Why didn’t she tell me? Did something go wrong?
Minutes crawled. My knuckles stayed white on the steering wheel.
The clinic door finally opened. Mrs. Morgan stepped out first, guiding Maddison by the shoulders like she might break. Maddison’s eyes were red, her cheeks blotchy. She pressed a fist against her mouth to smother a sob.
My chest caved. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only watch her climb into the passenger seat and disappear behind tinted glass.
When the SUV pulled away, I fumbled for my phone and dialed Bishop.
He answered on the second ring, huffing like he’d sprinted for it. “Yo, Reign. What’s up?”
“She was at Planned Parenthood,” I blurted. “With her mom. She was crying, Bishop, really crying.”
Silence crackled down the line, then his low, steady voice. “Okay. Breathe. You talk to her yet?”
“Not yet.” My throat burned. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then you wait,” he said. “Give her space until she’s ready.”
Space felt impossible. But Bishop’s words were the only rope keeping me from free-fall, so I clung to them and drove home in a fog.
The night dragged its feet. Rain rattled the windows; lightning turned my room the color of old photographs. I paced while Bishop lounged on my bed, tossing a foam football in the air.
“She’ll call,” he kept saying, like a promise he could deliver. “Whatever it is, you’ll handle it together.”
I nodded, but hope felt paper-thin.
Finally, my phone buzzed.
Maddison.
I stabbed the answer icon. “Maddi?”
Only static and a shaky inhale.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Talk to me.”
When she spoke, her voice was small, shredded around the edges. “I thought I was pregnant.”
Every molecule inside me froze. “Are you?”
“I’m not.” A breath that sounded like a laugh strangled halfway out. “False positive. They did the blood test. I’m… I’m not.”
Relief hit so hard my knees threatened to give, but she kept going before it could settle.
“I panicked, Nathan. I told my mom because I couldn’t even say the words to you, and she drove me there.” Another ragged inhale. “While we were gone, my dad found the test in the bathroom trash. He knows.”
Silence pressed between us, heavier than the storm outside.
“He lost it,” she whispered. “Said I’m throwing my future away. He called in a transfer; he’s moving us to Portland right after Labor Day. I won’t finish senior year here.”
The words hit like a helmet-to-helmet collision. Portland. Three hours away. The end of summer was seven weeks.
My voice broke. My world tore apart from the inside out. “I’ll come over. We’ll figure this out.”
“You can’t fix this, Nathan. You can’t even come over anymore.”
Maddison’s dad yelled from the background, “GET OFF THE PHONE NOW, MADDISON.”
Maddison choked out another sob through her tears. “I love you, Nathan. I—” Her dad started yelling again. She sobbed. “Bye, Nathan. Bye.”
The line went dead. I stared down at the phone and then up at Bishop, tears blurring my line of vision until the pain from the burn to keep them in broke, sending a wave of them sliding down my cheeks.
“What happened?” Bishop jumped to his feet.
“I lost.”
I always won. I never thought my first real loss would be the love of my life.
But I lost her. I lost what made me… me. I lost.
I looked down at my phone again. “She didn’t fight.”
Bishop just stares. “Look, it’s probably her parents and—”
“Love transcends all, right? Even parents yelling at you, you fight, you yell back, you don’t take it lying down unless on some small level you agree with them, on some small level, you’re relieved they’re taking you out of the fucking game.”
We were silent the rest of the night.
And I was pissed she didn’t try.
Just like I was pissed she didn’t share with me.
I was just pissed.
Because it was the same thing in the end. I wasn’t enough for her to trust in any scenario.
The sound of a knock pulls me out of it.
I blink, disoriented, the pen still in my hand, my mind somewhere else entirely. My desk, my office, the journal—none of it feels real.
The door cracks open, and my assistant leans in. “Hey, your next meeting’s here. They’re waiting in the lobby. Which conference room do you want me to set up?”
The question barely registers at first. I’m still half in that memory—half in that bathroom, the air thick with something I can’t name.
“Nathan?”
Her voice drags me back. I clear my throat, close the journal halfway, and force a breath. “Yeah, sorry. Just… feeling a little off. A little nauseous, actually.”
Her brow furrows. “That’s funny…I’ve been feeling a little nauseous today too.”
We both pause. Neither of us says anything.
Finally, she breaks the silence. “I’ll get Conference Room B ready.”
She closes the door, and I sit there for a long second, staring at the journal, wondering if what I’m feeling is guilt, fate, or just coincidence.
My laptop dings.
The sound of an email coming through.
Subject: Forensics Update.
From: Detective Barnett.
I open it.
Nathan,
DNA from the abandoned vehicle did not return a match,
and it appears he left in a rush. We are still looking.
— Barnett
I read it twice.
No match.
Rushed.
I close the laptop slowly.
I lean back in my chair, staring at the screen long after it goes dark.
If he did it, he wouldn’t leave a car like that.
He’d burn it. Dump it in a river. Do something final.
Rushed feels different.
Rushed feels like panic.
Like someone trying to get ahead of something.
Not someone hiding what they did.
I exhale slowly.
Running from the police isn’t the same thing as running from a crime.
And for the first time since he stood in my office, pleading, a small, unwelcome thought settles in.
What if they’re wrong?