Chapter Eleven #2
Because I know I need to confess what I’ve done.
To rip the veil off and damn the consequences.
But fear chains me in place. Not fear for myself, never that.
Fear of what the truth might do to her. What if confessing the whole of it fractures her?
What if the stress drags her body back into the abyss she’d barely survived before?
I won’t allow it.
So I carry the weight alone.
She doesn’t know it, but I’ve hired a whole team of doctors—mine, hers, the best specialists in maternal health—on standby around the clock.
I haven’t slept a full night since the day her test showed positive. I’ve turned my life inside out and I would gladly turn the whole world outside in if that’s what she required to see her greatest wish granted.
But what I can’t do any more is spend another night choking on silence.
If every cell in my body quakes on the knife-edge between loss and redemption, then so be it. I’ve lived my life with storms at my back. A fight for my very soul? Bring it on.
I unlock the penthouse door with a hand that trembles despite my iron will.
And there she is.
Standing dead centre in the living room, still as a statue, a piece of paper trembling between her fingers with a familiar logo of the IVF clinic that sends ice through my veins.
But it’s her face that stops my heart—hell.
I’d hoped for disappointment. Condemnation.
Fury. This is something worse. Something beyond desolate.
Utter devastation.
And in that instant, I know.
The storm hasn’t just arrived.
It’s already tearing the roof from above our heads.
Tessa
‘Tessa.’
The way he says my name kills me. Infuriates me. Makes me want to pound his chest with both fists until either he breaks or I do.
Because in that one taut rasp of my name, I know.
The facts I hold in my trembling hand aren’t fiction. They’re not some clerical error or figment of imagination. Everything the IVF clinic director told me was true.
And worse—there’s more. There’s always more with Theo Biney.
More man. More emotion. More devotion. More control.
More, more, more.
‘You know,’ he expands, that rough, sandpapered voice cutting into me like a dull blade. As if it doesn’t matter whether I do or not.
But it does. God help him, it does.
Because inside those molten brown eyes I see something. A bracing. A steadying. Like a warrior before battle, shoulders squared against the arrows he knows will come.
And suddenly, clarity hits me like a bucket of ice water.
‘Oh my God,’ I whisper, my throat closing around the words. ‘You’ve been waiting for this moment, haven’t you? From the second I set foot in that clinic in Cape Town, you’ve been…plotting.’
The list pours from me, unstoppable now.
‘The calls at midnight you swore were business. The way you stared down the consultant until he couldn’t breathe.
Your sudden obsession with what I ate, what I drank, how long I slept.
The donation. The architectural pointers.
’ My hand shakes as I jab the paper towards him.
‘Even the damn fruit punch you insisted on shoving into my hand after the groundbreaking ceremony. I see it now. I see it all.’
My laugh bursts out jagged and ragged, breaking on a sob. ‘I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified with this level of scheming. Hell, I just don’t know what to feel.’
Theo tosses his jacket onto the sofa with a flick of his wrist. His chest rises and falls once, heavily, before he speaks.
‘It’s very simple, Tessa.’ His tone is flat, steady— almost too steady. ‘You told me we created a child together once. Then you told me you wanted another child. I simply couldn’t sit back and do nothing.’
I stare at him, my blood pounding in my ears. ‘You couldn’t sit back and do nothing? So you bought a clinic? You bribed directors? You wormed your way into my medical decisions like you had the right?’
‘No. I didn’t bribe the director. I made a donation to the clinic in good faith.
Sure, if that got you the optimum care and attention you required, then so be it.
And I do have the right.’ His voice cracks on the edge of fury.
He stalks closer, his presence a wall of heat.
‘You’re carrying a child. A child that could be mine.
But whether it’s mine or not, I won’t stand on the sidelines while you carve me out of the picture. ’
The fury that flares in me nearly blinds me. ‘I carved you out because you earned it! Because four years ago, when I reached out, you—’ My voice breaks and I suck in a breath that feels like glass. ‘You deleted me.’
His jaw locks tight, a muscle twitching like a live wire. ‘And I’ll regret it until my last breath.’
The room vibrates with silence, so thick I could choke on it. He takes a slow step forward, then another.
‘Sit down,’ he orders quietly. ‘You’re distressing yourself.’
I snap my head up, heat slamming through me.
‘Don’t you dare patronise me like I’m some fainting damsel.
I’m not distressed, Theo. I’m furious. I’m shattered.
And I’m done letting you dictate how I feel.
’ I pause to take a breath, then his words truly penetrate.
I take a step back, chest heaving, words spilling before I can stop them.
‘Wait…what do you mean I could be carrying your child? Don’t—don’t you know? ’
His eyes flash, a storm gathering there. ‘No, I don’t. You left the room with four files, remember? I don’t know which donor you chose. I don’t even know if my profile was amongst the four. I had to trust that the algorithm would at least make me one of the possibilities.’
Charged air settles between us. The hand holding the paper shakes, quaking with the truth I can’t hide. The truth that lands on him like a blow. Calculations falter, replaced by something far more dangerous—hope.
His throat works as if he’s swallowed glass and, for one raw unguarded moment, the mask slips. The man who always knows every outcome, every contingency, suddenly looks like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, terrified to leap and desperate to believe the ground won’t vanish beneath him.
‘Tessa…’ His voice cracks, barely a breath. ‘Are you carrying my child?’
‘Yes! But it…it wouldn’t matter whose child it is!’ I spit back, even though the tremor in my voice betrays me.
His lips compress, his face unreadable now.
We stand there, two adversaries locked in battle, neither yielding, both bleeding. And me? I’m drowning. Drowning in love I wish I didn’t feel, in fury I can’t seem to burn off, in grief that never seems to end.
So I throw up my own mask.
‘You just said it doesn’t matter whether the child is yours or not. You intend to keep butting in where you’re not wanted. You’ve made your position clear,’ I state, stepping back.
But the words hang hollow between us. Because nothing is clear. Not anymore.
Not with this truth burning us both alive.
Theo
My world has narrowed to the sound of her voice. To the word.
Yes!
One syllable and the ground gives way beneath me. Every wall I’ve built, every layer of armour I’ve welded to my soul, splinters under the force of it.
She chose me.
Out of every faceless man in those files, she chose me. My blood. My legacy. My second chance.
A shudder tears through my chest, half relief, half disbelief, the echo of a prayer I never thought I’d make—thank you, whatever god, whatever twist of fate, saw fit to give me this miracle. My throat tightens around something feral, something humbling. I’m going to be a father.
With a little above-board streamlining and a little madness, sure, but also by sheer, unrelenting providence. Fate, the beautiful goddess, has seen fit to swing things my way, after all.
And damn, the elation? It’s blinding.
But when the first wave recedes, there’s something beneath the flood of awe, darker currents already twisting. Guilt. Fear. The sudden, staggering weight of what I might have destroyed.
The life I might not have with the woman I still barely deserve.
Doubts skitter through me, shards of reason trying to keep pace with the storm in my chest. Could this really be redemption? Could I, who’s failed so thoroughly at love in the past, possibly get it right this time?
I drag in a breath, bracing for whatever this new life demands of me—only for her voice to cut through the fragile calm, trembling but sharp enough to draw blood.
‘The simple truth…’ she whispers, voice trembling but eyes burning into mine like acid, ‘…is that you bought this baby.’
The words hit harder than a fist. I flinch before I can stop myself. But the recoil lasts only a heartbeat before steel slides into my spine.
‘No,’ I rasp, voice rougher than I intend. ‘I promise you that the only thing I did, after a thorough vetting by the clinic, was expedite my acceptance onto the donor register. The rest was all left to that computer algorithm. And you.’
Her laugh is sharp, caustic, bitter enough to peel the paint off the walls. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Theo. You knew exactly what you were doing.’
‘Did I?’ My own laugh scrapes out, jagged and low.
‘You think so? You know how it felt to watch you inspect those files, wondering if I was even in the running? Then watch you walk out of that room with four choices when I only wanted you to make one, Tessa? Do you have any idea what it felt like to sit here, imagining you being impregnated with another man’s seed when I only wanted you pregnant with mine? ’
Her throat works, eyes wide but still challenging. ‘Why? What did it do to you?’
I shake my head, disbelieving. ‘You still need to ask me that?’
‘Yes,’ she shoots back, stepping closer now, her fury lighting up every nerve inside me like a live wire. ‘Considering you made such a big deal about truth and fidelity and chose to deliberately keep me in the dark about your intentions? Absolutely, yes, I need to ask you. What did it do to you?’