12. Breaking Point
TWELVE
brEAKING POINT
Logan
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Twenty-Eight Years Ago
The hospital corridor stretches endlessly. My new trainers squeak against the floor as I swing my legs, perched on a chair too tall for a seven year old. Dad paces, his steps marking time like a metronome—back and forth, back and forth.
“It’s taking too long,” he mutters in Gaelic, a language I’m still learning. “Something’s wrong.”
A nurse rushes past, then another.
“Mr. Fraser!” A voice makes Dad stop pacing. “You need to come now.”
He looks at me, torn. “Logan, stay?—”
“No!” I grab his hand. “I want to see Mum. And the baby.”
But something’s wrong. There is more shouting in the hallway. Dad’s hand is sweaty in mine, but they pull him through doors I’m not allowed to pass.
I press my face against the window, watching shadows move behind frosted glass. The squeak of shoes on linoleum. The metallic smell of fear.
Then silence.
When Dad emerges, he’s not my father anymore. He’s a hollow thing wearing my father’s face. He drops to his knees in front of my chair, and I know—I know before he says it—that Mum isn’t coming home.
“Is it a boy?” I ask because I can’t ask about Mum.
“A girl,” he says, voice cracking. “Audrey.”
I nod, seven years old and suddenly ancient. “Mum liked that name.”
Dad breaks then, sobbing into my small shoulder, and I learn what it means to be the strong one.
* * *
Present Day
“Logan?”
Bella’s voice pulls me back. We’re in our bedroom—my bedroom—and she’s looking at me with concern. The same look the nurses gave me that day.
“You zoned out for a minute.” Her hand touches my arm. “After we both realized...”
She doesn’t finish.
“We don’t know for sure,” I say, but my voice sounds strange. Far away.
“There’s one way to find out.” She’s trying to sound calm and practical. The way she handles every crisis at work. But this isn’t work. This is...
This is my mother bleeding out while bringing life into the world. This is my father drinking himself into oblivion while I learned to braid Audrey’s hair for school. This is every nightmare I’ve had for twenty-eight years.
I have always been careful with women. It’s why nothing like this has happened before, but Bella came along, and I threw caution to the wind.
“Logan?” Bella’s voice again. “We need to know.”
The drive to the drugstore is silent. My hands are too tight on the steering wheel, but if I loosen my grip, they’ll shake. Bella keeps glancing at me, questions in her eyes that I can’t answer yet.
The fluorescent lights in the store are too bright and too sterile. Like the hospital lights.
“I’ll get it,” Bella says quickly. She disappears down an aisle while I stand frozen, surrounded by baby products and prenatal vitamins.
A young couple nearby argues about diaper brands. The woman’s hand rests on her swollen belly, and her husband’s arm is protective around her shoulders. They look so fucking happy, so unaware that hospitals have back doors where they wheel out mothers who never get to hold their babies.
“Got it.” Bella’s back, tucking a paper bag into her purse. “Let’s go home.”
Home. It’s where I wake up every morning, wondering if this is the day she realizes she deserves better than a man haunted by nursery rhymes with a Scottish accent.
“Logan.” Her hand covers mine on the gearshift. “Whatever this test shows... we’ll figure it out.”
I want to tell her there’s nothing to figure out. That I’ve known since I was seven exactly how I never wanted the women I love to have children for me. Instead, I start the car.
The pasta she was cooking is burned beyond salvation, even if I had the foresight to turn the stove off when she fainted. Neither of us mentions it. The test sits between us on the bathroom counter like a live grenade while we wait the required three minutes.
“My mother died having Audrey,” I say suddenly, but she already knows this, and I shouldn’t be fucking pointing it out right now, but I continue anyway. “She—there were complications. Dad never really came back from it.”
Bella’s intake of breath is sharp. She reaches for my hand, but I step back. I can’t be touched right now.
The timer on her phone chimes.
She picks up the test. I watch her face change and see the exact moment two lines appear where there should be one.
“Logan,” she starts, but I’m stepping back.
“I need a minute.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Just... I need to think.”
I’m out the door before she can respond, keys somehow in my hand, the echo of hospital corridors chasing me to the elevator.
I have to get out, breathe, and stop seeing my mother’s face superimposed over Bella’s.
The city lights blur past my windshield. I don’t realize I’m heading to my Chelsea property until I’m already punching in the security code. This place has always been my refuge—bare walls, minimal furniture, no memories.
My phone keeps buzzing.
Please come back.
We need to talk about this.
Logan, you’re scaring me.
The last one hits like a punch to the gut. I’m scaring her. Just like I was scared, watching my father spiral after Mum died. Watching him try to drown her ghost in whiskey while I learned to heat formula and check for fever.
I pace the empty living room, memories surging faster now.
Dad missed Audrey’s first steps because he was passed out on the couch.
The way Audrey would cry for Mum in her sleep, and I’d sing the lullabies I remember, my accent a poor substitute for our mother’s gentle American voice.
My phone rings. Audrey.
“Bella called me,” she says when I answer. “She’s worried sick.”
“I can’t—” My voice breaks. “I can’t do this, Audrey. You know what happened to Mum.”
“Yes, I do. Because you’ve spent my entire life making sure I knew her, even though you were just a boy yourself.” Her voice softens. “Logan, what happened to Mum was tragic. But it was also rare. And medicine has advanced so much since then.”
“You don’t understand. If something happened to Bella?—”
“Then you’d handle it just like you’ve handled everything else. But nothing’s going to happen. You know why? Because you’re not alone this time. You’ve got me. You’ve got Louis at the hospital.”
I sink onto the bare floor, pressing my palm against the cool hardwood. “I watched him fall apart, Audrey.”
“But Logan, you’re not Dad. You’re stronger than he ever was.”
“Am I? I just ran out on her.”
“So go back.” She says it like it’s simple, like I’m not choking on memories that have haunted me for years—memories that I’ve tried to put at bay but wouldn’t go away.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been taking care of people your whole life. The only difference is, this time, you don’t have to do it alone.”
My phone beeps with another text.
I understand if you need space. But please let me know you’re safe.
“She deserves better,” I whisper.
“Then be better.” Audrey’s voice is firm. “Be the man I know you are. The one who learned to braid hair from YouTube videos because his little sister wouldn’t let anyone else touch her hair. The one who built an empire while making sure I never felt alone.”
“Audrey—”
“The one who’s been in love with Bella since forever even though he was too scared to admit it.”
The words hit home. Because she’s right—I have been running from more than just tonight’s news. I’ve been running from the possibility of real happiness since I watched it die with my mother.
“Go home, Logan,” Audrey says softly. “Don’t let fear cost you everything worth having.”
“I can’t.” My voice breaks. “Not yet.”
“Logan...” She pauses. “There’s something else you should know. Louis and I... we found out two days ago. I’m pregnant too. So, you see, you and Bella couldn’t have been expecting a baby at a better time. We’re going to be one big family.”
But the world stops. My sister’s words echo in my head, and suddenly I’m seven again, and I’m seeing Audrey in that same hospital bed, machines beeping, doctors rushing?—
“Logan? Say something.”
“No.” The word comes out raw. “No, you can’t be. Audrey, you can’t?—”
“This is different,” she says firmly. “Medicine has advanced. Louis is a doctor. We have the best care?—”
“So did Mum!” My voice rises, panic clawing at my throat. “She had the best care too, and look what happened!”
“Logan—”
I hang up. Can’t bear to hear more. Can’t face the possibility of losing both of them—Bella and Audrey—to the same fate that took our mother.
My phone lights up with texts:
Audrey:
Don’t you dare shut us out.
Bella again:
Please come home.
But I can’t. Not when I can barely breathe through the fear. Not when this is a crumbled version of the alpha male that Bella wants—a man afraid of pregnant women. Really?
I need time. Space. Need to find a way to be stronger than this terror that’s ruled my life for twenty-eight years.
My fingers hover over Bella’s last message, before I finally send a reply.
I need a few days.
Then I turn off my phone.