Chapter 8 #2
As she eats, swinging her legs and humming to herself, I lean against the counter and sip water, careful and slow. The nausea hums in the background, not gone, just waiting. I keep my eyes on Lucy, on the small ordinary miracle of her eating real food and not the processed shit my mom fed her.
When she finishes two whole pieces, she announces, “I’m done.”
“Of course you are,” I say gently.
She slides off her chair and wraps her arms around my legs. “You’re a good cooker,” she says, muffled against me.
My throat tightens, sudden and sharp. “Thank you.”
She pulls back, already moving on. “Can we watch cartoons now?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “Absolutely.”
I turn on the giant screen TV to PBS and kiss the top of her head. “I’ll be right back here.”
I rinse the pan, wipe the counter, move through the motions like this morning is normal and manageable, and not quietly rearranging my entire life.
The omelet bites are a success. I file that away. Everything else can wait.
Lucy chatters about something I only half hear. I respond at the right moments, nodding, smiling, functioning.
That damn book sits on the counter in my peripheral vision. Taunting. Waiting.
And I tell myself, very carefully, that whatever my body is doing, whatever this morning is trying to tell me, will have to wait.
Because Lucy is watching.
I spend the day reading, drawing, and coloring with Lucy, avoiding all plans I’d made for today, and grateful I didn’t tell her about, thinking about how the hell this happened…
It starts with one of those invites that landed in my inbox and made me reread it three times. Faculty-only, technically. But someone adds, bring your promising students. I am promising. On paper. In practice, I am a girl who still triple-checks that she belongs in the room.
I thrifted the outfit. Of course I did. I built it piece by piece, silk blouse that still smells faintly like someone else’s perfume, tailored blazer that must’ve once belonged to a woman with money and a corner office. I steam it. I practice not tugging at the sleeves.
For once, when I walked in, no one clocked me as an accident.
I fit. I listened. I took notes. I asked a question that made one of the ‘fancy professors’ pause and smile like I’ve earned something.
I wasn’t the scholarship girl, or the girl sprinting away from the hell she was raised in.
I was the woman who made it out and brought her brain with her.
And then there’s him.
Nerdy-hot. Quiet confidence. The kind of man who listens before he speaks. Very rare. We talked about the lecture. About theory. About things that mattered. He didn’t condescend. He didn’t explain me to myself. He looked at me like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
For one night, I let myself believe that too.
It wasn’t reckless. It felt earned. Like a reward for clawing my way to where I needed and wanted to be.
I didn’t think about consequences because I was tired of thinking about them.
Now I am in my bathroom staring at two pink lines, and that memory folds in on itself like a cruel joke.
Because I know who he is now. Not just the man from the lecture. Not just the one-night stand I let myself have because I finally felt safe enough to want something.
That’s the part that makes my stomach drop.
If he didn’t want the child, that would be clean. Painful, but clean. I could handle that. I’ve handled worse. I raised myself. I can raise a child, hell, I am. I have never doubted that for a second.
What terrifies me is the opposite.
He would fight, like Claudia’s ex… whatever he was. More than one night, but not much.
I don’t think he’s cruel, but I also think maybe, I mean, he staged the book.
Who does that? Freaking weirdo is who, but I don’t get creep vibes. I will surely address that.
He has resources I do not; he comes from a world where lawyers are preventative rather than reactive. Where custody battles are strategic, not desperate. Where his wallet weighs more than my intentions ever could.
And I am standing at his mercy, living in a house with him, a teammate, and my sister.
Leaving is not an option. I have to prove I can take care of Lucy, and I cannot put her stability at risk for a child who, after doing the math, is just past the timeframe I personally feel is a choice for me, if it’s a healthy pregnancy.
My eyes burn, because I am meticulous with my time, I never waste it, yet I didn’t know… how?
I was being compensated to help someone else fight a custody battle. Watching a woman I care about brace herself against a man who thinks money equals moral authority. I see how the system tilts. I see how quickly motherhood becomes a liability instead of a virtue.
I am not naive.
That’s why my chest tightens the way it does. That’s why the fear sharpens instead of softens.
Because I didn’t sleep with a stranger. I slept with a man who could take my child from me without ever raising his voice. The irony burns so hot it feels like punishment.
I trusted myself that night. I trusted the version of me who belonged in that room. Who asked the smart question? Who was wanted, not tolerated. Now that trust I have long fought for is stained.
I slide down the wall and sit on the floor and wrap my arms around myself because suddenly I understand something I never let myself think before.
This isn’t about whether I can be a mother. It’s about whether the world will let me be one on my own terms. Ones I have fought for, given everything to.
And for the first time since I walked into that lecture feeling like I fit, I am terrified that belonging came with a price I didn’t see coming. Now I see that it did…
I think harder about that ‘version’ of him. He wasn’t loud or ultra-alpha like he is on the ice. He wasn’t performing. He was standing slightly apart from the group of professors, glass of wine untouched in his hand, listening like he was cataloging the room instead of trying to impress it.
I was still riding the high of the lecture when I drifted closer.
My heart was doing that steady, confident thing it only does when I know that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I had asked a good question. One that made the visiting lecturer, Matthias Eberhardt, pause.
One that earned a few nods. I felt… solid.
He, the man who startled me during the lecture, turned toward me as if he were looking for me because I was someone worth speaking to. Not scanning. Not assessing. Recognizing.
“You reframed his argument,” he said, accent thicker than the one he uses when he’s around his hockey family. “Not many people do that. They usually try to dismantle it.”
I was caught off guard. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know,” he said with a small smile, like that was his point. “You were asking where the framing breaks down. What comes next?”
Something in my chest loosened. I didn’t feel defensive. I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything.
“I think people underestimate how often legitimacy is mistaken for inevitability,” I’d said. “Just because something has endured doesn’t mean it’s neutral or unbreakable.”
His gaze sharpened. Not in a predatory way. In a focused one. Like I’d tuned into the same frequency he’d been on all night.
“That’s exactly the mistake,” he nodded. “Endurance gets confused for moral authority.”
We stood there, the hum of conversation around us fading into background noise. When he looked at me, he didn’t flick away to check who else might be more important.
It was unsettling, in a good way, for once.
“You’re a student,” he stated, not because he doubted me, but because he wanted to place me accurately.
“PhD student, defending in a year and four months.”
His smile deepened, just slightly. “That explains the precision. You’re still close enough to the material to be angry about it.”
I laughed, surprised. “And you?”
He hesitated for half a beat. Just enough to register. “I grew up around these systems. I like to understand the architecture before I’m forced to live inside it.”
It was an honest answer disguised as a vague one. I clocked that immediately. And instead of making me curious in a hungry way, it made me feel safe.
He asked about my research. Actually asked. Not the polite version where someone waits for a keyword they recognize. He listened, head tilted slightly, eyes steady. When I finished, he didn’t respond right away.
“That’s thankless work,” he said finally. “Know that those intelligent enough to understand it know how important it is.”
No one had ever said it like that before.
I felt myself stand a little straighter. Not because I wanted him to want me, but because I wanted to stay inside this version of myself a moment longer. The one who belongs there without shrinking.
When he looked at me, there was no calculation. No appraisal of what I cost or what I offer.
He looked like he’s impressed.
Which is dangerously intoxicating when you’ve built your life on not needing that from anyone.
Later, much later, I’ll realize something else.
The way he looked at me wasn’t ownership. It wasn’t hunger. It was attention. The kind that assumes you’re worth the time it takes to understand you.
Was that all a lie?