Chapter 5
Chapter Five
MYA
F our weeks.
That’s how long it takes for chaos to soften into habit. For the sharp edges of a new life to dull into something bearable. New York City doesn’t exactly cradle you gently—it shoves you into its current and dares you to keep up. But somehow, I’m still here. Still swimming.
Kingston’s penthouse isn’t warm in the traditional sense. It’s all dark woods and clean lines, like a brooding architect with a god complex and a black card designed it. The floors shine like oil-slick ocean water beneath the recessed lighting, glossy and unpredictable. Floor-to-ceiling windows slice through one wall, framing Manhattan like the city is on display in a museum—high art in motion.
At night, the skyline glows like it’s flirting. A million lights winking from buildings that never sleep, all of them saying the same thing: Try to forget me. I dare you.
The living room feels like walking into a cigarette ad. Sleek black leather. Cold steel. A low-slung sectional sprawled out like it owns the place, draped in throw pillows that look like they cost more than my first car but couldn’t care less about being touched. There’s a fireplace built into a slab of slate that practically dares you to feel anything. It’s all edges and shadows, a moodboard of masculine restraint. Even the coffee table—glass and chrome—looks like it belongs in a spy movie, seconds from revealing a secret weapon.
The air smells faintly like cedarwood, ambition, and whatever Kingston wears that lingers long after he’s left a room. It’s sharp. Clean. Familiar.
Our routines are still a little clumsy, but they’re starting to stick. He leaves me tea every morning. I take over his kitchen island with campaign strategies, mood boards and content drafts. He plays music too loud when he showers. I forget to turn the lights off when I leave a room. We exist beside each other like a pair of mismatched socks—different but oddly functional.
And Fletcher?
He’s a ghost now. A weight I carry in the spaces between breaths. I haven’t called. Haven’t texted. Haven’t caved. It’s a personal record. A quiet rebellion against my worst instincts. I don’t know if he’s tried to reach me—Kingston set my phone to auto-block anything that looks like regret.
I tell myself that’s progress.
Instead, I bury myself in work. Simply Reese is pushing into new territory—maternity athleisure that actually flatters instead of fighting your body. I met with the design team in the city this morning, pitching concepts like I wasn’t one poorly timed kick away from crying into my compression leggings.
“Soft where it matters. Supportive where it counts,” I told them. “Because growing a human doesn’t mean you stop being one.”
Reese eats that kind of tagline up. Now I’m back at the penthouse, perched at the kitchen island, laptop open and a half-empty glass of iced tea sweating beside me. I’m mid-call with her, both of us glowing with the kind of creative adrenaline that makes deadlines feel like dares.
“For the next reel,” I say, scrolling through raw footage, “we use your voiceover from the self-worth podcast—slow-mo stretches, mirror shots, raw belly clips—nothing too curated. Just real.”
Reese laughs. “God, you’re disgusting. How are you this good and this pregnant?”
“Black magic. And a perfectly timed snack schedule.”
“Seriously, Mya, you’re killing it.”
She means it. I can hear it in her voice. But still, I feel like I’m floating—like I’m watching my life play out from behind glass, nodding along like an understudy who never quite made it to center stage.
When we hang up, I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath for hours.
Sixteen weeks.
The doctor I found uptown is sharp-eyed and unshakable. Her office smells like disinfectant and destiny, and when she pressed the Doppler wand to my stomach last Tuesday and the heartbeats kicked in—steady, strong, stubborn—I forgot how to breathe again. It was real. All of it. Still is.
The babies are the only thing tethering me to now, and I refuse to loosen my grip on the hope it brings me.
My mom still hasn’t called. Not once. She knows, obviously. But she’s silent. Because silence is what we do in my family when we’re hurt. We go cold. We go quiet. We build walls and call it protection. She’s stubborn.
I got that from her.
The buzzing of my phone cuts through the quiet. It’s Thorin. More promo shots for Eighteendust’s upcoming tour. I tap into work mode, letting my fingers move before my brain can catch up. Image. Caption. Engagement strategy. Repeat.
But there’s an ache beneath it all. An echo I can’t shake.
Because even with the city outside my window and the future kicking beneath my ribs, there’s a part of me still reaching for something I shouldn’t want.
Still wondering if Fletch ever thinks of me at all.
I shut the laptop. Pour another glass of tea. Breathe in the stillness of the penthouse like it might become familiar if I try hard enough. Like I might become someone new inside it.
Someone who doesn’t need closure. Someone who doesn’t need to look back.
I press a hand to my stomach, where the tiny lives grow louder every day.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.
* * *
I burn the garlic bread.
One minute it’s golden and perfect and the next it’s a charcoal brick that sets off the fire alarm in Kingston’s million-dollar kitchen. Which, by the way, has a double oven, a pot-filler faucet, and one of those fridges that tells you when your milk is about to expire—but apparently no built-in common sense, because it didn’t warn me I was about to ruin dinner.
“Shit,” I mutter, grabbing a towel and flapping it wildly beneath the screeching detector like it’s a demon I can chase away with cotton.
Kingston appears in the doorway a second later, barefoot, t-shirt tight across his chest, a lazy smile playing on his lips.
“Need backup?” he asks, eyes flicking to the blackened bread like it’s cute that I’ve just murdered carbs.
“I had one job,” I groan. “Just one.”
He strolls over and disarms the alarm with the flick of a button like he does this sort of thing all the time—puts out fires, fixes messes, makes my brain melt.
“It’s not ruined.” He tears a piece off and pops it in his mouth. “It’s smoky. Adds character.”
I snort. “That’s not character. That’s carcinogenic.”
But then he leans in, kisses my temple like it’s nothing—and everything—and says, “I like when you cook for me. Always have.”
Cue emotional whiplash.
Dinner is edible—barely—but we eat it cross-legged on the floor of his cavernous living room because the dining table feels too formal and I need something grounding. Something that feels real and not like the shiny, glass-and-gold fantasy this penthouse is.
Kingston’s rare night off is quiet. Calm. The kind of evening I crave but never know how to ask for.
Then he says it.
“We should set up a nursery.”
Just like that. Casually, in between bites of pasta and a sip of Pellegrino like he’s talking about rearranging the living room.
My fork clinks against the plate. My pulse flatlines.
A nursery?
“What?” I laugh—but it’s the kind of laugh that sounds hollow. Ha-ha-ha, please tell me you didn’t just say that.
“I mean,” he shrugs, trying for nonchalance, but there’s something serious burning behind his gaze. “There’s space. The third bedroom’s just holding gym equipment and boxes. I could have it cleared out by the weekend.”
The weekend.
He’s already planned the logistics. Probably already Googled color palettes and cribs and safety-rated rocking chairs because of course he has.
I blink. Swallow. Try to hold it together, but I’m a cracked window in a windstorm right now.
“I met with my dad’s lawyer this morning,” I say, voice low, hoping he catches the gravity beneath the sentence.
Kingston’s chewing slows. “About Fletcher?”
I nod. “The termination papers are being filed this week.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just sets his plate down and shifts closer, so close his thigh presses against mine. Warmth. Pressure. Presence.
And I want to lean in. God, I do. But I also want to run.
I wrap my arms around my belly and stare at the floor. “The nursery thing…it just caught me off guard.”
“You rarely get caught off guard,” he murmurs.
“I know.”
There’s a pause. Not heavy, just… pregnant.
Ha. Of course my brain goes there.
“I’m not trying to push you,” he adds softly, “but you and the babies are already here. It’s not about rushing anything. It’s about making space.”
But that’s just it. He’s making space. In his home. In his life. In ways that terrify me because I didn’t ask for this and yet…I can’t bring myself to say no.
“I don’t know how to do this with you,” I admit, voice barely audible. “Some days I think I’m okay. That I’ve figured out how I feel about you. About Fletch. About everything. And then you say something like ‘nursery’ and suddenly it’s like my heart’s sprinting a marathon and my head’s on fire.”
Kingston doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask for more than I’m ready to give.
“You feel something for me.”
It’s not a question. It’s a truth wrapped in barbed wire.
“I do,” I whisper. “But it’s messy.”
“We’ve always been messy,” he says. “You’re just used to cleaning up on your own.”
I glance over, meet his gaze, and for a second I see everything I’ve been trying not to name—safety, comfort, history, maybe even love. The kind of love that builds slowly, quietly, without asking for permission. The kind of love that’s existed between us before.
“I’m scared,” I confess, because I’ve lost too much and leaned on too few and Kingston’s becoming something dangerous—something essential—and I don’t know what to do with that.
He brushes a hand over my knuckles. Just that. Nothing more.
“You can rely on me, Mya.”
And maybe that’s the scariest part.
“I already do,” I confess quietly.
The words hang between us, thick and electric, like the charged silence before a thunderclap.
My heart does this weird skip thing, like it’s trying to keep pace with a moment I didn’t see coming. And maybe I should be basking in it. Soaking in the sweetness of his confession like it’s warm sun on bare skin. But I’m too practical for that. Too bruised. Too me.
So instead, I circle back. Because that’s what I do—loop back to the safe stuff, the small things, the things that don’t carry the weight of everything I’ve been through.
“So… what do you think it’ll look like?” I ask, voice softer now. “If you start dating someone again. Someone who’s…” I gesture vaguely between us, my hand brushing the curve of my belly. “Pregnant. With twins. From another man.”
His brows lift just slightly, like he’s surprised I even asked. And then he shrugs—shrugs, like I just asked what kind of cereal he wants for breakfast.
“I think it’ll look like whatever we want it to,” he says.
I blink. “Kingston?—”
“Mya.” He leans in, elbows on knees, fingers laced like he’s steadying himself before jumping off a cliff. “I’ve got these feelings for you that are both old and new at the same time. Like they’ve been buried under years of bullshit, and now that I’ve finally dug them up, they’re all shiny and raw and real.”
God.
I think I forget how to breathe.
He keeps going, and each word is a low-voltage shock to the chest.
“It’s been easy. Us. Even when it’s not. And I’m not saying we don’t have crap to figure out. But I need you to know something?—”
“King—”
“I want all of it, Mya,” he says, voice rough now. Real. “But only if it’s with you .”
It hits like a sucker punch to the gut.
No preamble. No soft cushioning. Just a raw truth tossed into the space between us like it doesn’t have the power to detonate everything I’ve been clinging to.
He watches me, gaze steady. Serious. And when I don’t say anything—because what the hell can I say to that—he exhales slowly and leans closer.
“You remember how it was in high school?” he asks, his voice a husky murmur now, like we’re sharing secrets in the dark. “Before everything went sideways?”
God, do I.
Late-night drives with music blasting and our feet on the dash. Sitting on his kitchen counter, stealing spoonfuls of peanut butter and making plans we never said out loud because they felt too big to name. The way he used to look at me—like I wasn’t just a girl he liked, but a future he wanted.
It was intense. It was simple. It was ours .
“I remember,” I whisper, voice catching on the weight of it.
He nods once, like he knew I would. “It was good, Mya. You know it was. We were good together. Even when we were too young to know what the hell we were doing… it still made sense. You made sense.”
I don’t breathe.
Can’t.
Because yes, we were good. We were golden. But we never got our shot—not really. We were always a little too late, or a little too unsure, or too wrapped up in everyone else’s expectations.
But now? Now I’m pregnant. Now I’m messy. Now I’m someone else’s almost, someone’s leftover. And yet… here he is.
“Feels like a second chance,” he says, reading my mind like it’s a book he’s already memorized. “Like life’s throwing us a curveball and giving us another swing.”
A second chance.
My throat burns.
Because part of me wants that. Wants him. Wants the feeling I get when I’m around him—that I’m seen, safe, chosen. But another part of me is terrified. Because I’ve come to rely on him so fast, and that kind of trust is a dangerous thing. Especially when I’m not just me anymore.
“You say you want it all,” I murmur, “but I’m a package deal now, Kingston. There’s no version of this where it’s just you and me.”
“I know,” he says without hesitation. “And I still want it. I want them too.” He glances down at my stomach, and something shifts in his expression—something achingly tender. “I want everything that comes with loving you, Mya. Even the hard parts.”
My heart stutters. My soul flinches.
Because he says it so easily. Like it’s not a question. Like it’s not complicated. Like I’m not carrying someone else’s children and trying to pick up the shattered remains of the life I thought I’d have.
Fletch couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t look at me without flinching. Couldn’t stand in the fire long enough to even try.
But Kingston?
He’s not flinching.
He’s walking straight through it.
And maybe… maybe that’s what love looks like after all.
The room tilts.
Or maybe it’s me.
Because it shouldn’t be this simple. It shouldn’t be this easy for him to say. To mean. Especially when the last man in my life ran so fast in the other direction, he left skid marks on my heart.
I can’t help it. I whisper, “You’re not scared?”
He shakes his head. “Not of this.”
“You should be.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But I’m not. Because it’s not about them. Not the media. Not your ex. Not the people who whisper behind their hands.” He pauses, eyes on mine like he’s memorizing me in real-time. “It’s about us. This. You. Me. Them.” He nods to my belly like he’s already claimed them, like they’re his too. “That’s the only headline I give a damn about.”
“But the media?—”
“I don’t care,” he says simply, slicing through the what-ifs like they’re paper-thin. “It’s no one’s business but ours.”
And just like that, something deep inside me cracks. The part that’s been locked up tighter than a high-security vault. The part still bleeding from a betrayal I didn’t see coming.
Because this—him—feels like a risk and a promise wrapped in the same damn kiss.
And I don’t know what scares me more.
How much I want it…
Or how much I already believe him.