Chapter 6
Chapter Six
MYA
T here’s nothing quite like the feeling of coming home with aching feet, swollen ankles, and shopping bags digging into my wrists—only to be reminded that Harry, the doorman, is more of a knight in shining armor than any man I’ve ever dated.
“Miss Mya,” he says, spotting me as I wobble through the foyer of Kingston’s building like a woman whose center of gravity has officially shifted. “You sure you don’t want help with those?”
I glance at the pile of Holt Renfrew, Aritzia, and Baby Boutique bags hanging from both arms like designer saddlebags and sigh. “I’ll take you up on that, Harry. If you carry them, I’ll name a twin after you.”
He chuckles, old and warm, and takes the bags like they’re made of feathers. “Better make it the good one.”
We head toward the elevator, but I stop dead in my tracks before we get there.
Because there—sitting ramrod straight on one of the lobby’s velvet chairs—is my mother.
Clad in tailored black slacks, a cream silk blouse, and a matching blazer. Her brown hair is curled to perfection, makeup flawless, lips pursed in that subtle way that means she’s already judging everything. Including me.
“Mom?” I blink. Like I might’ve hallucinated her into existence. “What are you doing here?”
She stands, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her blazer like she’s about to step into a church meeting instead of confronting the daughter she’s barely spoken to in months. “I came to make peace,” she says, voice too even to be honest. “Your father said he’d come home if I did.”
Oh. Of course.
Before I can say anything scathing, Harry politely clears his throat and nods toward the elevator. “I’ll take these up for you.”
“Thanks, Harry.” My voice is tight.
The elevator doors hiss open, and I step in, tension coiled so tight inside me I’m pretty sure I could shatter glass if I screamed. My hands are full—shopping bags dangling from my arms like ornaments on an overburdened Christmas tree.
When the doors open again, my mother follows me wordlessly, her heels clicking against the polished marble floor of Kingston’s private hallway like a judgmental metronome.
I swipe the key card and push open the door to the penthouse, the familiar scent of sandalwood and expensive cologne wrapping around me the second I step inside.
Kingston.
It’s like breathing him in even when he’s not here. Like the space remembers him.
I slip off my shoes with a sigh, kicking them gently to the side of the entryway. The babies in my stomach flutter with something I can’t name—maybe exhaustion, maybe anticipation. I was supposed to be doing something relaxing tonight. Nesting. Shopping for swaddles I don’t need. Daydreaming about the gender-neutral nursery Kingston and I have been pinning ideas for—mint green walls, soft gray rocking chairs, golden wooden accents. I haven’t felt this excited in weeks.
And now?
Now my mother is standing in the foyer, arms folded like she’s bracing herself for war.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say, dropping my bags gently near the kitchen island. “What are you really doing here?”
She lifts her chin like she’s a guest in the home of a political rival she’s willing to entertain for optics. “I told you. I came to make peace.”
“No, you said you came so Dad would move back home. That’s not peace, Mom. That’s a bribe.”
Her eyes flicker. “Your father has been staying at a hotel in Newton for two weeks. He says he won’t come back until things are resolved between us.”
“So what—you thought you’d ambush me and check reconciliation off your to-do list?”
“I thought we could talk. Civilly.” Her gaze sweeps the open space, taking in the high ceilings, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, and Kingston’s signed jerseys in glossy black frames. “Upstairs felt more…appropriate.”
“Sure,” I mutter. “Wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation—just in case one of the Newton church ladies has telescopic vision and a gossip hotline to Manhattan.”
We move toward the kitchen island, the silence pressing tighter with every step. I put the kettle on autopilot, reaching for the chamomile tea she always drinks like it’s holy water. Something about digestion and calming her nerves, even though I’ve never actually seen her relax.
“I like what Kingston’s done with the place,” she says, voice dry. “Very…masculine. A little cold.”
“It’s not a showroom, Mom. We live here.”
We. That single word lands heavy between us.
She takes the tea I hand her but doesn’t sip it right away. She just studies me, eyes moving from the curve of my belly to the oversized knit sweater I’m wearing over leggings, her lips twitching like she wants to say something but is still weighing whether or not it’s worth the trouble.
It always is.
“You’re really going through with this, aren’t you?” she finally asks.
“With what?” I feign innocence, though I know exactly what she means.
“This life. Living with a man who isn’t the father of your children. Carrying twins with no ring on your finger. It’s not how we raised you, Mya.”
I laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because it’s so fucking on brand.
“You didn’t raise me, Mom. You judged me. There’s a difference.”
Her eyes narrow, the lashes clumping just slightly from her mascara. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ve always been difficult. The defiant one. The free spirit.”
“That’s code for black sheep, right?” I cross my arms, bracing myself.
She doesn’t deny it. “You’ve always been different from your siblings. Carlos is a respected doctor. Franky’s a lawyer with his own firm. Isabel is happily married with a beautiful home in Connecticut, and Sofia is about to graduate summa cum laude from Stanford.”
“Yeah. And I’m pregnant. And unmarried. And apparently a cautionary tale.”
The silence between us fractures like thin ice.
“I’m not here to shame you,” she says quietly, but her voice lacks any real softness. “I just… I wish you’d think about your future more carefully. About how things look.”
I laugh again, this one sharper. “Oh my God. You’re still stuck on appearances? On what the ladies at the prayer circle will whisper if they find out your daughter is having twins out of wedlock?”
Her nostrils flare, the only sign that I’m getting under her skin.
“You know,” I say, “when Kyle cheated on me, you didn’t ask if I was okay. You said I must’ve done something to make him stray. As if his actions were somehow my fault.”
Her mouth tightens. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Really?” I cock a brow. “Because it’s always felt like you saw me as the family embarrassment. The one who doesn’t fit your picture-perfect mold. The one who’s too loud, too bold, too messy.”
“You made choices, Mya.”
“So did you!” I slam my hand against the counter, my voice cracking. “You chose to love image more than your own daughter. To use Dad like a buffer whenever I pushed back. You chose to show up now, when your marriage is on the line—not because you wanted to reconnect, but because you needed me to fix something for you.”
She blinks. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her silence is damning.
“I’m not Carlos or Franky or Isabel or Sofia. I’m me. And I’m done apologizing for it.”
She stands, her cup barely touched. “I thought this would go differently.”
“Yeah. So did I.”
For a moment, something flickers across her face—regret, maybe. Or guilt. But it’s gone before I can decide if it was real.
She smooths her blazer, always so pristine, always so controlled. “Tell your father I tried.”
A scoff bursts from my lips, short and sharp, like a car backfiring in a too-quiet street. “No, Mom. You didn’t try. You came to criticize me with better lighting and tea service.”
Her gaze sharpens. “That’s not fair.”
“You want fair?” I laugh, and it’s hollow. Ugly. “Fair would’ve been you showing up when I got cheated on, not telling me I must’ve driven Kyle to stray. Fair would’ve been you calling after I left Newton, or checking if I landed on my feet in Horseshoe Bay instead of assuming I’d be back when the dust settled.”
Her spine stiffens, mouth drawn into that thin line she thinks hides her judgment. It doesn’t. Never has. “I didn’t come here to fight, Mya.”
“Bullshit. You came here to clean up the mess you made—except the only thing out of place is me, isn’t it?” My words crack like a whip, slicing the tension wide open. “Pregnant with twins. Living with a man who isn’t the father. Designing maternity athleisure wear instead of pursuing something more ‘respectable’—I bet it’s killing you that you can’t scrub that off me like scuffed heels before mass.”
“I raised you better than this,” she says quietly, and that’s somehow worse than her yelling. The disappointment seeps through every syllable.
I clench my jaw. My nails bite crescents into my palms, but I hold her stare. “No, you raised me to survive your expectations. I did the rest on my own.”
She exhales, but there’s no softness in it. Just exhaustion laced with superiority. “You’ve always been the difficult one,” she repeats. “You never wanted what was good for you.”
“No. I never wanted your version of good.” My heart thunders like it’s trying to claw its way out of my chest. “You line us up like chess pieces and I’m the pawn who ran off the board.”
Her lips part, ready to fire back, but I keep going.
“Every time I didn’t fit, you found new ways to cut me down and call it concern. You played favorites with the ones who made you look good, and you kept me hidden behind a curtain of ‘what could’ve been.’ I was the girl who dyed her hair red, wore combat boots to Christmas, and dumped a cheating fiancé—how dare I not reflect your perfect Catholic wife prototype?”
Emotion clogs my throat, tight and unrelenting. “And now you’re here, not because you love me, but because Dad left and your house doesn’t feel right without someone to control.”
For the first time, she falters. Her shoulders twitch like she’s been struck.
“I’m sorry your marriage is crumbling,” I add, voice barely above a whisper. “But I’m not your fix. Not now. Not ever.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t recognize the woman in front of her.
And maybe that’s the point.
“I should go,” she says stiffly, standing.
I nod. “Yeah. You should.”
She leaves the cup on the counter, untouched.
When the door clicks shut, the silence roars in my ears, but for the first time, it’s not empty.
It’s deafening.
It swells, wraps around me like a tidal wave with nowhere to go, pressing against every inch of skin until I can’t breathe. My chest contracts, ribs locking down like they’re trying to cage a wildfire, and for a second—just one second—I think I’m fine. That I’ll just…exhale and this ache in my throat will vanish.
But I don’t exhale.
I can’t.
My knees buckle before I make it to the living room, bags of baby clothes still stacked like unopened memories on the floor. My hand slaps the edge of the kitchen island, knocking over Kingston’s favorite Bruins tumbler with a clatter that ricochets through the apartment and shatters whatever fragile calm I was clinging to.
I sink to the floor like I’ve been cut at the knees. Like gravity suddenly realized I’ve been pretending to carry too much and decided to call my bluff.
A sob escapes my throat, ragged and broken, the kind that sounds like it’s been waiting years to be let out. My arms wrap around my belly—around them—like I can shield my babies from the storm inside me. But I can’t even shield myself.
Tears spill, hot and relentless.
God, it hurts.
It hurts in that sharp, echoing kind of way that comes from knowing you were never enough for the one person who was supposed to love you unconditionally. It’s not just about today. Not just about her.
It’s everything.
It’s the weight of her disapproval stacked on top of all the other weights I’ve been lugging around like emotional bricks in a designer tote bag. It’s Kyle cheating and her blaming me. It’s never being as polished as Isabel or as ambitious as Sofia. It’s living in a penthouse and still feeling like I don’t deserve to be here. It’s growing humans inside me and wondering if I’m going to mess them up just by existing.
My breath comes in short, sharp bursts. I press my palms to the floor, the cool marble grounding me as the tightness in my chest expands and my vision blurs.
Inhale, Mya. Exhale.
I can’t.
I curl in tighter. My lungs scream for air, but everything feels stuck. My heart races like it’s sprinting toward a finish line that keeps moving.
And just when I think I might break apart completely, the truth cracks open inside me like lightning across a storm-heavy sky:
I cannot keep carrying her expectations and carry this life at the same time.
Something has to give.
And it won’t be me.
Not this time.
Not when I’m about to be a mother.
Not when I’m building something new, something real, with Kingston.
Not when I’ve finally started to believe I deserve to be happy, even if she never approves of the way I got here.
Even if I’ll never be enough for her.
I cry until there’s nothing left. Until the panic dulls into an ache and my body finally unclenches. I sit there, back against the cold cabinetry, salty tears drying sticky on my cheeks, and for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—I don’t feel ashamed of my breakdown.
I feel…lighter.
Like maybe letting it all fall apart was the first step in finally putting me back together.
And this time, I won’t build myself out of her blueprints.
This time, I’ll build something softer. Stronger. Mine.
For me.
For them.
For all the pieces of myself I’m done apologizing for.
I close my eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough to let that truth settle into my bones like a promise.
Then I inhale.
Not the gasping, jagged breath that comes when your body forgets how to breathe. No. This one is different. Intentional. Deep. From the gut. I breathe in until it almost hurts, and then I hold it.
One, two, three, four.
Then exhale. Slowly. Deliberately.
I am safe. I am whole. I am not broken just because she can’t see me as healed.
I do it again. Another breath.
This time I picture Reese’s face—the one from her YouTube videos, soft and determined and always framed by that bright, clean light. She’s talked about this—how trauma lives in your body. How sometimes your body throws a tantrum because it thinks you’re in danger when really… you’re just remembering what it feels like not to be loved right.
“Name five things you can see,” I whisper, grounding myself the way Reese taught. “Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two you can smell. One you can taste.”
I rattle them off, my voice raw and scratchy and stupidly wet. The echo of my mother’s words still ricochets in my chest like a pinball. Pregnant with one man’s babies, living with another.
But the worst part wasn’t the words. It was the look on her face when she said them. Like she’d been waiting. Holding it in. Like she couldn’t wait to make me feel small again.
You must’ve done something to make him stray.
I shake the thought off, fingers tightening around the hem of my oversized knit sweater. It still smells like him—crisp and spicy and warm. He always smells like home.
My phone vibrates beside me on the tile. The screen lights up. Kingston
I swipe to answer, wiping under my eyes with the back of my hand. “Hey.”
“Hi, beautiful,” his voice comes through low, gentle. Tired but alert. “You good?”
I force a smile into my voice. “Yeah. Just got home not too long ago. Harry helped me bring everything up.”
“I told him to keep an eye out. He said you looked like you were about to drop.”
I laugh under my breath. “I was. But it was worth it. You should see all the stuff I got.”
“Oh yeah?” I can hear the smile tug at his mouth. “Tell me everything.”
I push myself off the floor and start walking toward the couch. “Okay, so first of all, I found these little onesies that say Twice the Trouble and Double the Love. They’re so soft I nearly cried in the middle of the store.”
Kingston chuckles. “Of course you did.”
“I got a few more gender-neutral things, too. More beige and olive greens. I know we talked about doing that nursery mood board this weekend?—”
“Babe, that sounds perfect. I can’t wait to see all of it when I get home.”
I bite down on my bottom lip. That word—home. The way he says it. Like it’s not just a place. Like it’s me.
“You sound tired,” I murmur.
“Just pre-game jitters. We’re heading out soon.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am now.” A beat. “You sure you don’t want to come? There’s still time.”
I glance at the stack of bags in the corner, the untouched tea mug still sitting on the kitchen counter. The silence in this apartment somehow feels less empty now that he’s on the line.
“I’m good. I had that design team meeting today, and I still need to put the samples together for Reese. I kind of needed this night to decompress anyway.”
There’s a short pause, just the sounds of voices in the background on his end. Then:
“Don’t wait up for me, okay? You need sleep.”
I smile. “Only if you promise to call me after. Win or lose.”
“We’re gonna win.”
“Okay, Mr. Confidence.”
He laughs, low and boyish, and I can picture it so clearly—his dimple creasing, his dark hair pushed back under his snapback. The image is so vivid it makes my chest ache.
“Confidence is key, baby,” Kingston drawls, and I can hear the shift in his tone—lighter now, teasing. “Besides, how am I supposed to let a team of grown-ass men push me around when I’ve got a woman like you waiting at home with twins in her belly? You think I’m about to embarrass myself in front of the whole arena? Nah.”
I smile, curling into the corner of the couch like I can curl into the warmth of his words. “You’re impossible.”
“And you love me.”
I roll my eyes, even though I’m already smiling. “Unfortunately,” I murmur, but there’s no bite in it. Just a warmth that spreads like sunlight behind my ribs.
And maybe it’s too soon for us to be saying that. Maybe, logically, it doesn’t make sense. We haven’t been back in each other’s lives long enough. We’re still figuring it out, still finding our way. But somehow, when it comes to Kingston, love has never really felt like a decision. It was so easy the first time and the second time is no different.
It’s instinct. Muscle memory. Like breathing.
Because the truth is—I never really stopped. Not after the first time. I’d just put those feelings away in a box in my mind and left them there.
He was my first real love. The kind that hit harder and deeper than it should’ve, the kind that ruined me for every half-hearted version that came after. Even when we drifted, even when life got messy and timelines frayed and the future cracked open in ways I didn’t expect… he never stopped being the bar.
So yeah, maybe we’re still new in this version of us. But loving Kingston doesn’t feel new.
It feels like home.
Like slipping back into a familiar rhythm—one I didn’t realize I still remembered until I was standing in front of him again and everything inside me just…exhaled.
There’s some shuffling in the background—metal clinking, a whistle blowing, some muffled voices—and then his voice is back in my ear, closer now, more grounded.
“I have to go,” he says, and there’s a calm to him that settles something shaky inside me. “But I wanted to hear your voice first. Just for a second.”
My throat tightens, emotion catching me off guard.
“You always know when I need you,” I whisper, clutching the edge of his hoodie closer to my body like it can shield me from everything I didn’t say.
There’s a pause. Not long, but long enough to make me wonder if he hears what I’m not saying.
“Promise me you won’t stay up all night,” he murmurs, knowing I’ve been prone to bouts of insomnia lately that leave me exhausted.
“I’ll try.”
“Promise me.”
“Fine,” I huff. “But only because I already cried in public once today and I can’t risk doing it again if you show up post-game with that smug little smirk and kiss my forehead like you didn’t just score a hat trick or fight someone twice your size.”
He chuckles, deep and rough and mine. “I’ll try to contain my smugness. No promises about the forehead kisses though.”
“Rude.”
“Charming.”
“Debatable.”
“Get some rest, Mya.” His voice drops into something warmer, softer, reverent. “For you and the babies.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat and nod even though he can’t see it. “Good luck tonight.”
“Already got it,” he says, “talking to you.”
And then the line clicks off.
I stare at the phone, the silence swallowing the room again—but this time it’s gentler. Softer. Like Kingston left a piece of himself behind just to keep me steady.