Chapter 3
I ’ve been here before.
In this same spot. Holding my breath. Waiting for my body to decide whether it is about to give me everything or take it away again.
I know this script by heart.
The shaking hands. The heart battering against my ribs. The terrible awareness of being trapped in a body I do not trust, no matter how badly I want to believe in it.
But this morning doesn’t quite follow it.
The first light of November seeps through the high kitchen windows, spilling across the marble countertop and catching on the rim of my half-finished coffee, the orange prescription bottle from the clinic, and the prenatal vitamins I have taken every morning with the obedience of a woman afraid to give fate one more reason to punish her.
I don’t move. I just stare at them.
Cold seeps into my bare feet. My pulse roars loud enough to drown out everything else.
Three years of trying. The first spent believing love, timing, and stubborn optimism might be enough. The next two swallowed by hormone shots, bruised veins, sterile reassurance, and now IUI. By quiet prayers choked into my pillow so my husband wouldn’t hear how desperate I have become.
I’m almost afraid to believe it. My body has done this before—parading every symptom in front of me like a promise, only to gut me hours later.
And still…
The heaviness in my breasts. The nausea at the scent of coffee. The strange warmth beneath my palm when my hand drifts to my stomach.
They don’t feel like lies this time.
They feel real.
My heartbeat kicks harder, a dangerous little thread of hope pulling taut in my chest.
I should know better by now.
But I can’t help it.
I stifle the tremor of a smile and leave the kitchen, my footsteps hushed against the marble as I slip into the corridor toward the stairs.
The house is still at this hour, its high ceilings and polished floors steeped in the hush of gold-tinted dawn.
With Colette off on her usual Saturday visit to her sister in town, there is no clatter of dishes, no voice carrying through the halls—just silence, broken only by the distant sound of waves striking the cliffs below.
When I woke earlier, I was relieved to find her gone. Yesterday’s dinner had been a catastrophe, one I didn’t have the strength to revisit through Colette’s worried eyes.
And judging by the absence of so much as a misplaced fork, she had already found the wreckage and cleared it with silent fury.
I climb with one hand grazing the banister, careful now, as if the house might punish too much eagerness.
At the double doors of our bedroom, I curl my fingers around the cool brass handle and listen for any sign of movement inside.
Nothing .
Good.
If Xavier were awake, he’d tell me I’m overthinking again.
The clinic’s nurse is due later this morning for the beta draw, but I need to know before anyone else does. One more wait might finish me.
I ease the door open and step inside.
The room is dim, the blackout shutters still drawn. Thin ribbons of gold filter through the slats and spill across the bed.
Xavier lies sprawled on his side of our king-sized bed, sound asleep for once.
The sheet has slipped low on his hips, leaving him bare from the waist up. Pale morning light skims the tanned planes of his back and shoulders, accentuating the dark ink coiling across his skin.
One arm is tucked beneath his pillow. The other hangs over the edge of the mattress, his fingers brushing the floor.
For a moment, I just stand there, drinking in the sight of him.
Messy dark hair falls over his forehead. His face is turned away from me, but I can still see the sweep of his lashes against his cheek, the familiar angle of his brow. With his eyes closed and the usual sharp intensity smoothed from his features, he looks younger. Gentler.
Beautiful in a way that makes my throat tighten around everything I no longer know how to say.
Almost like the man I fell in love with—the one who used to look at me as if loving me was the easiest thing he had ever done, who slept in a hard plastic chair beside my hospital bed after my surgery, night after night, refusing to go home even when I begged him to.
Not the distant stranger he’s been lately.
I bite down on my lip, swallowing the ache.
The rest of the night blurred after he carried me upstairs. I must’ve cried myself to sleep, because I woke with my eyes swollen nearly shut and my head pounding.
It feels surreal to watch him sleep now, after so many nights spent aching for even a glimpse of the man he used to be. I’ve grown so accustomed to his absence that, sometime in the night, I folded myself into my corner of the bed instead of cuddling in his arms the way I used to.
Now, with him this close, I find myself wondering what moves behind those shuttered eyelids.
Whether he is as far away there as he is when he is awake.
I tear my eyes away from him and glance toward the en suite bathroom. From here, I can just make out the edge of the vanity through the slightly ajar door.
Inside that cabinet, behind a row of cleaning supplies, lies a small graveyard.
A dozen empty pregnancy test boxes I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.
I wonder if he has ever seen them. If he has, he has never said a word.
Maybe he pretends not to. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to ask.
After the last negative, he told me in a weary voice that if this cycle failed too, we should stop for a while.
Not forever, he said.
But grief has never needed forever to sound final.
I opened my mouth to argue—to say no, not yet—but the defeat in his eyes stole the words from me.
So I nodded instead, swallowing the protest that rose like bile, even as something inside me refused to give up.
My gaze drifts to the table near the balcony doors, where contracts, acquisition briefs, and marked-up proposals lie abandoned beside his open laptop, the screen long gone dark.
He stayed up working, even after coming home so late on our anniversary.
You would think he’d rest when he is here.
But he never really does.
Lately, it feels as if he lives there more than he lives here. If not for the annual dinner we are attending tonight, I doubt he’d be home at all.
I am glad he at least chose not to disappoint Elise.
We haven’t been able to reach her since our last conversation. I know the fear has been eating at him. Xavier is too used to carrying everything alone, and this time, it is starting to consume him.
I was relieved he had a reason for missing our anniversary. A reason I could understand .
His cousin’s father had died.
Grief isn’t something I know how to resent without hating myself for it. Still, there were better ways to handle it than disappearing for hours without so much as a text or phone call.
My husband isn’t close to anyone in his family except his younger sister, Elise.
So when he said his cousin’s father had died, it took my exhausted mind a moment to arrange the relation.
His uncle.
The only relative, aside from Elise, Xavier had ever mentioned without that cold detachment he reserves for the Navarro name. The man who helped him when he ran away from home at nineteen. The man who, by the sound of it, had been less family than refuge.
Maybe that was why the explanation had felt so strange in his mouth. Xavier rarely gives his past names. He offers fragments, never full histories. A place. A date. A fact stripped clean of feeling.
Then again, I speak of my parents’ deaths the same way.
I glance at the clock on the nightstand.
Just past seven.
The nurse will be here soon. In a matter of hours, I will have a result capable of rearranging our lives all over again, a husband to face, and the annual dinner waiting for me in his parents’ estate ballroom.
I let out a quiet breath and tiptoe into the bathroom. The motion sensor casts a soft glow as I step onto the cool black marble floor. Golden fixtures gleam against the dark stone, and the air still carries the faint trace of his cologne from last night.
My stomach flutters as I kneel in front of the vanity and open the cabinet, pulling out one of the familiar slim rectangular boxes.
I told myself I wouldn’t do this anymore. No more early tests. No more false hope.
But hope is a hard habit to break.
And these past few weeks, it’s been louder than ever.
Swallowing against the dryness in my throat, I rise to my feet. The faint crinkle of the wrapper echoes in the silence as I tear the box open.
My fingers tremble so badly I nearly drop it into the sink.
I can do this.
I have to.
I draw in a slow breath and make myself do it.
The next minute passes in a blur of mechanical motions and ragged breaths. When I’m finished, I replace the cap and set the test carefully on the counter, turning it upside down so I can’t see the result.
I retrieve my phone from the pocket of my pajamas and set the timer with trembling fingers.
Three minutes.
In three minutes, my entire life could change. Again.
Almost immediately, time begins to play its old tricks. Every second stretches out, slow and thick like honey dripping off a spoon. I lean back against the cool counter and fold my arms tightly around myself, as if I can hold all the frantic energy inside.
Waiting for these things has never gotten easier. If anything, it’s worse now because this time feels different. The stakes feel higher. There’s more than just hope on the line—there’s a piece of my heart I’ve kept protected, and with each tick of the timer I feel it inching out onto the ledge.
I push off the counter and begin to pace the length of the bathroom in silent, restless strides.
The marble is cold under my bare feet, but I hardly notice.
My heart is racing. Calm down, I tell myself, inhaling deeply through my nose the way I learned to control my breathing in the ring.
Maybe do something to distract yourself.
But what? It’s not like I can scroll my phone or hum a tune and forget what I’m waiting for.
My mind runs over every symptom, searching for comfort in each sign. For the past two weeks, nearly every morning has hit me with a wave of nausea so fierce I’ve had to sit down and breathe through it.
I’ve been avoiding coffee because just the smell turns my stomach. I’m exhausted all the time; bone-deep fatigue has me falling asleep on the couch by mid-afternoon, and I sleep harder at night than I have in years.
And most telling of all: my period is late. Days late now, even by the clinic’s calendar. Five weeks since the last one began. The rational part of me knows the medication can distort my cycle, delay it, make my body mimic every promise it has broken before.
Each of these things on its own could be a fluke. I know that better than anyone.
But together?
Together they paint a picture so beautiful and terrifying that I can hardly breathe when I think about it.
I force myself to meet my gaze in the mirror.
A pale, wide-eyed woman stares back. I look…
fragile. There’s a new tension in my face I barely recognize, as if I might break with either outcome.
My dark hair is a tangled mess around my shoulders, and there are faint shadows under my gray eyes, despite all the sleep I’ve been getting.
My eyes slide to my body. The oversized ivory sleep shirt I’m wearing hangs loose, but I swear I catch sight of a subtle swell beneath the fabric that wasn’t there before. Is it wishful thinking?
Slowly, I lift the hem of my shirt, gathering it up just under my breasts. My breath hitches. In the mirror, under the soft light, I can almost see it—a gentle curve where my flat stomach used to be.
I run my trembling fingers over my abdomen, tracing the possibilities.
The skin there is warm, silken, unmarked—except for one thing. A thin, silvery scar runs down the center of my abdomen, extending several inches below my navel. The physical reminder of the worst night of my life. I brush my fingertips over it, and the memories rush in like a tide.
The roar of the crowd. Blinding lights overhead. The crack of a punch, then the sickening thud of my body hitting the mat. A white-hot pain ripped through my abdomen. Everything went black.
I blink hard, forcing the memories back.
I was twenty-three and invincible, a rising star in the boxing world with a shot at a national title.
One minute, I was trading blows in the final round.
The next, I woke in a hospital bed, disoriented, with that scar split across my stomach and a doctor speaking in a voice far too gentle for words that heavy.
There had been damage to my abdomen. Emergency surgery. A surgeon telling me I was lucky to be alive in the same measured voice she used to explain what luck had cost me.
Afterward, she told me pregnancy might not come easily.
Not impossible.
Difficult.
For years, I treated that distinction like a verdict I could appeal through sheer will.
Recovery was its own battle. Learning to trust my body again was another. Finding the courage to try after everything that happened took longer than I ever admitted, but I did.
Xavier was there through all of it. He promised we’d face it together.
For a long time, we did.
Until we didn’t.
My palms press gently against the smooth plane of my stomach, and I close my eyes, imagining telling him.
I picture his eyes lighting with astonishment, his arms pulling me close, a laugh breaking from him.
God, how long has it been since I last heard him laugh?
Long enough that I’m not sure I remember the sound anymore.
The timer on my phone chimes, startling me.
I whirl around and nearly knock a bottle of lotion from the counter.
Three minutes.
My hand shoots out to silence the alarm.
I stare at it as if it’s a venomous snake, coiled and ready to strike.
Two possibilities: one where I can finally breathe, and one where I break all over again.
A shudder runs through me, stealing the air from my lungs.
Eyes closed, I send one last desperate plea to the universe—to any god or fate or chance that might be listening.
“Please,” I whisper.
My heart pounds in my ears as I turn the test over.
Hope is my oldest addiction.