Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Vesper
Not going to lie—today, I was hoping for something else.
Something small. Something annoying in a normal way.
A delayed flight. A broken zipper. An email from my editor that says, Hey, Ves, can you rewrite this entire script by noon?
, so I can roll my eyes, drink my fancy tea-latte thing, and pretend my most significant problems are caffeine and deadlines.
Not this.
Not me, sitting in a medical office that smells like sanitizer and lemon floor cleaner, perched on crinkly exam paper like I’m a deli sandwich waiting to be wrapped, waiting for confirmation of something I really, really don’t want.
According to the internet, false positives happen. But so do alien abductions and detox foot baths.
Two of them don’t matter. I’m clinging to “false positive” anyway, because denial is my most consistent relationship.
I swing my legs. Not because I’m impatient. That would be sane. I do it because the alternative is sitting perfectly still while my brain pulls up a highlight reel of Worst-Case Scenarios and forces me to watch it in high definition.
I sigh, loud enough that the poster on the wall deserves an apology.
It’s a diagram of a reproductive system, and I refuse to look at it directly. I don’t need a labeled uterus judging me today. I’m doing a great job judging myself.
Instead, I focus on the clipboard I filled out earlier—one of those forms designed to make you feel like a malfunctioning appliance.
Are you alive?
Check.
Do you drink alcohol?
Check.
How often?
Mind your own fucking business.
(Again, not what I wrote. I wrote: two to three glasses of wine a week, unless I’m trapped at an event where everyone speaks fluent pretension.)
Any history of goat-related illnesses?
No, but now I’m concerned this is a thing, and who has decided to make this a question?
And fine, it says “livestock exposure,” but wouldn’t goat-related sound more fun? I’m just trying to entertain myself while fighting the whole, losing my shit.
Then the real gut-punch section. Family history:
Mother: Deceased.
Father: Alive. Sort of. Technically. Currently being medically supervised because he’s been running on stubbornness and vibes. Self-neglect runs in the family.
Siblings: Alive. Absurdly healthy. Emotionally allergic to responsibility unless it’s engraved on a League Cup.
I breathe out and roll my shoulders back like I can reset myself.
I am fine. This is fine. Just another day ending in y.
The door clicks open.
I sit straight too fast, eager to just get this over with, as if speed can make the result kinder.
The doctor walks in with my chart and a tablet and that professional, cautious expression people wear when they’ve delivered news a thousand times and still don’t enjoy it. She’s calm in a way that makes me want to throw something soft and harmless—like a pillow. Or my entire life plan.
“Hi, Vesper,” she says, like we’re catching up over brunch. “Thanks for waiting.”
“No problem,” I lie, because I’m nothing if not committed to performing competence.
She glances at her notes. There’s a pause—small, but my nerves stretch it into an hour.
“So,” she says. “The blood they drew earlier today confirms Dr. Ruiz’s test.”
I curse Harvey for sending some fancy lab technician early—before breakfast—to draw blood. He claimed that it’d help my doctor’s appointment. Newsflash, it didn’t. I don’t want confirmation. I want out.
I latch onto the one thread of hope I have left. “Could there still be a false positive?”
It comes out too bright. Too desperate. Like I’m a kid asking if the scary movie is about to end.
“False positives on blood tests are extremely rare. This is hCG. It’s very clear.”
My stomach drops, slow and sickening.
She continues gently because she probably has a script for women who look like they might bolt. “How are you feeling?”
“Emotionally or physically?” I ask. “Because emotionally, I’d call it . . . an existential crisis with a side of dread. Physically, I’m trying to be cool and failing.”
Her lips twitch, but she keeps it professional. “Physically. Can I get a few more symptoms?”
I swallow. My mouth is dry. “Tired. Nauseous. I’ve been traveling.
My dad—” My voice trips on that word, because apparently my body has decided we’re not ignoring that part.
“My dad fainted. The camp my family runs is in trouble. My best friends—who hate each other, by the way—got traded to the same team and now they’re doing that whole .
. . public handshake thing while privately wanting to set each other on fire. ”
I realize I’m rambling and stop before I start listing time zones like they’re alibis.
She nods like it’s all relevant, because stress is relevant. Stress can wreck you. Stress can make you vomit. Stress can turn you into a shaky, anxious raccoon with a passport.
But stress doesn’t create hCG out of thin air.
“Well,” she says, voice measured, “based on your symptoms and your labs, you are pregnant.”
“But it could be wrong,” I argue anyway, because I’m committed to being annoying until the universe caves.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and there’s no drama in it, just fact. “That’s not how this works. You have many of the typical symptoms. You are pregnant.”
My brain cuts out like someone flipped a switch.
Pregnant.
I am pregnant.
There’s a baby on board.
We’re baking a human. My body opened a side hustle without consulting me.
In conclusion: I’m fucked.
The doctor keeps talking—follow-ups, vitamins, baseline labs, ultrasound scheduling. Her words wash over me, and I catch fragments the way you catch rain in your palm. A little. Not enough.
“Prenatal care . . .”
“Dating . . .”
“Support . . .”
“Partner . . .”
That last one trips me, hard.
“It’ll be helpful if your partner joins you for your first ultrasound,” she says, like she’s suggesting he bring snacks.
“My who?” I ask, because I’m barely grasping “pregnant” and now she’s trying to add bonus characters.
“Your partner,” she repeats patiently. “It helps to have them involved from the beginning.”
I blink. “Uh. There’s no partner.”
There are two very involved men who aren’t part of this baby’s DNA—unless the laws of biology changed while I was filming in Finland, which would honestly track with my life lately.
But there’s no boyfriend. No husband. No neat little box to place this in.
The doctor doesn’t miss a beat. “Then you need your support system.”
Support system.
My mind goes strangely quiet.
Mom is gone.
Dad is trying, but he’s worn down, scared, and pretending he isn’t.
My brothers live on the ice and in their own heads.
And then there’s Cally and Monty—two men orbiting me so hard I can feel it even when they’re not in the room. One all warmth and devotion, ready to throw money at a problem until it behaves. The other all focus and insistence, prepared to drag truth into the light and refuse to let me hide.
My stomach twists again.
It’s not fair to ask them for this. It’s not fair to drag them into my body’s bad timing. It’s not fair to tie them to a baby that isn’t theirs, to a life I’m not even sure I want.
It’s also adorable that I keep pretending fairness has ever been part of my story.
I force my hands to stay still in my lap. I lock down every twitch like I’m bracing for turbulence. The doctor watches me, waiting for tears, panic, anger—something.
I could cry.
I could scream.
Instead, I nod like she just told me my car needs an oil change.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I deserve. “So what happens next?”
She hesitates, then launches into the next steps—appointments, more bloodwork, an ultrasound to establish dates and confirm everything is where it should be, warnings signs I need to take seriously.
This time I listen. Not perfectly, but more than before.
“Also,” she adds, glancing at her notes again, “since you’re not sure about the pregnancy, we should talk about options. Prenatal care, adoption, termination—whatever you decide, we’ll support you. There’s no rush today.”
No rush.
She says it like my life isn’t already sprinting ahead of me, like I can still choose the pace. Like there isn’t a countdown humming under my skin.
I nod anyway. Because nodding is what I do when I’m trying not to fall apart in public.
I walk out of the clinic with a folder in my hand. Pamphlets, referrals. A bunch of instructions that might help hold together a person like me.
Outside, Portland is doing its soft, gray thing. A drizzle that doesn’t commit. It kisses your hair and your eyelashes and your sleeves until you look damp and defeated, but not enough to justify an umbrella. It’s petty rain. Passive-aggressive weather.
People stream past me like nothing has happened. A guy laughs into his phone. A woman hustles a stroller over a curb. Someone’s coffee lid pops off, and they curse like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.
But the city doesn’t care.
So I make it to a bench—somewhere between the clinic and the street—and I sit. Like sitting is going to keep my knees from giving out. Like the ground can hold me up when my insides don’t feel like mine.
I drop my face into my hands.
And I breathe.
Not a cleansing breath in and air out, because apparently my body is committed to survival even while my brain is busy writing a eulogy for my old life.
A baby.
An actual human being.
Something with bones and a heartbeat and a future that will depend on me—me—for everything.
I press my palms harder into my eyes until I see spots.
This is impossible.
Because what kind of mother would I even be?
My life is motion. My life is passports, batteries, and boarding passes. My life is airports at dawn and hotel rooms at midnight and editing footage with bloodshot eyes while I tell myself sleep is optional if the story is worth it.
I chose this life.
I love this life.
And now my body is asking me to build a whole new one inside it.
A baby doesn’t fit into a suitcase.
A baby doesn’t care about a press pass or an itinerary or whether the light is good at golden hour. A baby needs you there.
And I don’t know how to be there.
The city hums around me—tires hissing on wet pavement, umbrellas flicking open, voices blending into that background noise that usually makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger.
Right now, it makes me feel untethered. Like I’m floating in the middle of a crowd and nobody can see I’m drowning.
My mind does what it always does when I’m scared: it makes lists.
Dad. His face when he finds out. The way he’ll try to be strong and accidentally make it worse. The way he’ll blame himself, because he blames himself for everything—Mom dying, the camp falling apart, us growing up too fast.
The baby’s father. The faceless problem I created on a night I didn’t want to remember. A condom from a wallet. A name I never learned. A body I didn’t keep. A story with no second act.
This isn’t a grand love story.
There isn’t going to be a scene where he turns into the perfect man because the plot demands it. There’s no montage where we co-parent in matching sweaters and laugh over pancakes.
There’s just . . . me.
And now a baby.
And the fact that my mother is not here for me to call.
That thought hits so hard it makes my mouth go bitter. Because if she were alive, she would know what to do. She would have words. She would have a plan. She would tell me the truth and make it sound survivable.
Instead, I have rain and a bench and a folder with pamphlets.
I swallow and touch my belly—barely there, nothing to feel, just skin and muscle and nerves—and I whisper, “For us.”
It comes out shaky, like I don’t believe myself.
A hand taps my shoulder.
I flinch—more irritation than fear—and look up to find John standing there in a dark jacket, rain beading on his shoulders like he’s been carved out of patience.
“Miss,” he says, polite but firm, like he’s been trained to speak to women who are pretending they’re okay. “Are you ready to head back to the apartment?”
I blink at him. My brain has to load him back in. Right. John. The guy who’s supposed to drive me. Check on me. Babysit me while two hockey players pretend they can’t feel anything.
I wipe my face quickly, because tears are embarrassing and also because my pride is a stubborn little demon.
“What if I ask you to drop me at the airport?” I say, like it’s casual. Like I haven’t already started packing in my head.
John’s expression barely shifts. He pulls out his phone anyway, thumb hovering. “I have instructions to take you home. I’d need authorization to take you to the airport. And I’d need to book a flight and travel with you.”
I stare at him. “Why would you travel with me?”
“I’m your temporary bodyguard,” he says.
The words slide under my skin and snag.
“Why do I need a bodyguard?” I ask, and my voice does this small, humiliating thing where it tries to squeak and I crush it.
John shrugs like this is normal. Like women get assigned bodyguards every day. “Probably because you’re connected to two high-profile men.”
I want to say I’m not connected. I want to say I’m not anyone’s. I want to say I’m a grown woman with a camera and a passport and a life I built on my own.
But the truth is that I do love those two men. Even when I should leave them, I just can’t live without them. If I have to, I guess I would need to tell them face-to-face.
“Okay,” I mutter, standing up even though my legs disagree. “Fine. Take me home.”
John nods and steps aside, letting me pass like he’s being respectful, like he’s giving me space.
But the moment I start walking, I see it.
Across the street—parked too neatly, engine running, window cracked just enough—someone watching.
A lens.
A person holding a camera the way people hold a weapon.
My stomach drops again, cold and fast. Why would there be a camera trying to take footage of me? I look around to see if there could be anyone else. The person takes the camera away because they notice that I noticed.
Something isn’t right. The question is, what’s happening . . . also, why do I have a bodyguard?