Chapter 9
SABINE
Sabine stormed out of the venue, her heels clicking violently against the concrete, breaths coming in fast, shallow bursts.
The bass inside back pulsing through the walls, but all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears and the echo of Adair pushing her.
She wasn’t crying. Not yet. Her pride wouldn’t let her, however, her hands were shaking as she yanked open her phone, pulling up the ride app, jaw clenched so tight her teeth hurt.
“Sabine!” Adair called after her. She didn’t turn. Didn’t pause. Just kept walking down the block. “Sabine, wait—” he reached out to grab her.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” she snapped, spinning around fast. Her voice cracked, full of heat and heartbreak. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Adair slowed, breathing heavy. “You think I’m just gonna stand there and—”
“You pushed me!” she yelled, chest rising. “I don’t care what the fuck Geechie did, you pushed me, Adair!”
“I didn’t mean—”
“But you did it!” her voice trembled now, but still no tears. “You saw red and forgot everything else. Forgot me. Just like you forgot me when you lied. When you kept lying.”
There it was.
Adair stepped back, like the words physically hit him.
“I’m not yours to protect anymore,” she said, quieter now. “You don’t get to act like you care when the only thing you ever did was hurt me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. And I’m done pretending it’s not.”
For a long beat, neither of them moved. The streetlight buzzed above them. The sound of the party behind them blurred into background noise.
Adair opened his mouth. Closed it. Then finally—soft, but firm—he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you…I…I never stopped loving you.”
She laughed. Just once. It was sharp and humorless. “You say that like it means something.”
“It does.”
“Then why does it feel like nothing?”
Adair stepped closer; his voice quiet, raw.
“You think I don’t wake up every day wishing I could undo it?
Wishing I could go back and just tell you the truth from the beginning?
Wishing I could be there for you the way I should’ve been?
” his voice cracked. “You been punishin’ me for fuckin’ years Sabine! ”
Geechie was long gone as a subject. They were getting out the hurt now. The hurt from their failed marriage. The hurt from their failures.
Sabine blinked hard, finally feeling the sting behind her eyes but refusing to let the tears fall. “Punishing you?” she repeated, stunned. “Adair, I birthed our daughter alone.”
That stopped him cold. She took a step forward now, her finger jabbing toward his chest like every word had been waiting years to be said.
“You think this is punishment? You think me walking away, trying to breathe again, trying to survive what you left me with, is punishment? I labored, I screamed, I pushed out our baby girl alone…while you were out, drinking, laughing, sharing pieces of yourself that belonged to me.”
“I didn’t sleep with her,” Adair said quickly, like that might make it better. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Not then but the bitch just so happen to fall on your dick the moment we separated! Couldn’t even wait until I filed for divorce with your sorry ass!
Fuck you, Adair! You think this is about fucking that bitch?
” she barked. “It’s not about what you did with her, it’s about what you gave her.
You gave her your time. Your honesty. You gave her all the shit I was begging you for! ”
They didn’t even notice the crowd that stood at the entrance of the venue watching them.
Adair’s jaw clenched. “I was lost.”
“So was I!” she cried, finally. The tears came now, hot and angry. “And I still showed up. For you. For our marriage. For our son. I still tried to hold us together while I was bleeding inside,” she clenched a tight fist to her aching heart. “You gave up on me first. You left me first.”
The silence that fell now was the kind that split ribs. That exposed everything.
And then, softer, she added, “You lied to me about her for years. You let me believe it was just my insecurity talking. Like I was crazy for noticing the way she looked at you, for feeling you slip away from me piece by piece.”
Adair couldn’t look at her. His hands were fists at his sides. “I didn’t know how to talk to you anymore without feeling like I was failing.”
“You were supposed to fail with me,” she said, softer now but not gentler. “Not make me feel like you were failing because of me.”
“I’m sorry…”
Sabine wiped her face, quick and rough, “I don’t need you to apologize anymore, Adair,” she said.
“I needed that then. I needed you then. Not now. Not when it’s too late…
that’s the difference between us,” she said, eyes shining.
“You hated the version of you that hurt me. I had to become someone else just to survive her.”
Another beat of silence passed between them. The kind that swallows everything whole. Sabine’s phone buzzed in her hand—the Uber she ordered announcing its arrival. She looked past him, toward the car idling by the curb. Then back at the man she once would’ve gone to war for.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you,” she said, not out of spite but truth and walked away.
As Sabine sat in the backseat of the car, crying her eyes out, having to ensure the driver that she was okay. The pain in her chest wasn’t just from the fight—it was years long. Still pulsing.
Still swollen.
It took her back.
Back to the moment everything inside her broke for good.
Back to the room where she lost everything—
She hadn’t felt right all day.
There was a heaviness in her lower back she couldn’t shake, a tightness across her belly that came in waves—low and deep and wrong but she brushed it off, told herself it was just stress.
Just exhaustion. Adair had been working late.
Again. The house was quiet except for the soft sounds of Ade babbling to himself in the playpen.
Sabine had just finished folding laundry when the first real contraction hit, knocking the wind out of her.
She called Adair immediately.
No answer.
She texted. Again. Again.
“It’s time.”
“I need you.”
“I think I’m in labor.”
“Please answer me.”
Still nothing.
She called his mother next. Then his cousin Reeka.
Parthenia. Narri. Her voice cracked on each one, but they all promised they were coming.
It would take time—at least five hours for most of them to get there but they were coming.
“Hold on, Bine,” Narri kept repeating over the phone. “Just hold on.”
But time didn’t care. Time kept moving.
She drove herself. Buckled a very active and fussy Ade into his car seat between contractions, prayed she wouldn’t crash, that she wouldn’t black out from the pain. She made it. Barely. Her hospital gown clung to her, and her hair was plastered to her forehead by the time they got her in the room.
Ade lay beside her on the bed, confused, fussy, grabbing at her arm while she cried through each wave of pain. “It’s okay, baby,” she kept whispering, even when it wasn’t.
She called Adair again. And again.
Still nothing.
The nurse came in, saw the boy curled up beside her, and gently said, “We can’t keep him in here, sweetheart. You are literally in active labor. I’m going to have someone take him to the family waiting area, okay?”
Sabine clutched her son tighter.
“No—no, he’s just a baby. He doesn’t know anybody.”
“We’ll be careful. We promise. You need to focus on you now.”
Ade screamed when they took him.
And that’s when she broke.
Parthenia and Narri were both on FaceTime now, one driving through the night, the other stuck in traffic, both helpless. “Sabine, breathe,” Narri begged through the phone. “You can do this, baby. Just breathe.”
“I’m alone,” Sabine wept. “I’m doing this by myself. Where is he?” Her voice cracked as the pain spread up her spine. “Where is he?”
Nobody had the answer.
The beeping got louder. The nurse rushed in, paging the labor and delivery doctor alerting that she was dilating too fast. The baby’s heart rate had dropped. They needed to deliver now.
Sabine gripped the bedrails, screamed until her voice tore, cried out for Adair even as her body gave up every ounce of fight. Everything happened fast. Too fast for her to even recall exactly what happened or maybe she blocked it out.
And then—it was quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that makes your ears ring.
The nurse whispered something. Another nurse cried. Someone gently asked if she wanted to hold her. Sabine nodded. Couldn’t speak.
They laid her baby girl in her arms—still, and cold, and perfect.
Sabine kissed her forehead, her lips trembling against skin that would never warm. She wept like her soul was being torn out. And through the FaceTime screen, Narri and Parthenia wept too. Listening. Watching. Hearing the shattering in real time.
Sabine rocked her baby girl in silence, whispering apologies, whispering prayers. Not even knowing which was which.
While Sabine was crying out alone in that sterile hospital room, Adair wasn’t there.
Wasn’t answering. Wasn’t anywhere he should’ve been and when she needed him most—when the weight of loss crushed her from the inside out—he was across town, doing something he’d never be able to take back.
Something that would hollow out the very foundation of their marriage.