1. Jordan #2
Something in my chest pulls. Tightens. I don't have a name for it yet but it's there, solid and undeniable, lodged under my ribs.
She looks at me for a long second. Her gaze moves over my face like she's cataloging details, cross-referencing what she's seeing with what she knows, trying to reconcile the man at her door with the idea of her mother marrying anyone, let alone someone like me.
Her breathing steadies. Not calm—controlled. There's a difference.
Then she steps back. Away from the door. Away from me.
"You should come in. The hallway's not—" She gestures vaguely. "Just come in."
I step inside.
The apartment is small. One room that does everything—kitchen, living room, bedroom. A couch that's seen better years, the fabric worn thin at the armrests. A table with one chair.
The window's covered with a thin curtain that doesn't block the streetlight outside—orange glow bleeding through, casting everything in a sickly amber. No extra furniture. No decoration. Nothing that isn't necessary.
But it's clean. The floor's swept. The dishes in the sink are stacked, not scattered. She's broke, but she hasn't let the place go.
I take up too much room. The ceiling's low enough I could reach up and touch it without stretching. My shoulders are too wide for the space between the couch and the kitchen counter. The floorboards creak under my weight.
I'm aware of every inch of myself standing here in her apartment, and every inch feels wrong. Too big. Too intrusive. Like I'm crushing the air out of the room just by existing in it.
She closes the door behind me. The lock clicks—flimsy, useless. My jaw tightens. Crosses her arms over her chest—presses hard, like she's trying to hold something down. She winces. Sharp. Her breath hitches and her face goes tight.
"What's going on?" I ask.
She blinks. "What do you mean?"
"With you. Right now."
I nod at her shirt. The wet fabric clinging to her skin. The way she's holding herself.
Her face flushes. Deep red, spreading down her neck. She looks away, stares at the floor like it might open up and swallow her.
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing."
"It's—" Her voice catches. Cracks. She closes her eyes, breathes through her nose.
Slow. Deliberate. When she opens them again, she's crying.
Not sobbing. Just tears sliding down her face while she stands there trying not to fall apart in front of me, trying to keep her spine straight and her voice steady even as everything else crumbles. "I don't know what's happening."
I wait. Don't move. Don't push. Just stand there and let her get to it.
"I woke up and my chest hurt," she says. Voice so quiet I barely catch it. Each word comes out slow, halting, like she's pulling them from somewhere deep and painful. "And now I'm—" She gestures at her shirt, the motion jerky and uncertain. "I'm leaking. Milk. From my?—"
She can't finish. Can't make herself say the word.
Her face is burning red now, the flush spreading down her throat, and her hands are shaking so hard she has to tuck them under her arms. She looks like she wants the floor to open up and swallow her whole.
Like she'd take the drop just to stop having this conversation.
My brain goes to the obvious place.
The only place it can go.
She's leaking milk. She's twenty-one. Someone got her pregnant.
The thought lands and my entire system floods with something ugly. Something territorial and possessive and completely irrational that hits so hard I feel it in my teeth.
She's pregnant. Someone touched her. Some guy put his hands on her, got her pregnant, and then what—left her here?
Alone in this shithole apartment with a lock that wouldn't stop a determined teenager and walls so thin I can hear the neighbor's TV through them?
Left her scared and broke and crying in a wet shirt with no idea what's happening to her body?
"Who got you pregnant?"
It comes out rough. Too loud. The words scrape against my throat on the way out. My jaw's locked and my hands are fists and I didn't mean to say it like that—didn't mean to sound like I'm accusing her of something—but it's out now and I can't take it back.
She stares at me. Just—stares. Like I slapped her.
"What?"
"Who. Got you. Pregnant."
Her face goes from red to white in the space of a breath. All the blood drains out of it. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. No sound comes out. She's looking at me like I just accused her of something unforgivable. Like I reached across the space between us and shoved her.
"I cannot possibly be pregnant."
I'm about to push—about to ask her how she knows, when she last saw a doctor, who the hell touched her and where I can find him—when she finishes.
"I'm a virgin."
The word lands.
Everything stops.
My brain blanks. Just—nothing. White noise.
Static. The sentence doesn't process because it can't process.
The word virgin and the image of her soaked shirt and the fact that I've known this woman for less than ten minutes don't fit together.
Don't make sense in any configuration my brain can assemble.
She's untouched.
No one's had her.
She's leaking milk and in pain and crying and scared and nobody has ever?—
Heat floods through me. Instant and overwhelming. Straight to my chest, my gut, lower. Possessive and wrong and so far past appropriate I can't see appropriate from here. Can't even remember what appropriate looks like.
My hands unclench and clench again, fingers digging into my palms hard enough to hurt. My breathing changes—gets heavier, rougher. The air in the room feels too thick. Too warm.
I have to stop thinking. Right now. Immediately.
Shut this entire line of thought down before it goes somewhere I can't come back from.
Because the direction my thoughts are heading is not acceptable for a man standing in this woman's apartment.
A man who's technically her stepfather. A man almost twice her age at thirty-eight.
A man who met her eight minutes ago and has no right to feel anything about what she just said.
She's still looking at me. Tears on her cheeks, tracking slow lines down to her jaw. Arms crossed over her chest, pressed so tight her knuckles are white. Defiant even now. Even like this—scared and hurting and crying—she's still got her chin up. Still meeting my eyes.
The word sits between us.
Virgin.
I have no idea what to do with it.
I have no idea what to do with her.
My chest is tight and my brain is offline and she's standing three feet away from me and I can't move. Can't think. Can't do anything except stand here while something hot and territorial coils in my gut and refuses to let go.