Epilogue #2
My phone buzzed against my hip—short, insistent. Then again.
Her gaze dropped anyway, tracking the vibration, then lifted back up, one brow ticking just slightly. “You’re not going to check that?”
“No.”
“That could be important.”
“It’s not more important than this.”
She held my eyes for a second, searching it—testing it—then her mouth shifted, small, like she’d decided something without saying it out loud. She nodded once and looked away.
Her phone slid into her hand this time, thumb unlocking it without thought. The tension at the corners of her mouth eased as she read, something lighter cutting through it.
“Micah.”
I shifted my weight, shoulder staying against hers. “What about her?”
“She’s been texting me for the last hour.” Bea’s thumb moved, quick, practiced. “She’s convinced this is the moment we find out we’re having twins.”
I huffed a breath. “It’s not?”
“No, it’s not.” Her mouth pulled, dry.
“What else?”
Bea angled the screen closer, her eyes narrowing slightly as she read, like she was deciding whether to take any of it seriously.
“She’s been texting me for the last hour.”
I shifted my weight, my shoulder staying lined up with hers. “About what?”
Bea’s mouth pulled at the corner, something lighter threading through the tension that had been sitting there moments before. “She’s convinced this is the moment I spiral and make a statistically questionable decision.”
I huffed a quiet breath. “That tracks.”
“She’s also—” Bea paused, her thumb hovering mid-scroll, her expression shifting just enough to catch my attention. “—apparently rewriting her entire academic trajectory in real time.”
My gaze moved to her, subtle but not missed.
“How.”
“According to her,” Bea continued, tilting the phone slightly like the evidence might somehow make more sense from a different angle, “this is ‘a critical observational moment in high-stress emotional adaptation,’ and she’s now ‘deeply inspired’ to double down on sports psychology.”
I leaned back a fraction, not breaking contact where our shoulders met. “She was already headed there.”
“I know.” Bea glanced up at me, one brow lifting, her expression caught somewhere between fond and resigned. “I just didn’t realize I was going to be cited as part of the case study.”
“You are,” I returned evenly. “She’s been collecting data on you since the first time you disagreed with her.”
Bea’s lips curved—quick, real—before she dropped her gaze back to the screen, her thumb moving again, slower now.
“She says she’s calling me later,” Bea added, her tone flattening slightly in anticipation. “And I need to be ‘emotionally available and intellectually honest.’”
“You won’t be.”
“I absolutely will not be.”
“Chicago’s not ready for her,” I said.
Bea exhaled softly, something warmer settling into it now, the earlier tension easing without disappearing completely. “Chicago created her,” she murmured.
“That’s worse.”
Bea’s shoulder bumped mine once, light, automatic—agreement without looking up. She typed something, hit send, and let the phone fall back into her lap, her hand drifting down again to where it had been before.
My thumb followed.
Steady.
Right where she needed it.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand. She typed something quickly, then set it aside, her attention shifting back to the space around us as the door at the end of the hall opened again.
This time—“Ribeiro,” the nurse called, her tone warm, practiced, her gaze flicking between us.
Bea straightened immediately, instinct kicking in before anything else. Her shoulders squared, her hand dropping from her stomach as she reached for her coat—I caught her wrist gently.
My thumb brushed once over the inside of her wrist, slow, deliberate, grounding.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
Her throat moved as she swallowed, something soft breaking through the edges of her composure again—not panic, not fear—just honesty.
She let out a breath that almost shook, then steadied, her fingers tightening briefly around mine before she pulled back, grabbing her coat and slipping it on with efficient, practiced movements.
Then she turned toward the nurse. “We’re ready.”
The monitor flickered.
Static gave way to motion, the image catching, slipping, then resolving again in uneven pulses that should have felt mechanical, routine, nothing more than the expected progression of a process that happened in rooms like this every day.
It didn’t.
Nothing in the room shifted in any obvious way. The lighting remained low and controlled, the steady hum of the equipment continuing without interruption, the doctor’s movements efficient and unremarkable as she adjusted the angle.
But everything narrowed anyway.
Not around the screen.
Around her.
I felt it in the exact moment her hand went still in mine—not tightening, not pulling away, just stopping, like something inside her had reached the edge of what it could process and held there.
Her breathing followed a second later, not uneven, not panicked, just…
absent. Like her body had forgotten the next step and hadn’t decided yet whether to take it.
“There we go,” the doctor offered, her voice calm, practiced, a steady thread meant to guide the moment without intruding on it.
The image sharpened.
Bea didn’t speak.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t look at me.
And I didn’t look at the screen. I watched her instead.
I watched the exact point where something shifted beneath the surface—where this stopped being something she could hold at a distance, stopped being something she could organize, prepare for, or contain inside a framework that made it manageable.
It wasn’t abstract anymore.
It wasn’t theoretical.
It wasn’t something coming later.
It was here.
Now.
Ours.
Her grip tightened then—sudden, sharp, enough that I felt the force of it all the way through my hand and up my arm, grounding me in my own body in a way I would have reacted to before, would have adjusted for, would have tried to ease.
I didn’t.
I let her hold on exactly as hard as she needed to.
“Everything looks good,” the doctor continued, her tone steady, measured, the kind of reassurance that carried weight because it didn’t try to oversell it. “Strong. Exactly where we want to be.”
Bea let out a breath, but it didn’t come clean.
It broke on the way out, catching somewhere deeper than the last few seconds, like it had been sitting there longer, waiting—not for the words, not for the confirmation, but for permission to exist.
Her head turned slowly toward me.
Her eyes were bright, but not fragile.
Unprotected in a way she had never allowed before, not even when she was unraveling, not even when she was fighting to hold everything together.
She wasn’t looking for answers.
She wasn’t looking for control.
She was looking for something steadier than both.
I leaned in without thinking, closing the distance until my forehead brushed hers, grounding us back into something smaller than the room, smaller than the weight of what had just settled between us—something we could hold without it slipping through our hands.
“On est bien,” I murmured quietly. We’re okay.
Her lips parted, her breath catching again, but this time it didn’t fracture.
It didn’t splinter into something sharp or unmanageable.
It settled.
That was the difference.
She nodded once, small, but there was nothing uncertain in it.
“On est bien,” she echoed.
The fear didn’t disappear.
The uncertainty didn’t resolve into something easy or clean.
But it shifted.
It stopped controlling the space.
It stopped dictating her next move.
She didn’t reach for structure. She didn’t pull back into distance. She didn’t try to reorganize the moment into something she could contain.
She stayed exactly where she was.
Her hand slipped from mine only long enough to settle fully over her stomach, this time not absent, not instinctive, but deliberate—aware of what she was touching, what it meant, what it carried forward.
Then her fingers found mine again. “I’m still scared.” Her voice came quiet, but it didn’t waver, her gaze holding mine without slipping away from it.
“Good.”
Her brow lifted slightly, the edge of something almost amused cutting through the weight of it, not dismissing it, just acknowledging it without letting it take over. “You’re consistent, I’ll give you that.”
“Fear means it matters.”
She let out a breath, and this time it came easier, something in her finally releasing the need to contain it, to manage it, to shape it into something smaller.
“Yeah,” she murmured, the word settling instead of catching.
Then, after a beat, her fingers tightening just slightly around mine—not bracing, not holding on for stability, but anchoring—“But I’m not running.”
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t soften it or turn it into something larger than it already was.
I didn’t need to.
I just held her hand and let it stand exactly where she placed it.
Because that was the point.
Not that she wasn’t afraid.
Not that we had everything figured out.
But that she stayed anyway.
We didn’t rush when it was over.
We didn’t fill the space with words that didn’t belong there.
She slid down from the table, steady, controlled, her balance sure without hesitation, her hand finding mine again without pause, without question.
Not for support.
Not because she needed it.
Because it belonged there.
We moved toward the door together, the space around us opening without resistance, the moment settling into something quieter, something that didn’t need to be held up or examined to prove it was real.
And for the first time in my life, there was nothing in me waiting for it to break.
No instinct measuring for the shift.
No quiet preparation for the moment something would tilt and force us to adjust.
No expectation that the space we occupied would demand to be recalculated.
Just the understanding—clear, unforced, absolute—that whatever came next would meet us exactly where we stood.
And we would meet it the same way.
Not perfectly.
Not cleanly.
But without stepping away from it.
Together.
I used to control rooms. I used to measure every angle inside them—every shift, every movement, every fracture before it had the chance to form.
I knew where pressure would build and where it would break, and I stayed ahead of it because I never allowed myself to be caught inside something I hadn’t already mapped out.
That was how I held it together. That was how I stayed standing.
Now—I didn’t need the room.
I didn’t need the control, or the constant calculation of what might change, or the instinct to test the edges just to prove they would hold.
Because I already knew where I stood.
Not in relation to anything else.
Not measured against what could shift or fall or fracture if I misstepped.
Just—here.
Her hand in mine, steady without effort.
Her shoulder close enough that I could feel the weight of it settle fully, not tentative, not waiting for the moment it might need to pull away.
There was no part of me bracing for impact.
No instinct waiting for the correction.
No quiet readiness for the version of this that didn’t hold.
There was only this.
I didn’t move.
the end.