Chapter Six #2
I feed them their dinner first—measured out portions of the premium raw food that Hyunwoo has shipped in monthly from some boutique pet nutrition company that I’m fairly certain charges more per pound than the wagyu we ate at that rooftop restaurant.
I watch the dogs happily scarf down their meals for a minute, leaning against the kitchen counter, before my stomach reminds me that I should probably feed myself too.
I end up sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, scrolling through articles about diets that are good when you’re trying to conceive.
I don’t know what possessed me to search for it.
Boredom, maybe. Frustration at another negative test. The nagging feeling that there has to be something I can do on my end besides just lying there and taking it.
The results are overwhelming. Foods rich in folic acid, iron, omega-3 fatty acids.
Leafy greens, lean proteins, whole grains.
Avocados, apparently, are a fertility superfood.
Sweet potatoes. Salmon. There’s a whole section about the importance of zinc for omega reproductive health that I read twice, frowning, trying to remember if the prenatal vitamins Hyunwoo makes me take every morning have zinc in them.
I’m three pages deep into a meal-planning website specifically designed for omegas trying to get pregnant—complete with color-coded grocery lists and weekly prep schedules organized by trimester—before I catch myself and feel a hot flush of embarrassment crawl up the back of my neck.
I close the laptop with a snap and rub my face with both hands.
I can’t believe I’m voluntarily researching fertility diets. What is my life?
Still, I get up and start making one of the meals I found.
A salmon and vegetable stir-fry with brown rice, heavy on the spinach and sweet potatoes.
It’s not complicated, and the ingredients are already in Hyunwoo’s always-stocked fridge because the man keeps it filled like he’s preparing for a siege at all times.
I pull out the salmon filet, grab a bunch of spinach, two sweet potatoes, garlic, ginger, soy sauce. Set the rice cooker going.
In the middle of chopping the sweet potatoes into cubes, I start to feel a little hot.
At first it’s just a flush across the back of my neck, a warmth settling under my skin that makes the kitchen feel stuffy despite the AC running.
I set the knife down, wipe my hands on a dish towel, and walk over to the thermostat on the wall by the hallway.
It’s set to twenty-two. I crank it down to twenty, wait for the soft hum of the system adjusting, and go back to the cutting board.
The sweet potatoes go into the pan with a sizzle. I add the garlic and ginger, the smell filling the kitchen, and reach for the spinach. And I notice the dogs.
Kal and Machete are trailing me. Not sitting at the edge of the kitchen the way they usually do when I cook—Hyunwoo trained them not to beg or crowd the cooking space, and they’re normally perfect about it, parking themselves just outside the tile line and watching with polite interest from a distance.
But right now both of them are on my heels.
Machete is practically pressed against my left ankle, her nose low, sniffing at my feet and the hem of my sweatpants intensely enough to not be casual curiosity.
Kal is circling behind me, his head up, nostrils flaring as he scents the air.
I stop moving to wipe a hand across my forehead, which is damp, and Machete lets out a low, concerned whine. She sits at my feet and looks up at me with her head tilted to one side, sharp brown eyes fixed on my face.
“What?” I ask her, bending down to scratch behind her ears. “You smell the salmon?”
She doesn’t break her stare. Her nostrils flare again, and she whines once more—a soft, worried sound that I’ve only heard her make a handful of times, usually when Hyunwoo comes home from the gym smelling like a different alpha and she gets anxious about it.
I frown but brush it off. “You’re being weird,” I tell her, and straighten up to finish cooking.
The stir-fry comes together fine. I plate it over the brown rice, pour myself a glass of water, and sit down at the table to eat.
The first few bites are good—the salmon is flaky and the sweet potatoes have a nice caramelized edge from the pan.
I’m chewing through a mouthful of spinach when my stomach cramps.
It’s not subtle either, it’s a pulling sensation in my abdomen like a fist is slowly closing around something inside me.
I set my fork down, frowning, and press my hand flat against my stomach.
The cramp rolls through in a wave—tightening, holding, then releasing—and I exhale through my nose and pick my fork back up, thinking maybe I ate too fast.
The second wave hits harder. A sharp, twisting pull low in my belly that makes me hunch forward over my plate, my hand gripping the edge of the table. It passes after a few seconds, but the dull ache it leaves behind doesn’t fade. It sits there, heavy and persistent, pulsing.
I give up on eating. The thought of putting more food in my mouth makes my stomach turn, so I scrape the rest of the plate into the trash with a grimace—a waste of perfectly good salmon that I spent twenty minutes cooking—and carry the dishes to the sink.
I’m getting hotter. The flush has spread from the back of my neck down my chest and across my face, my skin prickling with uncomfortable warmth.
I peel off my shirt one-handed, tossing it over the back of a kitchen chair, and check the thermostat again.
Twenty degrees. The AC is already running at its lowest setting.
The apartment should feel like a refrigerator, and instead I’m standing here sweating.
I turn back to the dishes and get as far as turning on the faucet before a wave of dizziness hits me.
The room tilts sideways, the counter blurring, and I grab the edge of the sink with both hands, my knuckles going white around the stainless-steel rim.
Water runs over my fingers, warm from the tap, and I stand there hunched over the basin trying to get the kitchen to stop spinning.
Machete is right there. She’s pressed against my calf, whining loudly, her nose pushing insistently against the back of my knee.
Behind me I can hear Kal’s nails clicking on the tile as he stations himself in the kitchen doorway, and when I glance over my shoulder his ears are pinned flat against his skull, his body tense, watching me anxiously.
“What the hell is wrong with me,” I mutter, more to myself than to the dogs. I shut off the faucet and abandon the dishes in the sink, half-washed.
I think maybe I’ve caught a late summer cold. Some bug going around the gym—one of my clients was sniffling all through our session yesterday, and the locker rooms are a petri dish on the best of days. A shower and some cold medicine should sort me out. That’s all this is.
In the shower, the cramps get worse.
They intensify from that dull, pulling ache into a sharper stab, spreading from my lower abdomen into my hips and down into my thighs.
I brace one hand against the tile wall as another wave rolls through me, this one strong enough to make my knees buckle.
The water hitting my skin feels wrong—too much, every droplet pounding against my nerve endings with a heightened sensitivity that makes me flinch and shiver even though the temperature is lukewarm at best. My skin feels like it’s been turned up to a frequency I can’t control, every sensation amplified and distorted.
My head feels heavy. My thoughts are sluggish, moving through something thick and resistant, like I’m trying to think underwater.
I stand under the spray and try to work through what’s happening to me—the heat, the cramps, the sensitivity, the dizziness—and the pieces are right there, obvious, but my brain won’t connect them.
Something is wrong. This isn’t a cold. This isn’t food poisoning.
I get out clumsily, my foot slipping on the wet tile, and I catch myself on the towel rack hard enough to rattle it against the wall.
I pull on a pair of sweatpants with hands that are shaking and don’t bother with a shirt.
The fabric of the sweatpants against my skin feels abrasive, too much contact, and I have to resist the urge to strip them off again immediately.
I stumble out of the bathroom thinking I need to find some medicine.
Maybe call Hyunwoo. Maybe call a doctor.
Machete and Kal are right there in the hallway, both of them flanking me like sentries, Machete pressing her body against my leg and Kal pacing at my other side.
They’re both whining now, a continuous anxious sound, and their combined worry is doing nothing to calm the growing alarm building in my own.
But instead of going to the kitchen for medicine, my feet carry me past it. Down the hallway. Past my own bedroom door without stopping. Toward Hyunwoo’s room.
I don’t make a conscious decision to go there. My body just moves instinctively. My hand finds the door handle and pushes it open, and Hyunwoo’s scent is like walking into a wall.
It’s everywhere. Saturated into the sheets, the pillows, the curtains, the carpet.
The warm sandalwood musk that I’ve been breathing in for twenty-six years without a second thought, as familiar and unremarkable to me as the smell of my own skin.
I’ve slept in this room dozens of times.
I’ve sat on that bed playing video games for hours.
I’ve never once had a reaction to the scent of this room beyond vague recognition.
Now my chest tightens at it. Something inside me reaches toward it, pulling me forward like a hand wrapped around my sternum, dragging me in. My feet cross the threshold and carry me to the bed without my permission.