14. Cillian #2
Claire is in the middle of the sofa, sitting close to her son.
She notices her son shift and she looks up.
Her face tightens around a faint, controlled smile—a half-apology that doesn’t reach her eyes, the kind of look someone gives when they’ve made a choice and are fully standing behind it, fallout be damned.
There’s a quality to it I’ve hated since the second meeting: the particular set of her chin, tilting just enough to signal defiance and calculation.
It makes my stomach tighten, and my pulse spike.
Every instinct I have wants to assert control, to anticipate the next move, but this small gesture tells me I’m already behind. She’s playing a game I don’t fully understand yet, and that thought unsettles me more than any argument or raised voice ever could.
Valentina is on the other armchair.
Not on it. Perched on the armrest, spine locked straight, legs crossed at the ankle, hands folded neatly in her lap.
Every inch of her body is still but the air around her is heavy and impossible to ignore. Her face is expressionless except for her eyes. Dark, blazing, focused like molten metal.
They burn into me, and I can feel it in my chest, in the sudden tautness of my shoulders, the way my stomach knots. I’ve made Valentina furious before, plenty of times, but never like this. This is pressure.
It presses down, makes the room smaller, my skin crawl, my pulse hammer. It’s the kind of fury that waits, observes, then rips everything apart with surgical precision.
She looks at me like I’m a stranger she’s decided not to waste energy on.
That’s worse than the fury.
“Cillian.” Her voice is calm, ice running through steel, the same tone she used on the phone.
“Your guest was just telling me about Finn.” She tilts her head just slightly.
“Your son. The one you’ve known about for—” She pauses, tapping her chin thoughtfully as if this is just a normal conversation, but her murderous eyes say otherwise. “How long has it been? Four weeks?”
I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, my palms damp, every nerve screaming. Every instinct I have tells me to run, to fix this, to vanish before the next second—but she doesn’t need me to move. She’s already won this moment.
I swallow heavily, my throat dry. I need to explain what’s going on. I have to make this better. “Valentina—”
“No.” The vehemence in that word stops me in my tracks. “Don’t say my name like that.”
I look at Claire. Her back is straight. Her lips press together for a fraction of a second, then curl just enough into a small smile that says I know what I did, and I don’t care how it affects you.
Her eyes are calm, almost distant, but the faint narrowing at the corners hints at something more sinister.
She tilts her chin slightly upward, a tiny gesture of defiance, and for a second, the whole room feels like it’s weighted with the choice she made and the fallout she’s tossed onto everyone else’s shoulders.
“I was going to tell you,” I tell my wife desperately, focusing only on her. “After the test. I was waiting until I had the results, then I was going to—”
Valentina scoffs. “You were going to tell me after the test.”
I nod frantically, heart hammering. “Yes. I didn’t want to worry you with something that might turn out to be—”
“I want you to hear yourself,” Valentina hisses, interrupting me. “About worrying me. I want to hear you say it again.”
I stop, realizing how fucking stupid that train of thought even was.
White hot anger moves across her face before she stamps it back down.
When she speaks her voice is perfectly even.
“You have been lying to my face for a month. While I am pregnant. While I have been losing my mind trying to figure out what was wrong, what I did, whether you were—” She stops and her jaw shifts.
“You watched me do that every day. And you said nothing.”
She’s right. I fucked up so badly and I don’t even know how to make this right. “I know,” I tell her, my stomach in knots.
“You know,” she mocks. “And yet, you did it anyway.”
I feel my throat tighten and my chest burns. Every muscle in me wants to leap forward, grab Claire, shake her, scream, how could you do this? But I can’t.
My hands clench at my sides.
My pulse hammers. The room feels smaller, hotter, heavier, every second stretching, every breath weighted with fury and panic.
Finn has put the tablet face down on his lap. He’s staring at the floor, perfectly still, as if he knows he must shrink when adults are having a bad conversation. This isn’t the first time he’s seen this. It should bother me, but I don’t give a fuck right now.
“Could we—” I look at Claire, with eyes that promise death. “Could you give us a minute?”
Claire’s eyes flick to Valentina’s and my wife looks back at her challengingly.
“Finn, sweetheart,” Claire says, standing and holding out her hand. “Let’s get some water.”
He slides off the sofa silently and takes her hand. They disappear, and suddenly I’m alone with Valentina.
She stands from the armrest.
God, she looks furious. Every line of her body radiates it.
Goddammit, how long has Claire been here to poison my wife against me?
Valentina looks at me with a gaze so hateful it feels like the air itself seems to bend away from her.
And underneath it all, I see what I put there. I put that look on her face.
“So,” my wife says dangerously, her eyes glinting. “That’s the type of woman you fuck for eight weeks?”
“Valentina,” I say, voice tight, every word trembling. “I am sorry. I know how this looks—”
“You don’t know how this looks,” she snaps. “You don’t get to tell me how this looks.”
“I was trying to protect you—”
“You were trying to control the situation.” Her voice doesn’t rise, but then again it doesn’t need to.
Every word cuts me deeply. “There is a difference, and you know there’s a difference.
But yet, you chose the thing that was easier for you and are still trying to dress it up as something you did for me. ” She shakes her head in disbelief.
I don’t say anything because she’s right. Every version of this in my head is wrong. Every argument I could make sounds like another excuse.
“You need to leave,” she says.
I blink, desperate. “What—”
“I need you to leave the apartment.”
I glance toward the kitchen. “I’ll ask them to—”
“Not them,” she responds, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “You.”
It lands like a punch and I suddenly can’t breathe. “You want me to—”
“I want you to leave.” Her voice is still steady and it’s more frightening than screaming ever could. “I can’t look at you right now. I need you to go.”
Panic claws at me. I’m losing my wife and I can’t figure out a way to get her back. “Valentina, just let me explain—”
“You’ve had a month to explain.” The word month cracks the veneer for a second and I can see the raw, awful hurt I put there, the betrayal and despair.
Her eyes are bright for a moment before she takes a deep breath and I can see her pull herself back into perfect composure.
“You had thirty chances. Every morning, every evening, every time I asked what was wrong and you looked at me and said nothing. You even told me I was just tired. Meanwhile, you were lying to me this whole time. There is nothing you can explain right now that I want to hear.”
I swallow, my throat burning. “I love you,” I manage, ragged and desperate. “I love you and I love this baby. I know I made a terrible call—”
“Get out.” Her voice wavers on the last word, like she can’t believe she’s saying it, but her eyes are cold. She moves to the door, hand on the frame, and the look of betrayal and exhaustion of her face will haunt me for the rest of my days.
I know I’ve lost. Nothing I say or do will matter. The only thing left is to leave.
I walk toward the door, but then I stop. “I’ll fix this,” I vow, my voice breaking.
She looks at me with such cool indifference, I nearly break down right there.
I step out and the door swings shut behind me. The lock clicks and it’s like a physical punch to my chest.
I press my back against the hallway wall, sliding down until I’m sitting on the floor.
My forearms rest on my knees, and my head tilts back, staring at the bland ceiling. My chest heaves.
My mind races through the calculations I’ve made—rational ones, careful ones, “protective” ones—every time I convinced myself I was waiting for the right moment.
I didn’t fix it. I let it become the problem. I let Claire sit in my apartment for who knows how long with my pregnant wife.
I let Valentina handle it alone.
I put her in this position.
I pull out my phone, desperate to try and fix this. I could spill everything I should have said a month ago.
Not tonight. Nothing I say tonight is what she needs.
What she needs tonight is for me to stay on the other side of this door and mean it when I said I’ll fix it, which means figuring out how to actually do that rather than standing in a hallway trying to talk my way back in.
I get up and straighten my jacket.
I press my hand to the door for a second in a silent apology, a physical marker of my failure.
Then I go.