28. KAI #3
She walks naked out of the living room, picking up my shirt from the floor and pulling it on. It hangs past her thighs, the hem swaying as she walks.
I watch the way her body moves with a confidence and fullness that makes my chest expand.
My mind comes up with an image of the bathroom door closing, the shower turns on.
I lean back on the couch, pull the condom off, toss it in the wastebasket by the side table, and close my eyes.
That was the best sex of my life.
My body is humming. Every muscle is loose, unwound, floating in the aftermath. And underneath the physical satisfaction, something deeper sits, warm and settled and certain.
Ava didn't hold anything back.
Every sound, every demand, every time she told me what she wanted and took it without apology. The way she moaned my name without trying to swallow it. The way she looked over her shoulder with that dark hunger and said come here like I was the only man on earth.
No walls. No performance. No hiding.
For the first time in a long while, everything feels exactly where it belongs.
I can picture her under the water while the shower runs, my shirt discarded on the tile, steam filling the bathroom.
I'm smiling my first real smile in days.
Her phone vibrates on the coffee table.
The screen lights up. A notification banner slides across the top, and I glance at it without thinking
Incoming Call: Dr. Fernandez OB-GYN
My stomach drops. Sudden cold, like stepping through ice into black water, runs through my body.
OB-GYN. I know what those letters stand for.
The phone vibrates again. Again. Then it stops. A voicemail notification slides onto the screen.
I pick up the phone. My hand feels like it belongs to someone else. I tap the voicemail.
It’s an automated voice: "This is a courtesy reminder for Ava Hartley. Your appointment with Dr. Fernandez is confirmed for Thursday at ten a.m. If you need to reschedule your prenatal visit, please call our office at..."
I pull the phone from my ear.
Prenatal.
The word sits in the air like a grenade with the pin already pulled. My legs move to the room without my brain registering the movement.
The shower is still running. Steam curls under the bathroom door.
My hand is holding Ava's phone in a grip tight enough to crack the case.
Prenatal visit.
The memory surfaces like a body breaking water. The dream I've had for weeks about Ava beneath me, her eyes wide, our fingers interlocked on a mattress. My voice saying keep your eyes open.
And then, the thing I kept dismissing as imagination: the torn condom.
The condom that broke the night of the gala.
I count backward. My lips move without sound. Months. The timeline unspools in my chest like barbed wire.
She was already pregnant when she came to the hospital.
She was pregnant when she brought me the succulent and told me to get better.
Pregnant when she proposed friendship, kissed me and ran.
Pregnant when she reorganized my apartment and sat on my kitchen floor and scrolled through my phone looking for memories I couldn't find.
The baby was inside her when she said yes to fake dating. Yes to the lake house. Yes to being my girlfriend.
Pregnant every single time she touched her stomach and changed the subject. Every time she steered my hands away from her belly during sex, used sex positions that now made sense for a woman with a baby growing inside her tummy.
Pregnant every time she said I'm fine with that smile that never quite reached her eyes.
The curves I held, the fullness of her breasts, the softness above her hips… the… the warmth radiating from her skin that I traced with my fingers and called beautiful.
My baby has been growing inside her while she’s been lying in my bed, laughing at my jokes, and letting me fall in love with her without saying a word.
Or could it be that the baby is not mine? That she got pregnant for another?
I cringe.
No. Ava's not like that.
She’s been faithful and practically gummed to my hip since that fateful day she came into the hospital room.
That only means one thing.
The most basic, fundamental foundation of our relationship is broken.
My throat closes. Pain fills my chest slowly, the weight growing by the second.
Ava doesn’t trust me.
Through every confession and every I'm yours and every time I told her I wasn't going anywhere, she still couldn't tell me.
If despite everything, Ava couldn’t tell me about the baby, she might never trust me.
I set the phone down on the coffee table, screen up, voicemail notification still visible.
The shower stops. The pipes clank. There’s silence, then the soft sound of a towel pulling from the rack. The bathroom door opens.
Ava steps out wrapped in steam and a towel, her wet hair leaving dark tracks on her shoulders. She's smiling. Soft, satisfied, open.
She looks at my face and the smile freezes.
"What happened?"
"Your phone rang." My voice is filled with pain. "Dr. Fernandez's office. They left a voicemail confirming your prenatal appointment on Thursday."
Her hand grips the towel at her chest. Her mouth opens. Closes.
My gaze hardens. "How far along are you, Ava?"