Naomi Reyes

Four years ago.

Six hours before I lost everything.

Ethan Cole had me pinned against the inside of his apartment door, laughing against my mouth because I still had my coat half on and he couldn’t get the second sleeve free. His body was warm and solid, pressing into mine as if he were trying to get inside me.

“You’re impossible,” I breathed, fingers already fumbling with the top button of his shirt.

“You love it.”

His mouth found the curve of my jaw, slow and deliberate, as though he had all the time in the world instead of just forty-five minutes before he had to leave for a call. His hand slid under my shirt and spread wide and certain across my stomach—right over the place where, in four weeks, I would learn there were two more heartbeats than either of us knew yet.

The heat of his palm sank into me. I felt it everywhere.

“Stay tonight,” he murmured against my skin.

“I have an early site visit.”

“Naomi.”

He pulled back just enough to look at me. Really look at me. That look always did something dangerous to my chest—like he was memorizing me in case the world tried to take me away.

“Marry me.”

I laughed because I thought he was joking. The way he sometimes threw those words into the air just to watch me react.

“Ask me again when you mean it.”

“I mean it every time I say it.”

Then he kissed me as if he were trying to prove it. Slow. Deep. His hand sliding higher until it rested just beneath my ribs, thumb brushing the underside of my breast. I melted into him, fingers curling into his shirt, letting myself believe — for one perfect, suspended moment — that this was the entire shape of my future: his mouth, his hands, the low, certain way he said "marry me" against my skin.

Three hours later, I stood in front of my mirror and rehearsed the words I’d been carrying all evening.

Ethan, I’m pregnant.

Four syllables.

I’d practiced them until they sounded almost like good news.

I told myself the timing had never been better.

I never got the chance to say them.

When the elevator doors opened onto the Cole Industries private floor, it wasn’t Ethan waiting for me.

It was his mother.

Diane Cole sat behind a desk, hands folded neatly in front of her.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I’m supposed to meet Ethan for dinner. Where is he?”

“On his way. I asked to speak with you first.”

Her gaze dropped to my hand resting against my stomach.

“I think we both already know why.”

The floor tilted beneath me.

She knows.

“I don’t know what you’re...”

“Don’t.”

“I’ve raised my son to be a great many things, Miss Reyes, but a fool was never one of them.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust my voice. Not after his mouth, not after his hands, not after the four words I had been carrying like a secret gift.

It never happened.

“You come from Queens,” Diane said. “A rent-controlled walk-up. A mother who cleans houses on the Upper East Side for women like me.”

“And somewhere in the last eight months, you decided that got you a Cole.”

“I never decided anything. I fell in...”

“You fell pregnant.” Her mouth curved into a thin smile. “Conveniently, right around the time my son started discussing rings with his assistant.”

The word "rings" landed like a blade beneath my ribs.

But he’d said “marry me” three hours ago like he meant it.

For one sick second, I wondered whose ring he’d been picturing.

The door opened behind me.

“Mom said we needed to talk. All three of us.”

I turned.

Ethan stood in the doorway.

His gaze shifted to his mother.

Something in his face shut down.

“It’s true.”

Three words.

Just three words already laden with doubt.

“Ethan…”

“She’s telling me it isn’t mine,” Diane interrupted smoothly. “Given the timing, that deserves a closer look. Don’t you think?”

“I never said that.”

“Then you won’t mind proving it.”

Diane opened her drawer and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“I had it run privately. Discreetly. For your protection and hers.”

Ethan read it in silence. His jaw tightened. His shoulders went rigid.

I didn’t trust what I was seeing.

I wanted to cross the room and put my hand against his chest the way I had that afternoon. I wanted him to remember the way he’d kissed me, the way he’d said marry me as though our future had already been decided.

I needed him to fight.

Instead, I stayed where I was.

He looked up.

“Negative.”

The word came quietly.

He held the paper toward me.

My hands shook too badly to take it.

“That’s not possible. Ethan, I took a test. Two of them. I know what I…”

I stopped.

I know what your hands felt like today.

I know what you said against my mouth.

“The lab doesn’t lie, sweetheart.” Diane’s voice had gone almost gentle. Somehow, that was worse. “I understand this must be disappointing. A future like the one you pictured… it’s a great deal to let go of.”

“I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you.”

I looked at Ethan.

“Ethan. Say something.”

He remained silent.

“Say what you said to me this afternoon.”

Something flickered across his face.

But he didn’t say it.

I searched his face for anger at his mother. Doubt. Anything beyond the paper.

I found nothing.

Only a man deciding which version of me was easier to believe.

His silence became the answer.

Diane placed a check on the desk.

It sat there for eleven full minutes.

I would remember that number for four years—the way some part of my mind kept counting instead of screaming while Ethan stood by the window.

On the twelfth minute, I picked up the check.

Staying one second longer felt like something I could no longer survive.

I wanted him to stop me.

He didn’t move.

I made it to the elevator before I looked back. He was still standing exactly where I’d left him, hands in his pockets, watching the city instead of me.

The doors closed.

My reflection stared back at me in the polished steel.

Pale.

Steady.

A stranger already learning how to survive this.

I was three weeks gone before I allowed myself to cry.

Curled up on a mattress in a city that didn’t know my name, I pressed one hand against my stomach, which was already beginning to show.

By then, the only person who still didn’t know he was about to become a father was the one man who should have fought hardest to find out:

Ethan Cole.

The same man whose hands I could still feel on my skin months later, no matter how hard I tried to scrub the memory clean.