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PROLOGUE

ZARA

Ican’t stop the tears.

No matter how hard I try, they won’t stop falling, and Ineedthem to stop falling.

“Mom.” The voice of Raine, my sixteen-year-old daughter, is full of worry and trepidation, and I hate to be the one to make her sound that way.

“I’m fine, babe.” I try to keep my voice steady, to reassure her. “I’ll be out after my shower.”

Slowly, I rise up off the toilet and step out of my underwear, ignoring the drops of blood that drip down my leg, my mind too fixated on the heaviness of my leaking breasts.

They’re too sore to touch, and alleviating the fullness feels more like a punishment than the guaranteed relief I know it would bring.

It’s been three days since I gave birth to a sleeping Lola, and every part of me feels like I died with her. The grief is nuanced and complex, and as a surrogate for my daughter’s father and his husband, I’m struggling to sort through what are my feelings and what are everybody else’s.

They lost a daughter.

Our daughter lost her sister.

But what about me? I lost someone too, hadn’t I? I was more than just a vessel for this baby, and I don’t know how to untangle that thought from the rest of it. Our lives are so intertwined, our love for one another unconventional, and I have never hated it more than I do right now. I have never doubted my role in this life I chose, but I don’t know what feelings I have a right to feel and what ones I don’t.

I don’t know when I can cry and when I can’t.

I don’t know if I can complain about the changes and the pain in my body.

I don’t know if I can share a single thought without guilt and regret consuming me.

I hate it here. I hate how we got here. And I hate what we all lost.

Turning the shower on, I wait for the stream of water to reach the right temperature. Stretching my leg, I climb over the lip of the tub and just stand there under the spray, knowing the responsibility to wash and take care of myself lies solely on my shoulders, and yet I can’t get a single muscle of mine to move.

The heat of the water scalds my skin, and it’s still not enough to rid my chest of the cold, empty, hollow feeling. I’m a living and breathing contradiction, simultaneously wanting the aches and pains to stay and desperately wanting them to go. I want every reminder to somehow immortalize Lola’s existence, but I also selfishly want to wind the clock back to a time where everything didn’t hurt this badly.

My eyes spill with tears as my body purges the remainder of the pregnancy. I massage my tender breasts, watching the milk spill through my fingers, tortured by the instant relief.

“Zara.” The familiar voice calls my name, followed by the rattling of the door. “Zara, I’m coming in.”

No. No. No.

“Zara.” The voice is closer, and I turn to find Jesse, my best friend, my daughter’s father—Lola’s grieving father—standing there staring at me.

Not at my body.

Not at my heavy chest.

Not at my marked-up stomach.

Justme.

“What are you doing here?” I ask flatly. “You should be at home.”

There’s nothing but anguish on his face, the tired eyes of a man whose world has forever been altered. He drags a towel off the rack—always the gentleman—and leans into the shower to switch off the water and wrap it around me.

“Raine’s worried about you,” he says, the four words his only explanation. “She says you’ve been in the bathroom for an hour.”

Had I been?