Page 166 of Babies for the Big Shot

She turns to face me fully now, and the pain in her eyes is worse than anything Isla could’ve written.

“I trusted you,” she says, softer now. “Not just with me. Withthem. With everything. I stepped into this chaos because I thought, maybe, if I held on tight enough, you’d make space for me inside of it.”

“Youhavespace,” I say immediately, my voice low, urgent. “You are not chaos. You’re what brought me out of it.”

Her throat moves, as if she’s swallowing glass. “Then why does it feel like I’m constantly playing catch up to things you already knew were going to hit me?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“By keeping me in the dark?”

“I thought I could stop it,” I admit. “I thought I could shield you from it. Fromher. From the spotlight. I underestimated how far Isla was willing to go. That was my mistake.”

“You’re damn right it was.”

She doesn’t raise her voice, but the weight of her anger is louder than any shouting could be.

“I didn’t sign up for this part, Nick. I didn’t sign up to be your cautionary tale.”

She looks away then, and I see her hand move instinctively toward her stomach—a small, unconscious touch that makes something twist deep in my chest.

“I thought if I could just keep moving forward,” I say, the words catching at the edges, “if I could fix the next thing, or stop the next leak, or silence the next voice, then maybe you wouldn’t have to go through what everyone else around me eventually does. The exposure. The fallout. The scrutiny.”

Her eyes meet mine again.

“And what if I wanted to be a part of the solution? What if I wanted you totellme things instead of trying to clean them up behind my back?” She shakes her head. “You can’t protect me from the world if you’re not willing to stand in it beside me.”

That hits harder than anything else.

The room is quiet again, but not empty. It’s charged. Heavy with every unsaid thing between us.

“I read the article,” she says finally. “All of it. I kept waiting for the punchline. The part where you stepped in. The part where you did something. But you didn’t. It was just me. Alone.”

“I won’t let that happen again.”

“I’m not asking you to be a hero, Nick,” she says, her voice breaking. “I’m asking you to stop hiding behind the excuse of protecting me. If we’re doing this, really doing this, I need you to show up.”

I cross the room slowly, but I don’t touch her.

“I’ll do better,” I say. “I swear. I got her fired…”

“But the damage is done.”

“I know, but it still hurts.”

She doesn’t respond right away. Her eyes search mine, looking for something real. Something solid to hold onto.

And for the first time since I walked in, I see it, just the smallest crack in her armor.

Not forgiveness. Not yet.

But something close. Something human.

The beginning of a reckoning we both know we need.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Sara