Page 97 of Babies for the Big Shot

“About two weeks ago.”

Two weeks.

The words hit with the force of a freight train, leaving me no space to breathe. My chest tightens, a slow, suffocating pressure building in the hollow of my ribs.

Two weeks. She’s known for two weeks.

Fourteen days of… nothing.

Fourteen days of her pretending she wasn’t holding something that could shatter us both.

Fourteen days of me thinking I still had time. Time to sort out whatever the hell this is between us. Time to keep my head above water while I tried to decipher the mess I’d let myself get caught in.

And she’s been carrying this, thissecret, our secret, without a word.

“I was trying to find the right moment,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. It trembles, but there’s still thatedgeto it, the one I want to reach out and touch, the fraying end of a rope. “But there’s no right way to say it. I didn’t want to lose my job. I didn’t want to lose you.”

My jaw clenches, hard enough to crack teeth. “You don’t trust me.”

Her eyes widen, desperate. “It’s not about that.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not!” she insists, voice rising. “I’m not used to people showing up for me, okay? I grew up thinking the other shoe was always going to drop. I’m not good at… asking for help.”

Her words hit hard as a punch, unexpected but deep. I wasn’t ready for that. For the cracks in her armor to reveal something so raw, something I’d never imagined under all that bravado.

And then she keeps going. Talking faster now, words tripping over themselves. Her eyes don’t meet mine, flicking around the room, looking for an escape.

“And then I thought… what if you didn’t want it? What if you were angry? What if you thought I trapped you or something, God, like Rebecca said would happen, and I thought maybe you’d believe her and then I…” She pauses, her breath hitching as if she’s just crossed some invisible line she can’t come back from. “I started thinking maybe I could just handle it on my own. Like my mom. Just… figure it out.”

I freeze.

Her mom.

I can barely hear her over the thundering in my head. The walls are closing in.

“What?” I manage to rasp.

Sara’s shoulders shake, her hands twisting in her lap. “She was sick,” she stammers. “Growing up, she was always sick. And she raised me by herself and never asked for help and she…” Shefalters. Stops. Presses her hand to her mouth as if she’s trying to shove all of this back inside. “She did it alone. Until she couldn’t anymore, and then it was my turn to look after her, which is why I was freelancing and jobs weren’t secure…”

I’m trying.

I swear, I’m trying.

But none of it makes sense. Her mom, illness, fear, loneliness, all of it’s tangled. All of it’s jumbled.

I can’t focus. Can’t breathe. Can’t make any of it fit into place.

Because beneath it all, one truth is screaming at me, louder than everything else:

She didn’t tell me.

She didn’t trust me enough to tell me that I was going to be a father.

I take a deep breath. “I need a minute,” I mutter, backing toward the door.

Her face falls, eyes wide with panic. “Nick, please…”