Chapter 155
The truth is, I want it. Despite the danger, despite the complication, despite the absolute fucking insanity of bringing another child into our bloodsoaked world… I want to feel life growing inside me again.
My phone timer chimes. I pick up the test. And…
One line.
One.
Fucking.
Line.
I’m not pregnant.
I blink, certain I’ve misread it. I hold it up to the light, tilt it, shake it, as if the laws of chemistry are just gonna laugh and say, Gotcha!
But the result remains stubbornly, infuriatingly singular.
One line.
Yesterday’s test was wrong. A false positive. A cruel joke played by a universe that seems to delight in my suffering.
“No,” I whisper to the empty bathroom. “This can’t be right.”
But it is right. I know it is. The first response was the anomaly—stressed bodies do strange things, and pregnancy tests can be fallible. This is reality crashing back in, crushing my fragile hope under its heel and cackling at my fledgling hope.
The most fucked-up part? I’m devastated.
I do it again and again. Three more tests until I empty the package.
One line.
One line.
One line.
I sink to the cold tile floor, tests clutched in my white-knuckled grip like the most fucked-up bouquet there ever was. Twenty-four hours ago, I was terrified at the prospect of another pregnancy. Now, I’m mourning its absence like a death.
A laugh bubbles up from my chest—bitter, jagged, bordering on hysterical.
What kind of monster am I? What kind of woman mourns a pregnancy that never was, when she already has a beautiful child sleeping safely in the next room? When that same woman was paralyzed with fear at the possibility just yesterday?
The kind of woman who loves a monster, perhaps.
The kind who’s becoming one herself.
41
ROWAN
Anastasia is in the kitchen when I stumble out. I wanted to snuggle Sofi for a while, but she was sleeping soundly, so I thought it was best to leave her alone.
When I step through the door, Anastasia takes one look at my face and knows.
“It was negative,” she says. Not a question.
“False alarm.” I push past her and drop into a seat at the counter, unable to meet her eyes. “Guess I’m not pregnant after all.”
She follows me, her silence more damning than any words could be. “Are you relieved?” Anastasia finally asks.
Am I relieved? Shouldn’t I be?
“I don’t know what I am.” I sound weak and miserable even to my own ears. “Yesterday, I was terrified. Today, I’m…” I trail off, unable to name the emptiness gnawing at my insides.
“Disappointed,” she supplies gently.
“Isn’t that messed up?” I turn to face her, anger suddenly surging through me. “I should be grateful. One less complication in our catastrophe of a life.
One less reason for Vince to murder half of New York in the name of protection.”
Anastasia leans against the edge of the counter. “It’s not messed up. It’s human.”
“Nothing about my life is human anymore.”
“You wanted this baby,” she says simply. “Despite everything, you wanted it.”
She’s not wrong. I did want it. Part of me had already begun imagining a future with two children instead of one. Had already fallen in love with a possibility.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, forcing certainty I don’t feel into my voice. “It was never real.”
“The pregnancy wasn’t. The desire was.” Anastasia stands, crosses to me. “And you should still tell Vincent.”
I jerk away from her. “Tell him what?”
“All of it. The fear, the hope, the disappointment. He deserves to know.”
“He’d think I’ve lost my mind.”
“He’d understand better than you think.” She moves toward the door, then pauses. “We’re more than the circumstances we’re trapped in, Rowan. More than the violence that surrounds us. Remember that.”
After she leaves, I sit at the counter, staring at nothing. One of the failed pregnancy tests is still clutched in my hand, the single line mocking me.
It would be for the best if I throw it away.
But throwing it away feels like throwing away the child that never was.
So instead, I creep back to my bed and place it carefully in my nightstand drawer.
I’ve spent the three days since Vince left staring at that fucking drawer. It’s become a black hole in our bedroom, warping time and space around it. The negative test sits inside like a dead star, radiating its own peculiar gravity.
I’ve opened it seventeen times. Yes, I counted. Each time, I expected the result to magically change, like if I wish hard enough, want desperately enough, that second pink line will materialize out of thin air.
It doesn’t.
Whatever small, fragile thing might have started growing inside me wasn’t meant to be. Or never existed at all.
A phantom pregnancy. A phantom grief.
Sofiya has started to notice something’s wrong. This morning, her pudgy hands patted my wet cheeks while I changed her diaper, her blue eyes studying me with unsettling clarity for someone who still shits herself daily.
She babbled something, just nonsense, but I could almost swear that what she said was “Mama sad.” I know she didn’t—she’s not old enough to form syllables, much less grasp any of the involved concepts—but that didn’t stop something in me from shattering all over again.
Even my infant daughter can tell I’m falling apart over the loss of something that never was.
The compound feels like it’s shrinking around me. The walls closing in, the air thinning. Anastasia’s advice haunts me: Tell him. All of it. He deserves to know.
But how do I explain this? I’m mourning a baby that never existed. It’s silly that I found myself desperately, pathetically wanting to be pregnant again in the middle of this fucking bloodbath we call a life. It’s selfish. It’s wrong.