Chapter 19 I knew it was her before my eyes could focus properly in the blinding sun. The shape of her, the waves of deep brown hair falling around her cheeks, the grey sweatpants and white tank top like she didn't give a damn who was looking at her in the middle of the afternoon - but that wasn't in the way that had drawn me to her in the first place. When she'd worn that stupid yellow sundress, it had been an act of defiance. But the way she sat there, her lips parted, her shoulders rising and falling too quickly, the messy hair and the equivalent of pajamas on her body, she looked like she'd surrendered. She was still her, still a fucking magnet, still glowing, but it was like she was some kind of malfunctioning neon sign. It wasn't right. I didn't even hear what my accountant was saying. My brain stuttered, like someone had hit me square in the face, Zach's insistent pulling at my shirt and pointing and whining of "Sienna!" falling on deaf ears. Because our eyes had locked, and I couldn't see or hear or feel anything but the choices I'd made that night. The one I hadn't been able to stop replaying in my head since she'd walked out of my house. She looked pale, with dark circles under her eyes that I could see all the way across the street, her nails biting into the wood of the table she sat at. Alone. Still beautiful. Still enough in her eyes to make every part of me want to cross the street and wrench her into my arms. But by the time my brain seemed to want to work again, by the time I'd found even an ounce of control over my limbs to want to do exactly that, she broke her gaze away, looking down at her phone as if it were far more interesting. At the dinner table that night, Zach wouldn't shut up about her. Not that he'd really stopped in the last two months - but today, after seeing her, it was a whole new level. One that I wasn't coping with well. "Yeah, tiger, that was her," I said, answering the same question for the fifth time now in the last six hours. Zach hummed his response at me around a mouth full of dinosaur-shaped noodles drenched in artificial cheese sauce. One of these days, I was going to have to insist that he didn't need to have at least one meal of dinosaur-shaped foods a day. He swung his feet under the table, chewing gleefully as if the question wasn't eating away at me every time he asked it. "I thought that maybe it was her but then you didn't wanna look so I thought maybe it wasn't her but then I saw her hair and I knew it had to be her." I poked a piece of broccoli with my fork. "She didn't wave," he said, his voice a little quieter. "She just kind of stared." My throat worked around nothing, the piece of broccoli still sitting on my fork, my chin resting on my fist. "I know." "I never got to swim with her," he added. I'd never wanted to jump off a fucking cliff more in my life. "Can you ask her to come over?" My grip tightened so hard on my fork that it scraped loudly on the plate. I fought to regain control of myself, taking a deep breath in and out, so I could answer my kid, my perfect kid, with as much patience as I could physically muster. "She's really busy, Zach." He looked at me for a second, gears turning behind his eyes, and I would've given anything to know what was going through his head. But he didn't question it, just kept eating and swinging his feet like the world was made of safe truths and simple answers, and it only made it worse. A minute passed in silence, and I finally swallowed down that goddamn piece of broccoli, before he spoke again. "Is Sienna somebody's mom?" My hand froze halfway to my mouth, loaded with another stem of broccoli. "What?" Zach met my gaze again, all wide-eyed and curious. "A mom. Is she one? Like to another kid?" I blinked at him. "No," I said, careful not to let the word sound too tight. "She's not." He nodded to himself, his brows furrowing a little. "Okay." He paused. I took the bite, watching him like a hawk. "I wish she could be mine." The air in my lungs punched out of me all at once, something wild and broken cracking in my chest. He wasn't just hitting on the anger I had for myself over the Sienna situation - this was years of knowing that at some point, he was going to put pieces together. Years of knowing he'd ask properly at some point. Years of knowing I couldn't give him what he would inevitably want, and now he wanted it, and he wanted it to be her. He shoveled another spoonful of macaroni into his mouth, his gaze locked on it as he moved the little dinosaurs around in his bowl, utterly unaware of the landmine he'd just stepped on. I pushed up from my seat as calmly as I could muster, doing everything in my goddamn power not to make it look like I was angry or upset or effected in the slightest, and took the few steps from the kitchen table to the fridge. I pulled open the door, staring into it, not looking for anything in particular but just needing to feel the rush of cool air on my face, needing the door in the way to cover Zach's view of my face while I tried to calm myself down from that one fucking sentence. I'd spent the better part of my adult life avoiding family. I knew what one looked like when it rotted from the inside, knew what it meant when love came with price tags or bloodlines or being born in the wrong order or expectations that choked you until you either became exactly what they wanted or dissolved trying. And now my kid was casually mentioning his want for one. For something more. For someone else as well as me and Margot. I didn't know what to say to that. It took me too long to school my face back into softness, but I sat with him again regardless, my fingers digging into my thigh beneath the table. "Zach," I said carefully, saying my words twice in my head before I let them out. "Sienna's really great. But being someone's mom isn't just about being fun or nice or teaching you how to float on your back. It's a lot bigger than that." He blinked at me, the words not really registering. "Okay. Do I have a mom?" I took another breath. This wasn't the first time he'd ever asked, but it was the first time he was old enough to understand an answer. "You did," I swallowed. "But she's not around. And that's not because of you, okay?" He nodded slowly, almost like he got it, but I could tell he didn't the second his mouth opened again. "She didn't like me?" "No, that's not it." The words came fast, quick to squash that idea. "She just didn't know how to be a mom. That's not your fault, bud. It had nothing to do with you as a person." He thought about it for a second, his macaroni making an awful squelching noise as his spoon mushed around in it. "I don't get it." I swallowed. "Your mom didn't know how to be a mom," I explained. "Some people, moms, and dads, aren't ready to be parents. Some aren't... I don't know, built for it." Mine weren't. Zach blinked at me, his head tilting to the side, a stray curl falling in front of his eyes. "Are you built for it?" I almost laughed. Almost. "I'm trying, tiger," I said, the words cracking just a hair, my throat too tight. "Every day." Somehow, by the grace of whatever God existed, he seemed to accept that and went back to his food. I tried to shake the weight bearing down on my chest, but his line of questioning kept replaying in my head alongside the image of her sitting alone at that fucking table, looking far worse than I'd ever seen her. I couldn't stop hearing the quiet, innocent ache in Zach's voice when he spoke about her, when he said he wanted her. I couldn't stop wondering what it meant that I did, too. Even after every fuck up I'd made. Even now. ---- I glanced at the clock on my bedside table, watching the eleven turn into a twelve. Zach had been asleep for hours, the house dead quiet - the kind of silence that normally brought me peace and the knowledge that I'd at least get six good hours of sleep in before I inevitably woke up to a five-year-old in my face or the sun in my eyes. But tonight, it felt suffocating. I'd read the same page of a quarterly report six times. I'd poured myself a drink I didn't touch. I'd stared out the window at the clouds rolling in and blocking the moon and the stars, thunder low in the distance, a storm rumbling north from Florida. But none of it brought me closer to sleep. None of it brought me closer to peace. Because all I could think about was her. Her face at the cafe. The exhaustion written all over her. The way she'd looked a second from breaking, shaken by something, enough to have caused her to look like that. Not just me. Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong. I'd seen her angry, seen her done up to the nines, seen her makeup-less and casual, seen her freshly fucked and dazed. I'd seen her shaken by Ryan. Whatever this was, was worse. And maybe it was me. Maybe what I'd done to her had fucking destroyed her over the last two months. But it didn't feel right, it didn't feel like that was it. And I couldn't help myself as I reached for my phone, desperate, unable to find the dignity in myself to care if she hated me for reaching out again. I still cared about her. I still wanted her. Fuck, I wanted her more than I could comprehend. If anything, even if I couldn't fix whatever was wrong, I just wanted to apologize. Just wanted to make this right. Me: I need to talk to you. I stared at the screen. Watched the message change to delivered. Minutes ticked by. Nothing. I sent another. Me: I made a mistake. Please. Still nothing. I swore under my breath and hit the call button before I could second-guess it, lifting my phone to my ear, my heart thundering in my chest and matching with the same outside my window. It rang once. Twice. Three times. The ringing stopped. There was nothing - no voicemail box, no "hello?," no swearing at me for calling at this hour or calling at all. But then I heard it. The smallest breath. It hitched. Trembled. It wasn't steady, wasn't anywhere close, and then it broke, a sob tearing through the phone, small, sharp, and raw, and my heart dropped into my stomach. "Sienna?" I rasped, sitting forward in bed, my pulse spiking. She didn't answer. Another sob came down the phone. My breathing went shaky. I gripped the sheets and pulled them off me, swinging my legs out of the bed. "Sweetheart, talk to me. What's going on? Are you okay?" She sniffed, trying to catch her breath. "I-Matt, I⁠-" I pushed up from the bed, already moving, already grabbing, and pulling on the easiest clothes I could find - a t-shirt and a pair of joggers. "Are you safe? Are you at home?" "Yes," she croaked. "I just-I don't know what to do⁠-" "I'm coming." I didn't care how it sounded, how it looked, how it came across. Just wrenched open the door and padded as quietly down the hall as I could before hitting the stairs. "Text me your address." "But-" "Text it. Now." "O-okay." I snagged my keys from the kitchen island and passed through the back hall to Margot's room, tucking my phone between my ear and shoulder, and knocked hard enough on her door to wake the dead. She cracked it open, her eyes half open, her greyed hair braided back, her nightgown on. "What in God's good name⁠-" "I need to go," I said quickly, seriously, breathlessly. "Zach's asleep. I just need you on in case he wakes up." She looked at me, her eyes widening the moment she took in my face. "Okay-yeah, go, I've got him," she said quickly, already moving, already stepping out into the hall. My phone buzzed against my ear, Sienna's broken breaths still echoing down the line. "That your address?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady as I moved back through the house, stopping for a split second to pull on the easiest shoes I could find. "Yeah," she said, her voice cracking clean down the middle. "I'll be there soon." The rain had started by the time I was halfway there, fat drops hammering the windshield between my wiper blades, the streets slick and reflective and blurry beneath my high beams. I ran a red light. I didn't care. The image of her crying, alone, into the phone wouldn't leave me alone. I pulled up in front of a small, dimly lit townhouse, the porch light on and the garage door closed, every window dark. She sat on the front steps, just barely out of the reach of the rain, in just a hoodie that was too big for her and no shoes, her arms wrapped around her knees like she was trying to hold herself together by force. She pushed up the moment I threw the car in park and opened my door. I got out fast, not caring if I got wet, not caring about anything but her, and slammed the door behind me. "Sienna⁠-" "I didn't know how to tell you," she croaked, taking one step down, and then another, stepping into the rain like it wasn't even happening. Her hands shook, her hair slicked down and clung to her cheeks the more the rain hit it, and her eyes-fuck, puffy, red-rimmed, and glassy-looked like they hadn't closed properly in weeks. She gripped the cuffs of her sleeves. I wanted to grab her. I wanted to pull her into me, wanted to shield her from the rain and from whatever had caused this, but I didn't know how to do that when she very likely hated me, when I didn't deserve that privilege. So instead, I stood a few feet back, feeling my clothing gluing itself to me, feeling the chill of the rain as the wind picked up. "Tell me what?" I asked gently, trying to show her with just my face, just my being here, that she could say whatever it was. She stared at me, her jaw working like she was trying to find the words, rain, or tears or both sliding down her cheeks. Then she said it. Soft. Scared. Unmistakable. "I'm pregnant." Everything seemed to stop. The rain, the cold, the ache in my chest - for a split, splintering second as the sky filled with a flash of light and her face illuminated, broken and raw, I didn't feel any of the bad things that had weighed me down for months. Years, maybe. Just her words. I'm pregnant. The ground folded under me. My heart stopped beating. I'm pregnant. I opened my mouth, finding words, trying to make something happen, but it just kept pinging around in my mind and making me lose sense. I'm pregnant. She stood there, blinking fast, her lower lip trembling violently, her arms wrapping back around herself like she could shield herself from a potential fallout. I'm pregnant. "It's yours," she added, her voice cracking. "If that wasn't obvious." The fucking world shattered beneath me.