Chương 2
His hand around mine.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he had whispered.
Back then, I believed that was love.
Maybe it was.
Maybe people could love you and still become someone who hurt you.
That was the part nobody warned me about.
“Ten minutes,” Rowan said.
I looked at him.
“For what?”
“To leave.”
I almost asked him if he was serious.
Then I saw his face.
He was.
“You’re putting me out of my home while I’m eight months pregnant.”
“There are hotels.”
“I have a doctor who wants me resting.”
“You can arrange whatever you need.”
The words sounded professional.
Cold.
Like he was speaking to an employee who had become inconvenient.
I walked toward the suitcase.
My back hurt.
My feet were swollen.
The baby pressed against my ribs.
Every part of my body reminded me that I was not alone.
I grabbed the handle.
Rowan reached forward.
Not to help.
To stop me from pulling too hard.
I stepped away.
“Don’t.”
His hand dropped.
A strange sadness crossed his face.
Not guilt.
Something else.
Maybe discomfort.
Maybe he did not like seeing the consequences of his own decision.
“Are you really this certain?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“If the test proves you’re wrong?”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
But it was there.
A crack.
“If.”
I nodded.
“If.”
Then I pulled the suitcase toward the elevator.
Neither of them followed.
The elevator doors opened.
I stepped inside and turned around.
Rowan stood beside Elise.
The woman who had once asked me for advice about choosing a birthday gift for him.
The woman who knew exactly how he liked his coffee.
The woman who now stood where I used to stand.
“Remember this night,” I said.
Rowan stared at me.
The doors closed.
Three floors later, the pain started.
At first, I thought it was stress.
Then the second wave came.
Stronger.
I gripped the elevator wall and breathed through it.
The lobby security guard looked up from his desk.
“Ma’am?”
I tried to answer.
Nothing came out.
My phone was in my purse.
My husband’s name was still the first contact on my emergency list.
For a few seconds, I stared at it.
Then I locked the screen.
Not because I didn’t need him.
Because I finally understood something.
The man who had built a case against me was not the man I needed beside me anymore.
I walked outside into the cold night air, carrying my suitcase in one hand and protecting my child with the other.
Behind me, the apartment lights remained on.
The place where Rowan thought he had won.
He had no idea what he had just started.
I walked three blocks before I realized I had left my purse in the apartment.
That was the kind of mistake exhaustion created.
The kind nobody warned pregnant women about when they talked about preparing for a baby.
They talked about swollen ankles and sleepless nights.
They did not talk about standing outside your home at eleven thirty at night, trying to decide whether going back inside for your belongings meant admitting you still needed the person who had just thrown you away.
I sat down on the wooden bench outside the building entrance.
The security guard, Marcus, pretended not to watch me.
He was good at that.
Older men who had spent years working in apartment buildings learned how to notice everything without making people feel observed.
“You want me to call someone?” he asked after a few minutes.
I shook my head.
“I’m okay.”
He looked at my suitcase.
Then at my face.
Then at the apartment tower behind me.
People always said they were okay when they were not.
Marcus knew that.
“Okay people usually don’t sit outside with luggage.”
Despite everything, a small laugh escaped me.
It surprised both of us.
“I forgot my purse.”
“You want me to call upstairs?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Marcus nodded.
“Alright.”
He went back to his desk.
He did not push.
That kindness almost made me cry more than Rowan’s cruelty.
Because strangers still treated me like I was human.
My phone was in the pocket of my coat.
I called my sister.
Maya answered on the second ring.
“Nora?”
I heard the television in the background.
Then her husband asking something.
Then silence.
The kind of silence siblings understand.
“What happened?”
I closed my eyes.
I had spent the entire night trying not to break.
But hearing her voice made the wall collapse.
“I need somewhere to sleep.”
She did not ask why.
She did not ask what I had done.
She did not ask whether Rowan had a good reason.
She just said, “I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“Maya—”
“I said I’m coming.”
Twenty minutes later, her old blue SUV pulled into the driveway.
She parked badly.
She always parked badly when she was angry.
The passenger door opened before the engine turned off.
Maya walked toward me wearing sweatpants, a winter jacket over a T-shirt, and one slipper.
The other foot had a sneaker.
I stared at her shoes.
“What?”
“You drove here wearing one slipper.”
She looked down.
Then shrugged.
“I was upset.”
That was such a Maya answer that I almost smiled.
Then she hugged me.
Carefully.
Avoiding my stomach.
And I finally let myself cry.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
The next morning, I woke up on my sister’s couch with a blanket covering me and a pain in my neck from sleeping at an angle.
For a few seconds, I forgot.
Then I saw the suitcase near the door.
Everything returned.
Maya was already awake.
She sat at the kitchen table with coffee and a laptop open.
“You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you.”
I looked away.
That answer hurt.
Not because it was wrong.
May you like
Because Rowan used to know me like that too.
Maya slid a plate toward me.
