5: Don't you dare

Mica pov

"I should go home," I said, even as I didn't move.

"You should." He didn't move either. "You won't, though."

He was right. I hated that he was right.

I don't remember deciding to leave the bar with him. I remember the rain on the walk to wherever we ended up. I remember he never asked why I looked like my whole world had ended, and I never told him. I remember thinking, somewhere underneath the numbness, that I didn't want comfort. I didn't want someone to hold my hand and tell me it would be okay.

I wanted to feel something that wasn't grief. Just for a few hours.

He gave me that.

Neither of us said much. Neither of us asked for names. In the dark, he was just a stranger with steady hands and eyes that didn't look at me like I was something breakable — and for one night, that was exactly what I needed.

I woke up to gray morning light and an empty side of the bed.

For a moment, I didn't remember where I was. Then it came back in pieces — the bar, the rain, his voice low against my ear saying he was good at getting people through the next hour.

He'd been telling the truth. He'd gotten me through it.

Now it was morning, and the hour was over, and I felt sick.

I sat up too fast. My clothes were folded on a chair I didn't remember folding them onto. A note sat on the nightstand, written in quick, slanted handwriting.

*Didn't want to wake you. Take care of yourself.*

No name. No number.

I almost laughed. Almost cried. I wasn't sure which one I actually felt.

I got dressed in silence, my hands shaking as I fumbled with buttons that suddenly felt too complicated. In the mirror of the unfamiliar bathroom, I barely recognized the woman staring back at me — hollow-eyed, hair a mess, wearing yesterday's mascara in streaks down her face.

*What did you do, Mica.*

Ophelia wasn't even in the ground a full week and I'd let a stranger — a stranger whose name I didn't even know — pull me into a bed because I couldn't stand being alone with my own grief for one more hour.

*She would be so disappointed in you.*

No. That wasn't fair. Ophelia never judged me for anything. But I judged myself enough for the both of us.

I let myself out before the sun was fully up, walking three blocks in yesterday's dress before I found a cab. The city hadn't changed. Everything looked exactly the same as it had two days ago, before the funeral, before the bar, before I'd made a mistake I couldn't take back.

Except I had changed. I just didn't know yet how much.

By the time I got home, showered, and sat curled on my couch with a mug of coffee I wasn't drinking, I'd almost convinced myself I could bury the whole night and never think about it again.

That's when my phone rang.

*Nyric.*

My stomach dropped before I even answered. Some part of me — some instinctive, guilty part — was certain he somehow knew. That he could hear it in my voice. That grief had a scent and I still hadn't washed it off.

"Nyric?"

"I need to tell you something." His voice was flat. Controlled in the way it only got right before he made a decision nobody could talk him out of.

"What's wrong?"

A pause. Long enough that dread pooled low in my stomach.

"I called the clinic this morning."

My grip on the phone tightened. "Okay."

"I told them not to renew the storage."

For a second, I didn't understand. Then I did, all at once, like the floor dropping out from under me.

"Nyric, what are you talking about?"

"The embryos, Mica." His voice cracked, just slightly, on her name — on what those embryos meant. "I can't do it. I can't look at a child that should have been ours and see her instead of *me*. I can't raise a family built on a promise I never should have made in a hospital room while she was dying."

"You can't be serious."

"I've never been more serious about anything."

"Nyric, that was her *last wish*. You can't just—"

"I can." His voice hardened, the grief underneath it turning into something colder, more final. "I already did."

The room tilted around me.

"You called the clinic," I said slowly, "to destroy them."

Silence.

"Nyric. Answer me."

"I have an appointment," he said quietly, "tomorrow morning. To sign the release."

I was already on my feet, already reaching for my purse, my heart hammering somewhere in my throat.

"Don't you dare," I said. "Don't you dare do this without me."