AFTERMATH

Lily’s POV

I woke up to a steady beeping sound I couldn’t place at first. My eyes felt too heavy to open all the way, but I forced them apart slowly and looked around. Strange faces moved back and forth around the room. The air smelled like antiseptic, and that alone told me exactly where I was before anyone said a word.

My fingers felt stiff, like they had been asleep longer than the rest of me. I moved them slowly, then pushed myself up with both hands.

“How did I get here?” I asked the woman standing near the table, busy arranging small bottles.

She turned, a little surprised. “You’re awake,” she said, her voice gentle. “You gave everyone quite a scare.”

I waited for more, raising a brow.

“Your boyfriend rushed you in,” she said.

My face twisted a little. “My boyfriend?”

“Yes. Damian Cole,” she said, smiling like that should mean something warm to me.

Right. Damian. The word felt strange in my mouth for a second before the memory caught up with me. My sister’s fiancé, back from the dead, now somehow mine.

“Right. My boyfriend,” I said, trying to hide how off that still felt to say out loud. “Where is he now?”

“He left a little while ago. Said he had something to take care of.”

I nodded and pushed the blanket off my legs, my mind racing back to the moment before everything went dark. The watch. His hands on it, calm as anything, telling me I was thinking things a little too much. That watch belonged to my father. I would know it anywhere: the initials carved into the band, the weight of it. My father had planned to give it to Damian the night of my birthday, if Damian had shown up on time. He never got the chance. Whoever killed my family must have taken it that night. So how was it sitting on Damian’s nightstand five years later?

I reached for my shoes, moving faster than my body wanted to go.

“You need to slow down,” the nurse said, catching my arm as I stumbled trying to stand.

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling free. “I just need to get home.”

“Ma’am, you can’t leave without your test results and your medication.”

“What medication?” I frowned. “I passed out. I just need rest, maybe something for the headache. That’s all.”

“These are for your health,” she said, still calm, still smiling in a way that was starting to annoy me. “And for your baby. You’re two weeks pregnant.”

I stared at her, sure I had heard her wrong.

“Say that again.”

“Two weeks pregnant,” she repeated, holding out a folded piece of paper.

I took it from her hand and read the words myself, like seeing them written down would somehow make them make more sense. They didn’t. My mind went straight to the math, and none of it added up cleanly. Adrian, weeks ago. Damian, twice a few nights ago. Two weeks landed somewhere in between both of them, close enough that either one could be the answer.

“You have this wrong,” I said, my voice shaking more than I wanted it to. “I’m not pregnant.”

“You are,” she said simply. “Congratulations.”

Something in me snapped at the word. “Shut up,” I said, louder than I meant to. “Shut up before I make sure you regret saying that.”

She flinched, her hand sliding toward the phone on the table. I could guess exactly who she planned to call.

“Does Damian know?” I asked.

She shook her head fast. “No.”

“Keep it that way,” I said, low and even. “For now.”

She nodded quickly, hand still resting near the phone like she wasn’t sure she believed me.

I grabbed the folder with the medicine and walked out before she could say anything else, moving faster the further I got from that room. I didn’t stop until the hospital building was small behind me. Once I felt safe enough, I called Charles.

“Hello, ma’am,” he answered.

“Come get me,” I said. “I’m on Olive Street, near Chevron Hospital.”

I hung up before he could ask anything.

He arrived within the half hour, opening the door for me without a word, though his eyes kept flicking toward me in the mirror the whole drive, waiting for me to say something first.

“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask.

He didn’t look convinced, but he let it go.

How could I be fine? I had made the biggest mistake of my life and didn’t even know whose child I was carrying. I ran the timeline over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it, but nothing settled cleanly. If it was Adrian’s, what did that make me? A woman falling for the man who destroyed her family, now carrying his child on top of everything else. And if it was Damian’s, what then? I had barely let myself love him the way he wanted, and now I would be tied to him forever, whether I meant to fall for him or not.

I thought about my parents, about Clara, about everything I had promised myself I would do for them. None of this was part of the plan. None of it. I had let my feelings and recklessness tangle into something I couldn’t control, and now there was a whole other life caught in the middle of it.

A dark thought slid into my head before I could stop it. End this now. Stop everything before it goes any further.

Without thinking it through, without giving myself the chance to talk myself out of it, I reached for the door handle and pushed it open while Charles was still driving.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​