CHAPTER 1 ABORTION

1

(Lara POV)

The bathroom floor is freezing. I can feel the cold seeping through my thin hospital gown, mixing with the blood that won't stop coming. Everything hurts—my body, my heart, the empty space where hope used to live.

I lost the baby an hour ago.

The nurses knocked twice already. I told them I needed a minute. That was a lie. I need forever to process this, and forever still won't be enough.

My hands shake as I press them against my stomach, feeling the cramping pain that reminds me of what's gone. A baby. My baby. Our baby. Except it was never "our" anything, was it?

Maxton's voice cuts through the door like a knife.

"Thank god it's over."

I freeze. My breath catches in my throat.

"That baby was ruining everything," he continues, his voice casual, almost cheerful. "Now I can focus on getting what Kyle stole from me."

I press my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound. He's on his phone. He doesn't know I can hear him.

"She'll stay," Maxton says to whoever is on the other end. "She has nowhere else to go. Broken girls always stay."

Something inside me shatters—something different from the grief already consuming me. This is colder, sharper. This is truth replacing illusion.

I was pregnant and hopeful three days ago. Now I'm empty in every way that matters.

"I know, I know," Maxton laughs. It's a sound I used to love. Now it makes my skin crawl. "She's completely dependent on me. Where would she even go?"

I want to scream. I want to throw something. Instead, I press my face against the cold tile wall and let silent tears fall. The physical agony of losing my child battles with the emotional devastation of realizing Maxton never wanted it. Never wanted us.

He celebrated my miscarriage.

The bathroom door isn't just wood and hinges anymore. It's a barrier between two different lives—the one where I believed in him, and the one where I know the truth.

Three days pass like a nightmare I can't wake up from.

The apartment feels different now. Smaller. Darker. I move through it like a ghost, barely eating, barely sleeping. The bleeding comes and goes, a physical reminder of everything I've lost.

Maxton plays his part perfectly when people are watching. He brings me water with a concerned expression. He touches my shoulder gently when the neighbor from 3B asks how I'm doing.

"She's been through a lot," he tells Mrs. Howard, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "But we'll get through this together."

Mrs. Howard pats my hand. "You're lucky to have such a caring man."

I want to laugh. Or scream. I do neither.

The moment she leaves, Maxton's mask drops.

"Can you stop crying?" He stands by the window, scrolling through his phone. "It's been three days."

"I lost our baby." My voice sounds hollow, even to me.

"It wasn't even a baby yet." He doesn't look up from his screen. "Just cells. You're being dramatic."

The words should hurt more than they do, but I'm already numb. Already drowning in grief so deep I can barely breathe.

"You couldn't even keep a baby alive," Maxton says later that evening, watching me from the couch. His eyes are cold, assessing. "How good are you, really?"

I don't answer. What could I possibly say?

My body is recovering—slowly, painfully—but my mind is somewhere else entirely. Trapped in a loop of what-ifs and if-onlys. If only I'd been stronger. If only I'd done something different. If only I'd known Maxton never wanted this.

I move to the kitchen, needing to do something with my hands. Mail sits on the counter—bills, advertisements, the usual clutter of daily life that feels absurd when everything else has fallen apart.

An envelope catches my eye. Official-looking. I pull out the document inside without thinking.

Apartment Lease Agreement.

My eyes scan the page. Tenant name: Maxton Morrison. Space for co-tenant: Empty. Start date: Six months ago.

Six months ago. One month after I moved in.

My hands start shaking again, but this time it's not grief. It's something else. Something that feels like understanding mixed with betrayal.

I live here, but legally I have nothing. No claim. No home. No proof I exist in this space at all.

"What are you looking at?"

Maxton's voice makes me jump. I didn't hear him come into the kitchen.

"Nothing." I try to slide the paper back into the envelope, but he's already seen it.

He shrugs. "It's my apartment. You knew that."

"You never put my name on it." My voice sounds distant, detached. "You never planned to."

"Why would I?" He leans against the counter, casual, confident. "You don't pay rent."

"Because I take care of everything else. Because I thought we were building a life together."

Maxton laughs—that same laugh I heard through the bathroom door. "You thought wrong."

The words hang in the air between us. Cold. Final.

I want to leave. Every instinct screams at me to walk out that door and never look back. But my grief has paralyzed me, trapped me in this moment where I can't seem to move forward or backward.

He planned this trap from the beginning. While I was falling in love, he was making sure I had no way out.

"Go lie down," Maxton says, already turning away from me. "You look terrible."

I stand in the kitchen long after he's gone, holding the lease in my shaking hands. The apartment is quiet except for the sound of my breathing and the distant hum of traffic outside.

The bathroom door was a barrier between two lives. This piece of paper is proof that only one of those lives was ever real.