PREGNANT WITH THE CEO'S TWINS

The pain arrives before the sun is even up, curling low in my stomach like a fist closing slowly around something that refuses to let go.

I sit up too fast. The room tilts. I press one hand flat against my stomach and the other into the mattress, waiting for it to pass.

It doesn't pass.

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It gets worse.

I count my breaths the way my mother taught me. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. She always said pain ends if you count long enough. She never told me what to do when it doesn't.

By the time I make it to the kitchen, my legs are shaking. I grip the edge of the table and hold on like it's the only solid thing left in the room.

Another wave rolls through me.

I bite down on my lip until I taste blood.

"Not now," I whisper. "Please. Not now."

I don't know who I'm talking to. There's no one in this apartment but me. There hasn't been anyone else in a long time.

I lower myself into a chair, one hand still pressed against my stomach, and wait for the room to stop spinning. My reflection stares back at me from the dark kitchen window. Hollow eyes. Cheeks that used to be fuller. Hair pulled back because I don't have the energy for anything else.

I don't recognize the woman looking back at me.

I used to have color in my face. I used to laugh without thinking about it first. That woman feels far away now, like someone I read about once in a story that ended badly.

The pain finally eases into something I can breathe through. I let my head drop forward until my forehead touches the cool wood of the table.

"I can't do this anymore," I whisper.

The words scare me more than the pain did. I've thought them before, quietly, in the dark, where no one could hear me and hold me to them. Saying them out loud, even to an empty kitchen, makes them feel real.

I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand before I even realize I'm crying.

No one can see this. No one can know how close I am to breaking.

I've spent months telling everyone I'm fine. I've gotten good at it, the smile that doesn't reach my eyes, the "I'm just tired" that covers everything I don't say. If I let one person see the truth, I'm afraid I won't be able to hold the rest of it together.

So I don't let them see.

I sit alone at my kitchen table while the sky turns from black to grey, and I give myself exactly two minutes to fall apart before I force myself back together, piece by piece, the way I always do.

By the time the sun is properly up, I've washed my face, tied my hair back, and put on the same steady expression I wear every day like armor.

In the mirror by the door, I practice it one more time. Chin level. Shoulders back. A small, easy smile that costs nothing and gives nothing away.

"Fine," I say to my reflection. "You're fine."

My reflection doesn't look convinced, but she doesn't argue either. She never does. She just watches me pick up my bag and walk out the door like the last hour never happened.

The stairwell smells like burnt toast from someone else's kitchen. I hold the railing the whole way down, my legs still not quite trusting themselves, and I count the steps out of habit more than need.

Twenty-two.

There used to be a version of me who ran down these stairs two at a time without thinking about it. I try to remember what that felt like. I can't.

Work doesn't care that my body feels like it's collapsing from the inside.

I make it through the door with two minutes to spare, my bag slipping off my shoulder as I catch the edge of my desk to steady myself.

"You look pale."

I look up. My coworker is watching me over the rim of her coffee cup, the kind of look people give when they already suspect something is wrong and are deciding whether to say so.

"Didn't sleep well," I say. The lie comes so easily it almost frightens me.

"You've said that every day this week."

"Bad week."

She doesn't push, but she doesn't look convinced either. I turn back to my screen before she can ask anything else. If she asks one more question, I'm afraid of what might come out of my mouth instead of another careful lie.

The morning crawls by in fragments. A phone call I answer on the second ring so no one notices my voice shaking. An email I read three times without understanding a word of it. A trip to the bathroom where I stand with both hands braced against the sink, breathing through another low pull of pain until it passes.

I catch my reflection again. Same hollow eyes. Same forced calm.

"Get it together," I tell her.

She doesn't answer. She never does.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door before I've finished steadying myself.

"Occupied," I call out, and my voice comes out almost normal. Almost.

"Sorry, didn't know anyone was in there." A pause, then, quieter, through the door, "You okay in there? You've been in a while."

"I'm fine," I say. "Just splashing water on my face."

Footsteps move away. I wait until I can't hear them anymore before I let my shoulders drop.

By early afternoon, the pain has quieted to something dull and manageable, a low ache instead of a fist. I almost convince myself it was nothing. Bad food. Stress. The kind of thing that happens to a body that hasn't been taken care of in a long time.

Almost.

Because underneath the pain, there's something else. Something I've been refusing to look at directly for two weeks now, the way you refuse to look at a bruise you already know is there.

I pull out my phone during my last break of the day and open the calendar app. My thumb hovers over the screen for a long moment before I let myself scroll back.

I count the days.

Then I count them again, certain I made a mistake the first time.

I didn't.

My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with pain.

I'm late.

Not a few days late. Not the kind of late that happens when life gets busy and stressful and a body simply forgets to keep its schedule. I am late in the way that makes my hands go cold and my mouth go dry.

I set the phone face down on the desk like it might do something if I keep looking at it.

"It's nothing," I whisper to myself. "It's stress. It's the pain. It's not sleeping."

I say it three times, and I still don't believe myself.

The rest of the day moves around me like I'm watching it from somewhere outside my own body. I answer questions. I nod when I'm supposed to nod. I hold my face very still so nothing shows through the cracks.

But that night, walking home with my arms wrapped around myself against the cold, I stop outside a small pharmacy on the corner I pass every single day without noticing it.

Tonight I notice it.

The lights inside are warm and yellow. Through the window I can see the aisles, ordinary and unremarkable, the kind of place where people buy toothpaste and cold medicine and go home without their whole life shifting under their feet.

I stand there longer than I mean to.

My reflection hovers in the glass, layered over the shelves inside, and for a moment I can't tell which version of me is real — the one standing frozen on the sidewalk, or the one about to walk through that door and find out something she can't take back.

My hand finds the door before I've fully decided to move it.

The bell above it rings, small and bright, and I step inside before I can talk myself out of it.

I don't let myself think about what I'm looking for as I walk down the third aisle. I don't let myself think about anything at all. I just reach out, take the small box off the shelf, and hold it against my chest like it weighs more than it should.

The cashier is young, barely looking up from her phone as she scans the box and slides it into a small paper bag. She doesn't know that this box, this ordinary little box she's handled a hundred times today, might be the thing that splits my life into a before and an after.

"Six fifty," she says.

I hand her the exact amount in cash. I don't wait for the receipt.

Outside, the cold air hits my face and I realize my hands are shaking again, the same way they were this morning at the kitchen table. I tuck the bag into the inside pocket of my coat, pressed against my chest, as if I can keep it a secret from the whole street just by holding it close enough.

Only this time, it isn't the pain making me shake.

It's fear of what I already know, and haven't let myself say out loud.

I

I take a breath, steady my hand, and let myself inside.