CHAPTER 1: Two Pink Lines

"Four tests, Iris. You've taken four tests."

I say it to my reflection like she has answers I don't.

She doesn't. She just stares back at me, pale and hollow-eyed, holding a piece of plastic that has already decided my future. Two pink lines. The same two pink lines that appeared yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

I set the test on the edge of the sink and grip the counter.

A baby.

I am carrying Damon's baby, and I have no idea how to tell him that without watching his face go carefully blank the way it does when I say things he doesn't want to hear.

I rehearse anyway.

"Damon, we need to talk." He'll check his phone. He always checks his phone.

"I have something to tell you." Too vague. He'll assume I've done something wrong.

"I'm pregnant." Clean. Direct. Three words that will either save this marriage or finish it.

My hand drifts to my stomach before I can stop it.

Something is alive in there. Something that is half me and half the man sleeping down the hall, who hasn't reached for me in four months, who looks at me sometimes like he's trying to remember why I'm in his house.

Maybe this is the thing. Maybe this is what cracks him open again.

The thought tastes like desperation and I know it, but I swallow it anyway.

Movement in the mirror catches my eye. My sleeve has ridden up.

I look down.

Purple and blue marks ring my wrist like a bracelet, his fingers pressed hard into my skin yesterday when I walked into his office without knocking. He'd grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back into the hallway fast enough that I'd stumbled, fast enough that he'd left this behind without even meaning to.

He was on a call. I'd interrupted.

I reach for the concealer.

Dab. Blend. Smooth. The bruises fade under a layer of beige and I tell myself the same thing I always tell myself. He's under pressure. Six months as Alpha. His father's legacy sitting on his shoulders like something with teeth. He doesn't mean it. He never means it.

I'm still telling myself this when I hear her laugh.

It floats up from the kitchen, light and easy, and the sound of it lands in my chest the way it always does. Clarissa. Here before eight in the morning, which means she slept over again, which means she's wearing one of his shirts again, which means I will spend the entire day pretending I don't notice the way he softens when she walks into a room.

She's been Damon's closest friend since before I existed in his life. That's what he tells me when I've tried, carefully, carefully, to explain how it feels. *She's like family, Iris. Don't make this into something it isn't.*

I stopped bringing it up six months ago.

I slip the test into my pocket and open the bathroom door.

The stairs are old enough to be honest. They creak under my feet as I come down, and I'm almost grateful for the warning, it gives me a second to compose my face before I reach the bottom.

I don't use it.

Because I see them, and there is nothing in me left to compose.

Clarissa is at the stove in Damon's grey shirt, the hem grazing her thighs, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders. She should look ridiculous. She looks like a photograph. Her face is turned toward Damon and even from here I can see she's been crying, cheeks blotchy, eyes too bright and Damon is already moving toward her, already reaching for her shoulder with that steady, certain hand.

"Hey." His voice is soft in a way I have not heard in a very long time. "It's okay. We'll figure it out."

"I'm scared," she says.

"Don't be. I've got you."

I stop on the bottom step.

The test presses against my palm through the fabric of my pocket.

She leans into him and he folds his arms around her and she fits under his chin like the space was made for her. His hand moves to her hair. She exhales against his chest like she is finally, finally safe.

"Thank you," she murmurs. "For always being here."

"Always."

The word falls into the room and stays there.

He has never said that to me. Not once in three years. Not at the altar. Not in the dark. Not when I needed it badly enough that I would have accepted it in a whisper, a note, anything at all.

Always.

Clarissa pulls back just enough to look up at him. Her palm moves to his chest, fingers spreading wide, and then slowly, like she's done it before, like she'll do it again her other hand drops to her stomach.

My hand mirrors her without my permission.

"I need to tell you something," she says.

Damon looks down at her. "What is it?"

She takes a breath.

"I'm pregnant, Damon."

The kitchen doesn't move. I do. Something in me simply comes loose, quietly, like a knot that has been holding for too long.

She is pregnant.

Clarissa is pregnant and standing in my kitchen in my husband's shirt and the way Damon's face is changing right now that slow, cracking-open wonder is an expression I have never once seen him turn toward me.

His hands come up to cup her face.

I press my fingers hard around the test in my pocket. The plastic edges bite into my skin.

He tilts her chin up.

And he kisses her.

Not softly. Not briefly. Not in any way I can fold up small and explain away. He kisses her like a man who has been waiting to, like a man who intends to again, and I watch it happen from the bottom of my own staircase while our child presses against my palm in two pink lines.

Three years.

Three years of meals made and questions swallowed and bruises covered with concealer and myself made smaller, quieter, more convenient. Three years of telling myself I was paranoid. Dramatic. Too sensitive for a man like him.

I was not paranoid.

The stair creaks under my foot as I step back.

Damon's head lifts.

Across the kitchen, his eyes find mine and for one long, terrible moment, neither of us moves.

He knows I saw.

And I finally know everything.