{ PREGNANT AFTER GOODBYE }

LEILA

The phone rang again, his name staring back at me in the dark. I held it for a moment longer than I should have, then I switched it off. I placed it face down on the desk and pushed it away.

Karl Hawthorne was done with me, so I had to be done with him as well.

I turned back to my laptop and opened the Apex Prize design application portal.

When I started this project, it was because I thought that if I became exceptional enough, if I won something he couldn't ignore, he would finally see me. I knew Karl loved Natalia because she was always in the headlines, a celebrity admired by everyone. I had wanted to win something that would bring my name to the news too. I wanted Karl to stop and look at me properly, at the ambitious version of me.

But that woman belonged to the past now. She was a woman still waiting to be chosen.

My fingers moved across the keyboard. This time, I wasn't building this design for him. I was building it to survive.

I stopped when I reached the final entry. When it was done, I clicked send. The file uploaded slowly, the loading circle spinning in the quiet room. At some point, exhaustion won, and my eyes drifted shut right there at my desk.

When I woke up, pale morning light was cutting through the studio windows, and my neck ached from sleeping upright. On the screen, a new notification was glowing:

(Congratulations, Leila Stonne. You have been officially qualified to participate in the Apex Urban Prize. Final submission window: 7 days.)

Beneath it, a string of urgent emails from the Hawthorne Group had already piled up. Mark Winter from the Executive Office had messed my inbox: (Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hawthorne requires the revised east elevation files before the 9 A.M. board review.)

Twelve hours ago, I would have answered within minutes. This morning, I closed the tab without replying.

I stood up, but the moment my feet hit the floor, the world tilted violently. A wave of nausea hit the back of my throat, and I stumbled to the bathroom, barely making it to the sink before dry-heaving. My body trembled, cold sweat breaking out across my forehead.

I tried to pour a cup of tea to settle my stomach, but the mere smell of it made the room spin again.

I looked at my hands. They were shaking too badly to hold a pen. I had seven days to finish the final Apex submission, and I couldn't even stay upright. Karl's dramatic exit last night had broken something inside me physically. I couldn't afford to collapse now.

I picked up my phone, switched it back on, and dialed Meridian Private Hospital.

"Name?" the receptionist asked.

"Leila Stonne," I said firmly.

Not Hawthorne. I wouldn't use that name anywhere that still belonged to me. It had been a borrowed name from the start, a condition made by his father Theodore, not Karl's choice. I would not be keeping it.

---

I answered Dr. Marchetti's questions regarding my blood pressure, sleep, and diet, keeping my voice even and my face neutral. She bent over her desk and scribbled a few notes on the paper before her, then glanced up at my medical chart, her brows knitting together slightly.

"Given the sudden onset of your symptoms," she said, looking back at me, "I'd like to include a pregnancy test."

I opened my mouth to say no, to tell her that it wasn't necessary. After all, I had shared a drink with him that night. But the bottom suddenly fell out of the room as my mind raced back to two months ago.

Karl had come home late that night, his tie loosened and his jacket thrown over one arm. I had been working at the kitchen counter when he crossed to the cabinet above the refrigerator, poured two glasses of whiskey, and set one in front of me without asking.

We stood at the counter together in a silence that felt unfamiliar only because it wasn't cold. At some point, he reached across and brushed a strand of hair away from my face. His thumb rested briefly, warmly, against my jaw. It was the first time in two years he had touched me like I was someone he had actively chosen to touch. The walls between us lowered just enough for me to forget they had ever existed.

He was gone by the time I woke up. His side of the bed was already cold. Our glasses were still sitting on the counter exactly where we had left them, whiskey-ringed, unwashed, and silent. They were the only proof that the night had truly happened.

I had spent the last eight weeks pretending it meant nothing, pretending that one quiet night and a glass of whiskey hadn't been enough to make me hopeful again.

But Karl had handed me those divorce papers last night. He had been planning to leave me for much longer than eight weeks. Which meant that night, the whiskey, the gentle touch, and the way he had stayed beside me until I fell asleep had all happened after he already knew he was throwing me away.

Dr. Marchetti's eyes didn't leave mine, pulling my mind back into the stark reality of the office.

"Okay," I said, nodding toward her. My voice came out steady. I didn't understand how. She nodded and quietly made the arrangements.

While I waited, I sat across from her desk, staring at the pale grey light cutting through the frosted glass windows. I forced my thoughts toward my work instead. I focused on the Apex deadline, the renderings, the final revisions, anything except eight weeks ago.

The results came back just minutes later.

She set the printed sheet on the desk between us. I looked down at the paper.

Two months.

The numbers didn't blur. They didn't move. Something shifted inside my chest that I did not have a name for, and my hands went flat against my thighs to stop them from shaking. I was carrying his child while he planned a future without me.

The silence in Dr. Marchetti's office stretched around me, heavy and suffocating.

Suddenly, the smart-display monitor mounted on the wall chimed sharply.

"VIP Arrival: Karl Hawthorne. East Wing VIP Trauma Suite."

I gasped, my breath catching in my throat.

Karl? Why was he here?

My mind raced back to last night, to the frantic, unanswered phone calls he had made to me just twenty-five minutes after walking out of our apartment. He had been trying to reach me. He had been looking for me. And now, he was here.

Had he tracked my phone? Did anyone tell him I was sick? Did he regret the divorce papers the moment he left?

Hope, warm and terrifying, flooded my chest. It was a foolish, desperate thing, but it burned through my veins like wildfire. He had come for me. He actually cared.

I stood up so fast my chair scraped loudly against the marble floor, and ignoring Dr. Marchetti's startled voice behind me, I clutched the pregnancy report tightly in my hand.

I threw open the door of the office and stepped out into the hallway, my heart hammering against my ribs. He was here. And this time, I was going to tell him the truth.