Lahat ng Kabanata ng REJECTED ME BUT KARMA CAME FOR YOU : Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Ryan slipped out of the house without telling Olivia where he was going. He never did anymore. The drive to Chloe's apartment had become a habit he couldn't fully explain — a pull he didn't understand except that being near her felt like breathing again after being underwater too long. The streets blurred past in the dark, streetlights flashing across the windshield like a countdown to something he wasn't ready for.When Chloe opened the door, something in her face made him pause. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hands twisting together in a way he'd never seen before."I have something to tell you," she said, her voice barely steady."Why? What is it?" he asked again, stepping inside, his stomach already tightening with unease.She took a breath, the seconds stretching unbearably long. "I'm pregnant."Ryan went still. The room seemed to tilt slightly beneath him. "Wait. You're... pregnant?"He stared at her, waiting for her to laugh, to say it was a joke. She didn't. Her expression rema

Morning came grey and reluctant, the storm from the night before having settled into a thin, persistent drizzle that clung to the windows like a second skin. Chloe stood at the kitchen counter, both hands wrapped around a mug of tea she hadn't touched, watching the water bead and slide down the glass in slow, meandering trails.She hadn't slept. Neither had Vanessa, whose eyes were rimmed with the same exhaustion, though she'd tried to hide it behind a forced brightness as she moved through their morning routine — coffee, toast, the small rituals that usually made the apartment feel safe. Today they felt like props in a play neither of them believed in anymore."You need to eat," Vanessa said again, nodding toward the untouched toast on the counter."I know." Chloe didn't move.The silence between them had a texture now, something heavier than it had been even the day before. Every small sound — the refrigerator humming, a car passing on the wet street outside, the pipes groaning some

The white card sat on the entryway table for three days before Chloe finally picked it up.She turned it over in her hands that morning while Vanessa showered, running her thumb along the embossed edge, reading Isabelle's name and a phone number printed in plain, unassuming type. It looked like nothing. A business card, forgettable, the kind you'd find in the bottom of a purse months from now and not remember why you'd kept it. And yet it had rewritten the shape of her entire life in four days."Until the end of the month."She hadn't slept properly since the knock on the door. Every sound in the apartment building — footsteps in the hallway, a car idling too long outside, even the mail slot rattling — sent her pulse spiking into her throat. She'd started checking the peephole before answering anything. She'd started flinching at unknown numbers the way other people flinched at loud noises.That was the night the thought first came to her, quiet and unwelcome, slipping in somewhere be

Three days passed without a word from Isabelle.At first, Chloe told herself it was nothing — Isabelle had said she needed time to think, and silence was simply what thinking looked like from the outside. But by the second day, the silence had taken on a texture of its own, pressing against Chloe's chest every time she checked her phone and found nothing waiting there. No message. No missed call. Not even the venomous, unsettling texts from the unknown number that had haunted her the week before."Maybe that's a good sign," Vanessa offered on the second night, though her voice lacked conviction. "Maybe she's just deciding what she wants to do.""Maybe," Chloe echoed, staring at her phone as though it might change its mind and light up if she watched it long enough.But the unease didn't leave her. It followed her through the following day like a shadow attached at the heel — through a lunch she barely touched, through a conversation with Ryan she could hardly focus on, through the lon

Samantha arrived at Chloe's apartment two days after their exchange, the late afternoon sun slanting low through the blinds and catching the polished edge of her tailored coat despite the thick Miami heat outside. She moved through the small living room the way she moved through everything — unhurried, deliberate, as though the world would simply wait until she was ready for it. Chloe let her in without a word, aware of how different the apartment felt now that Vanessa's presence no longer softened its corners. The couch still bore the faint indentation where her friend used to curl up each evening. A stray hair tie sat forgotten on the coffee table. Everything in the space felt like an echo of someone who wasn't there to answer it. They settled across from each other at the small kitchen table, the same table where, weeks ago, Vanessa used to sit with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, offering quiet reassurance Chloe hadn't realized she'd come to depend on so completely until i