[Sophie’s POV]

The restaurant noise fades into a muffled hum behind the walls, laughter and cutlery and someone ordering dessert like the world hasn’t just split open under my feet. The fluorescent light overhead flickers once, then steadies, casting my reflection back at me in a way that feels cruelly honest.

Cleo stands beside me, arms crossed, watching my face instead of the test in my hand. She hasn’t said a word since we slipped away from the table together, since I grabbed her wrist under the tablecloth and whispered that I needed her. Now.

I stare at myself for a second too long. Pale. Eyes too bright. My mouth parted like I forgot how to close it.

“Okay,” I whisper to no one. “Okay, Sophie. Just breathe.”

My hands don’t listen.

The test is still warm in my palm, plastic cheap and unforgiving, the kind of object that should not be allowed to hold this much power. I don’t look at it again right away because I already know. I knew the moment the second line appeared, dark and undeniable, like it had been waiting for me to catch up.

I press my free hand to the counter, grounding myself in the cool laminate. “This is not happening,” I say out loud, my voice cracking in the middle. “This is not happening right now.”

“Sophie.” Cleo’s voice is soft, careful. She steps closer, her hand settling gently on my shoulder. “Let me see.”

I look down at the test again because I can’t not look at it anymore. Two lines. Not faint. Not questionable. Bold and clear like the universe decided subtlety was overrated.

“Oh my god,” I whisper.

Cleo leans in, her eyes dropping to the plastic stick in my trembling hand. Her breath catches audibly beside me.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Oh, Soph.”

My vision blurs, and for a terrifying second I think I might actually pass out in a restaurant bathroom stall like a cliché I would roll my eyes at in someone else’s story. I grip the counter harder, breathing through my nose the way Adrian once told me to when my anxiety spiked, the way Cassian reminded me to stay present when my thoughts started racing ahead of my body.

This is not staying present. This is falling apart.

My legs give out before I can stop them. I slide down against the wall, my back hitting the cool tile as my body decides it’s done holding me up. Cleo follows without hesitation, crouching in front of me, her knees pressing into the floor like she doesn’t care about anything except being here.

“Say it’s wrong,” I beg, my voice barely there. “Say the test is defective.”

She doesn’t. She reaches for my hands instead, squeezing them tight. “It’s positive.”

A sound tears out of me that I don’t recognize—half laugh, half sob, sharp and ugly and real. “I can’t,” I say, shaking my head over and over. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“Hey.” Cleo’s grip tightens, anchoring me. “I’m here. Whatever happens, I’m right here. You’re not doing this alone.”

“I don’t even know who—” I stop, my chest seizing. The words won’t come out clean. They scrape on the way up. “I don’t know who the father is.”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t look at me like I’m broken or reckless or any of the things I’m calling myself inside my own head.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We can’t figure it out,” I snap, panic flooding back in. “I’ve been with both of them. I can’t even remember my last period properly because everything has been chaos for months. There’s no figuring this out, Cleo. There’s just—” My voice breaks. “There’s just this.”

“Then we deal with this,” she says firmly. “Together. You and me, like always.”

I look at her through the blur of tears, and something in my chest cracks a little wider. “You don’t have to—”

“Stop.” She cuts me off with that tone she uses when she’s done entertaining bullshit. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not when you tell them, not after. You’re stuck with me.”

The tears come faster. I wipe at them uselessly. “They’re going to lose their minds.”

Cleo’s expression shifts, something careful flickering behind her eyes. “Adrian and Cassian?”

“Who else?” I laugh, but it sounds hollow. “You know how they are. You’ve seen them. They’ve barely figured out how to share me without tearing each other apart. And now this?” I gesture vaguely at my stomach, at the test, at the catastrophe forming in real time. “This is going to break everything.”

“You don’t know that.”

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