[Sophie’s POV]

The apartment is quiet when we get back from the clinic.

Cleo disappears into the kitchen to make tea—her solution for everything, as if chamomile can fix the unfixable—and I drift toward my bedroom like a ghost haunting her own life. My legs feel hollow, my chest too full, everything inside me rearranged by a sound I can’t stop hearing.

That heartbeat. Rapid and relentless and so impossibly alive.

I sit on the edge of my bed and pull the ultrasound photo from my bag, handling it like it might dissolve if I’m not careful. The image is grainy, abstract—a blur of gray and white that wouldn’t mean anything to someone who didn’t know what they were looking at.

But I know.

That tiny smudge in the center, barely visible, already has a heartbeat. Already exists in a way I can’t undo, can’t ignore, can’t pretend away no matter how hard I try.

My thumb traces the edge of the photo, and something cracks open in my chest.

“Hey,” I whisper to the image. “I heard you today.”

The words feel strange in my mouth—too intimate, too real. But I keep talking anyway, because no one else is listening and I need to say it out loud.

“I didn’t think it would feel like this. I thought I’d be scared—and I am, I’m terrified—but there’s something else too. Something I wasn’t expecting.”

My hand drifts to my stomach, palm pressing flat against the fabric of my shirt. Still flat. Still unchanged on the outside. But I know now what’s happening beneath the surface, and that knowledge has shifted something fundamental inside me.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I continue, my voice cracking. “I don’t know how to be what you need. I don’t even know who your father is, and that feels like the kind of failure you don’t recover from.”

Tears blur my vision, but I don’t wipe them away. I just keep looking at the photo, at the proof that my body made a decision my mind wasn’t ready for.

“But I heard your heart today. And it was the strongest thing I’ve ever heard.”

A sob escapes before I can stop it—not sad, exactly, but overwhelmed. Like my body is finally releasing everything I’ve been holding since those two lines appeared on the test. The fear, the guilt, the impossible weight of loving two men and not knowing which one gave me this.

“I’m going to figure it out,” I whisper, brushing my thumb across the photo again. “I don’t know how yet. But I’m going to try.”

My hand presses harder against my stomach, like I can send the promise directly through my skin.

“I’m going to protect you. Whatever it takes.”

The words settle into the quiet room, heavy with meaning I’m only beginning to understand.

I don’t hear Cleo approach until she’s standing in the doorway, two mugs in her hands, her expression soft and careful in a way that tells me she’s been watching for longer than she’ll admit.

“Hey,” she says gently, stepping inside. “Tea’s ready.”

I nod but don’t move, my eyes still fixed on the photo. She sets the mugs on my nightstand and sits beside me on the bed, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.

For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The silence isn’t uncomfortable—it’s full, weighted with everything we’ve been through today and everything that’s still coming.

Then Cleo turns to look at me, her eyes searching my face with an intensity that makes my chest tighten.

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