[Sophie’s POV]

I make it three steps toward the door before I stop.

The floorboards creak beneath my feet, ancient and complaining, the same sound they’ve made every morning for the past year. Cleo is already downstairs, the car packed, engine probably running. She texted five minutes ago: Ready when you are. I should be walking out. I should be closing this chapter, literally and figuratively, leaving behind the apartment and the memories and the two men I’m too afraid to face.

But something pulls me back. An invisible thread wrapped around my ribs, tugging with a desperation that makes my breath catch.

The letters.

I left them on the kitchen table, weighted under a book so the air from the cracked window won’t scatter them. One for Adrian. One for Cassian. Pages I wrote and rewrote at 3 a.m., tears blurring the ink until I had to start over, trying to explain the unexplainable, trying to say goodbye without actually saying it. The paper still holds the ghost of my fingerprints, the indentation of words pressed too hard with a pen that was running out of ink.

I turn and look at them one more time, my hand still on the doorknob, the metal cold against my clammy palm.

The apartment looks different in the morning light—softer somehow, like it’s already mourning my absence. Dust motes drift lazily through the sunbeams slanting through the windows, golden and peaceful, completely at odds with the chaos churning inside me.The ache in my chest intensifies, a physical weight pressing against my sternum.

“You can do this,” I tell myself quietly, the words thin and unconvincing in the empty room. “You have to.”

For a second—a selfish, desperate second—I want to take them back. Tear them up. Stay. Run back into the mess and let the truth explode where it will. Watch Adrian’s jaw tighten the way it does when he’s processing something painful, the muscle jumping beneath his skin like a warning signal. Watch Cassian go still, calculating, trying to find the logical path through emotional chaos, his mind working behind those sharp eyes even as his heart struggles to catch up.

Maybe they’d surprise me. Maybe they’d hold me instead of fighting. Maybe the fragile thing we built is stronger than I’m giving it credit for.

The hope is a blade, slicing through my resolve with cruel precision.

“I can’t,” I say out loud, my voice breaking on the second word, cracking like ice under too much pressure. “I can’t do that to you.”

Because the “maybe” isn’t enough. Not when a child is involved. Not when the question of paternity could become the wedge that finally splits them apart for good. Not when I’ve seen how they look at each other sometimes—that flicker of competition, of measurement, of wondering who matters more. Adding a baby with uncertain origins would turn that flicker into an inferno.

I force myself to turn away from the letters, from the apartment that holds everything—every laugh, every argument, every whispered promise in the dark.

I’m not strong. I’m running. There’s a difference.

The distinction burns like acid in my throat.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, the vibration startling against my thigh. I pull it out, expecting Cleo, probably asking what’s taking so long, probably already rehearsing the lecture she’ll give me about cold feet.

It’s not Cleo.

Cassian: Please just tell us you’re safe. We’re worried.

My chest tightens painfully, the air suddenly too thick to breathe. I can picture him typing it—measured, careful, choosing each word the way he always does, probably standing in his kitchen with coffee going cold on the counter, his brow furrowed in that way that makes him look older than he is. Worried. They’re worried about me, and I’m about to destroy them.

Nothing. You did nothing wrong. I did this.

I type back three different responses before deleting all of them, my fingers trembling over the screen. I’m okay feels like a lie—I’m so far from okay that the word has lost all meaning. I’m leaving feels too final, too cruel, a door slamming that can never be reopened. I’m pregnant and I don’t know whose baby it is feels like a grenade I’m not ready to throw, a truth that would shatter everything the moment it left my hands.

I push myself upright, determined to make it to the door, to get out of this apartment before it becomes my tomb. My legs feel weak, disconnected, like they belong to someone else entirely. The baby. Something’s wrong with the baby. The thought crashes through me with the force of a tidal wave, terror flooding every cell.

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