Page 112 of Filthy Lies

I jerk away from her. “Tell him what?”

“All of it. The fear, the hope, the disappointment. He deserves to know.”

“He’d think I’ve lost my mind.”

“He’d understand better than you think.” She moves toward the door, then pauses. “We’re more than the circumstances we’re trapped in, Rowan. More than the violence that surrounds us. Remember that.”

After she leaves, I sit at the counter, staring at nothing. One of the failed pregnancy tests is still clutched in my hand, the single line mocking me.

It would be for the best if I throw it away.

But throwing it away feels like throwing away the child that never was.

So instead, I creep back to my bed and place it carefully in my nightstand drawer.

I’ve spent the three days since Vince left staring at that fucking drawer. It’s become a black hole in our bedroom, warping time and space around it. The negative test sits inside like a dead star, radiating its own peculiar gravity.

I’ve opened it seventeen times. Yes, I counted. Each time, I expected the result to magically change, like if I wish hard enough, want desperately enough, that second pink line will materialize out of thin air.

It doesn’t.

Whatever small, fragile thing might have started growing inside me wasn’t meant to be. Or never existed at all.

A phantom pregnancy. A phantom grief.

Sofiya has started to notice something’s wrong. This morning, her pudgy hands patted my wet cheeks while I changed her diaper, her blue eyes studying me with unsettling clarity for someone who still shits herself daily.

She babbled something, just nonsense, but I could almost swear that what she said was “Mama sad.” I know she didn’t—she’s not old enough to form syllables, much less grasp any of the involvedconcepts—but that didn’t stop something in me from shattering all over again.

Even my infant daughter can tell I’m falling apart over the loss of something that never was.

The compound feels like it’s shrinking around me. The walls closing in, the air thinning. Anastasia’s advice haunts me:Tell him. All of it. He deserves to know.

But how do I explain this? I’m mourning a baby that never existed. It’s silly that I found myself desperately, pathetically wanting to be pregnant again in the middle of this fucking bloodbath we call a life. It’s selfish. It’s wrong.

But just when I’ve decided to bury this episode in my heart forever, I hear the security system disarm downstairs.

Then footsteps. The heavy tread of footsteps I would recognize even if I were blindfolded, gagged, half-dead.

My body responds before my mind catches up—pulse quickening, skin warming, that Pavlovian response to Vince’s proximity that never quite faded, not even after all this time.

I wipe my eyes and try to pull myself together.

I fail spectacularly.

And so he finds me sitting on the edge of our bed, staring at that damn drawer. I don’t need to look up to know he’s filling the doorway, cataloging every detail of my posture, my unwashed hair, my red-rimmed eyes.

“Rowan.” He exhales. “What’s wrong?”

I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my head a thousand times since that second test. All of that practice evaporates like morning dew in August.

“Nothing,” I lie, wiping furiously at fresh tears. “Just tired. Sofiya’s been?—”

“Don’t.” He cuts through my bullshit that easily. “Not with me.”

He crosses the room in long strides and kneels before me. His hands cup my face, forcing me to meet his gaze.

“Tell me.”

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