PAIGE
The silence in my apartment had taken on a new, heavy quality. It wasn't just the absence of noise anymore; it was a presence, a thick fog filled with the one question Leon and I were meticulously avoiding.
What next?
It hung in the air between us, unspoken, a ghost at every meal. We talked about everything else. The weather. The bizarre new reality show Mark was obsessed with. The progress of my solo war against my family—the creditor calls I'd orchestrated were starting, the first tremors of the earthquake I was building.
But we never talked about the thing. The two blue lines. The life growing inside me that felt less like a miracle and more like a complication of nuclear proportions.
My hand would drift to my stomach, still flat, still normal. But it didn't feel normal. It felt like a countdown clock had been activated, ticking away silently beneath my skin. My mind was a war zone. One side, the cold, strategic planner, saw it as the ultimate liability. A chain.
