I nodded, my voice caught somewhere deep inside.
Back at the café, I worked until closing. My feet screamed. My back ached as the baby kicked at my ribs.
That night, in my studio apartment, I sat at my tiny desk with my laptop open.
Olivia had left me with something else too—an idea.
"What are you good at?" she'd asked over lunch, leaning in."Like, really good at?"
"Business strategy," I'd told her without hesitation. "Corporate analysis. I can look at a company and see what's wrong with it, how to fix it, how to make it profitable."
She smiled. "So why aren't you doing that?"
"Because I'm broke and pregnant and"
"Excuses," she smiled again. "You've got the internet. You've got brains. Start small and build something."
Now, staring at the screen, I pulled up articles about startup consulting. Freelance business analysts. Corporate advisors.
People who did what I could do—for money.
My hand rested on my belly as the baby kicked. "What do you think?" I whispered. "Should we try?"
Another kick that I chose to interpret as yes.
I opened a blank document and started typing.
Monroe Consulting: Strategic Business Analysis
By 2 AM, I had a basic website framework. Nothing fancy—I'd learned enough coding to cobble together something functional.
Services offered: Corporate restructuring analysis. Investment opportunity assessment. Market positioning strategy.
I had no clients. No reputation and portfolio.
But I had skill. I published the site.
Then I started emailing—cold outreach to small businesses in London. Fifty emails. A hundred. Two hundred.
Most would ignore me. Some would delete without reading.
But I only needed one yes.
"For you," I said to my belly. "I'm doing this for you."
Two months later.
The contractions started at 2 AM.
I woke to pain that ripped through my belly like a knife. My hands gripped the sheets as I gasped, trying to remember what the midwife had told me during that one prenatal class.
Breathe. Count. Wait until they're five minutes apart.
I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand. My fingers shook as I pulled up Olivia's contact.
She answered on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep. "Aria?"
"The baby's coming." My voice cracked as another wave of pain hit.
"I'm on my way." Rustling sounds came through the speaker. "Don't move."
Twenty minutes felt like hours. I paced my tiny studio, one hand pressed to my lower back, the other clutching my belly. The contractions came harder.
When Olivia burst through my door, still in her hospital scrubs, relief flooded through me.
She dropped her bag and checked her watch. "How far apart?"
"Four minutes," I panted, gripping the back of a chair. "Maybe less."
"We need to go. Now." She grabbed my hospital bag—already packed by the door—and helped me down the stairs.
The taxi ride to Royal London Hospital was a blur of streetlights and pain. Olivia held my hand, talking me through each contraction.
"You're doing great," she said, her thumb rubbing circles on my palm. "Just breathe with me."
I wanted to scream that breathing didn't help. That nothing helped. That I was terrified and alone and this baby's father didn't even know he existed.
Instead, I squeezed her hand until my knuckles went white.
*******
The hospital was chaos. Bright lights, rushing nurses, the smell of antiseptic. They wheeled me to a delivery room while Olivia stayed at my side, somehow both my friend and my medical advocate.
A midwife checked me and made notes on her clipboard. "You're six centimeters dilated. Still got a way to go."
Six hours. That's how long it took.
Six hours of pain that rewrote my understanding of suffering, hours of Olivia wiping my forehead, holding my hand, telling me I was strong even when I was certain I'd break.
"I can't," I sobbed at hour five, my entire body trembling. "I can't do this."
Olivia's face appeared above mine, fierce and certain. "Yes, you can. You're the strongest person I know."
Tears streamed down my face. "I'm not strong."
"You survived being thrown out pregnant with nothing." She gripped my shoulders. "You built a life from scratch in a foreign country. You're about to bring a whole human into the world. If that's not strength, I don't know what is."
Another contraction hit. I screamed.
The midwife moved to the end of the bed. "That's it. It's time to push."
The next twenty minutes were agony and instinct. My body took over. I pushed when they told me to push. I breathed when they told me to breathe.
And then
A cry.
The midwife lifted a tiny, wriggling bundle. "It's a boy."
They placed him on my chest. Warm and slippery.
I looked down at my son.
And my heart shattered and remade itself all at once.
He was perfect. Impossibly small, with a tuft of dark hair and tiny fists that waved at the air. His face was scrunched and red from crying.
Then he opened his eyes.
Ice blue. Sharp and striking even at birth. He had Damien's eyes.
The sob that tore from me was equal parts love and grief. This baby—my son—carried the face of the man who destroyed me. But he was also mine. Completely, utterly mine.
I touched his tiny hand, my voice barely a whisper. "Hello. I'm your mama."
His fingers wrapped around mine immediately.
Olivia appeared beside me, her own eyes wet. "He's beautiful, Aria."
"He looks like" I couldn't finish, the words catching in my throat.
"He looks like you," Olivia said firmly, reaching out to touch his tiny foot. "He has your nose. Your chin."
But we both knew the truth. Those eyes would always be Damien's.
The nurses cleaned him up and handed him back to me wrapped in a blue hospital blanket. I held him against my chest, feeling his heartbeat against mine.
Olivia settled into the chair beside my bed. "What are you going to name him?"
I'd thought about this for months. Considered family names, meaningful names, names that felt right.
I kissed my son's forehead. "Noah. Noah Monroe."
Not Blackwood.
Olivia smiled, tears sliding down her cheeks. "Noah Monroe. I love it."
"Me too." I stroked Noah's soft hair. "Welcome to the world, baby boy."