Juniper POV
The light coming through Maya’s living room windows had no warmth to it anymore. It was the kind of gray winter glare that made everything look flattened, like the world had been drained of color and left to sit in the fridge too long. I wake up to it every morning now, or what passed for morning—sometimes it was already past noon, my body too heavy with exhaustion to care about clocks.
The nausea hit first, always, a greasy roll that started low in my gut and climbed until I had to breathe through my mouth and count backward from twenty just to keep from bolting to the bathroom. Pregnancy was supposed to get easier after the first trimester, according to the apps I no longer trusted. Instead it felt like my body was punishing me for every bad decision that had led us here.
