The bathroom tile was cold against my palms, but I barely registered it. The sonogram photo lay there between my shoes like evidence from a crime scene I hadn’t meant to commit. Maya’s arm stayed around my waist, solid and warm, the only thing keeping me from dissolving completely into the floor. My sobs had turned raw, scraping up from somewhere deep in my gut that had nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with the man who had just flown out of my life without a backward glance.
He didn’t even know we existed.
That thought looped through my head on repeat, louder than the distant echo of fireworks still popping outside the arena. Louder than the muffled cheers that had once celebrated him. The abandonment I had spent years trying to outrun had finally caught me in the worst p
