The prenatal vitamin lodged in Lily's throat like an accusation.
She stood in the cramped bathroom of her sublet apartment-a fifth-floor walkup in Bushwick that smelled perpetually of her neighbor's curry and someone else's regret-and stared at the prescription bottle Jasper had pressed into her palm before she'd fled the coffee shop. Premium prenatals, the kind with DHA and folate and probably gold flakes, knowing him. The kind that cost more than her weekly grocery budget.
She wanted to throw them away. She wanted to prove she didn't need his money, his concern, his suffocating sense of obligation.
Instead, she dry-swallowed one and hated herself a little.
Her phone buzzed on the sink. Another message from Jasper-the seventh since yesterday.
*We need to discuss logistics.*
*I've arranged for you to see Dr. Morrison at Presbyterian. She's the best.*
*Lily, ignoring me won't change the situation.*
She deleted them without responding, then immediately wondered if that made her petty or just practical. Probably both. The distinction didn't matter when you were eight weeks pregnant with a stranger's baby and your entire life philosophy was currently imploding.
Her laptop sat open on the kitchen counter-if you could call the three feet of warped laminate between the fridge and the stove a kitchen-displaying her blog's analytics. Down seventeen percent. Her last post about the fairy chimneys in Cappadocia had gotten half the engagement of her usual content. Turns out people could sense when your heart wasn't in the wanderlust anymore.
Turns out it was hard to sell the dream of radical freedom when you were about to be responsible for an entire human being for the next eighteen years.
Lily pressed her palms against the cool porcelain sink and studied her reflection. She didn't look pregnant yet. Still the same honey-colored skin, the same dark eyes that her mother always said held too much stubbornness and not enough sense. Still the same girl who'd left Miami at eighteen with a backpack and a blog and a bone-deep certainty that staying in one place meant slow death by ordinary.
Except now that girl was going to be someone's mother.
The thought arrived with its now-familiar companion: terror, sharp and electric.
The buzzer shrieked through the apartment like a smoke alarm.
Lily's stomach dropped. She knew-*knew*-before she even pressed the intercom button.
"I brought Thai food." Jasper's voice crackled through the ancient speaker. "The kind with extra vegetables. I checked-they're good for first trimester."
"Go away."
"Lily-"
"I said go away, Jasper. I don't need you showing up at my apartment with prenatal vitamins and unsolicited medical advice and-" She stopped, horrified to feel her voice crack. "Just go."
Silence stretched between them, punctuated only by static and someone's car alarm three blocks away.
Then: "I'm not leaving."
Of course he wasn't. Because Jasper Sterling didn't know how to lose, how to walk away, how to accept that some things couldn't be fixed with money or persistence or sheer goddamn force of will.
Lily jabbed the buzzer.
She counted his footsteps up all five flights-steady, determined, probably not even winded because men like him had private trainers and Pelotons and functional cardiovascular systems. She'd barely opened the door before he was there, filling her doorway with his Brooks Brothers shirt and his expensive cologne and his eyes that saw too much.
"You look tired," he said.
"You look like you're about to give me a PowerPoint presentation on fetal development." She crossed her arms. "Please tell me you didn't actually make a PowerPoint presentation."
Something flickered across his face-amusement, maybe, or pain. "It's only fifteen slides."
Despite everything, Lily felt her lips twitch. She stepped back. Let him in. Hated herself for it.
He set the Thai food on her counter with the careful precision of someone who'd probably never eaten takeout in a Bushwick walkup. His gaze swept the studio: the futon that doubled as her couch, the collage of photographs from forty-three countries, the half-packed suitcase in the corner that she couldn't bring herself to finish unpacking or put away.
"How long is the sublet?" he asked.
"Month to month."
"That's not stable."
"Stable is a trap." The words came automatically, a mantra she'd repeated so many times it had worn grooves in her brain. But they sounded hollow now, unconvincing. "I'm not you, Jasper. I don't need a five-year plan and a diversified portfolio and-"
"A place for our child to sleep?" He turned to face her fully. "Because that's not negotiable. Neither is prenatal care, or proper nutrition, or-"
"Stop." Lily pressed her fingers to her temples. "Stop turning this into a business transaction. This is my body. My life. My-"
"Our baby."
The words landed like a verdict.
Jasper stepped closer, and Lily saw something raw in his expression, something that looked almost like fear. "You think I want to be the guy who demands involvement? Who shows up with vitamins and Thai food and acts like I can fix everything?" His voice dropped. "I don't. But I also won't be my father."
Lily's breath caught. In the coffee shop, he'd mentioned his mother's death-overwork, exhaustion, a single parent's breaking point. But this was different. This was the wound beneath the scar.
"What happened?" she asked quietly.
"He left." Jasper's jaw tightened. "I was seven. My mother worked three jobs trying to keep us afloat. She was brilliant-could have been anything-but instead she was cleaning office buildings at midnight and waitressing on weekends and slowly killing herself because one man decided fatherhood was too inconvenient." He met her eyes. "She died when I was nineteen. Heart failure at forty-two because she'd never taken care of herself, never rested, never-"
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
"I built Sterling Hospitality so my mother would finally be proud of me," he said. "So I could prove I wasn't like him. And now you're asking me to walk away from my own child because you've decided I'm not capable of being more than an obligation?"
The question hung between them, sharp and accusing and completely fair.
Lily opened her mouth to respond-but her phone erupted with a ringtone she'd assigned to only one person.
Her mother.
Who didn't know about the pregnancy.
Who definitely, *definitely* couldn't know about the pregnancy.
She grabbed the phone, finger hovering over decline, but Jasper's eyes narrowed.
"Answer it," he said.
"Jasper-"
"Answer it, Lily. Because whatever you're running from isn't just about me."
Her phone rang again, insistent. Final warning.
Lily answered.
"Mija," her mother's voice trembled through the speaker. "I need you to come home. Right now. It's about your father."
The world tilted.
"Mamá, I don't have a father-"
"He's dying," her mother said. "And he's asking for you."
