Steele’s Redemption

Chapter 9

Emma

I woke before the sun, before Jake, before I'd let myself think about what I'd said to him last night.

The words were still there, sitting heavy in my chest, but I didn't reach for them again. I couldn't. Not yet.

By eight, Jake was in the kitchen making coffee he didn't drink, sliding a mug toward me like an offering.

"Dr. Chen can see you at nine," he said. "No pressure. If you want to go alone, I'll drive you and wait outside. If you want me in the room, I'll be there. Your call, all of it."

"Come in with me," I said, surprising myself. "I don't want to say any of this twice."

He nodded once, like that answer cost him nothing and meant everything.

The clinic was small, tucked behind a nondescript door with no sign. Dr. Chen was maybe fifty, steady-voiced, unhurried. She didn't look at Jake like he was strange for being there. She looked at *me*, first and always.

"Let's start with how you're healing," she said, and checked the fading bruises along my ribs, my cheek, gentle enough that I barely flinched. "These are healing well. No signs of fracture. You were lucky."

*Lucky* felt like the wrong word, but I let it pass.

Then she sat across from me, hands folded. "Your home test was positive. I want to confirm that and get a better sense of timing."

The blood draw took seconds. The ultrasound took longer, and I stared at the ceiling instead of the screen until she said, "There you are," softly, like she was talking to someone other than me.

"Based on measurements, I'd put you at about five weeks," she said. "That lines up with what you told me about the timeline of the assault."

*Five weeks.* Long enough that Derek's hands were already a memory. Long enough that there was nothing left of that night to collect, nothing a hospital could have swabbed or photographed even if I'd gone straight there instead of running.

"There's no evidence left," I said, half a question.

"Not from an exam, no. That window closes fast—ideally within seventy-two hours. It's been weeks." Her voice was matter-of-fact, not unkind. "That doesn't mean your account isn't valid. It means the forensic path isn't available to you anymore. If you want to pursue anything legally, it would rely on your testimony, timeline, any documentation of the abuse pattern before that night."

I nodded because I didn't trust my voice yet.

"I want to be clear," Dr. Chen continued, "about what's in front of you now. You're pregnant. You have options—continuing the pregnancy with prenatal care, or ending it, and you can take whatever time you need to decide. No one in this room is going to push you toward either one."

I felt Jake go very still beside me. Not tense—still, like he was making sure his own reaction didn't take up space that wasn't his.

"I don't know yet," I said. "I need—I don't know what I need. Just time."

"That's allowed," Dr. Chen said simply. "For now, let's talk about prenatal vitamins, and I'll want to see you again in two weeks regardless of what you decide, just to keep an eye on your health."

She gave me a folder—information on both paths, a list of counselors, a card with her direct line—and didn't make me choose anything in that room except whether I wanted the pamphlet on top or the one underneath. Small mercy. I took both.

In the truck afterward, Jake didn't start the engine right away.

"You don't have to talk," he said. "But if you want to, I'm here. And if you don't want to, that's fine too."

"It's his," I said, staring at the folder in my lap. "Whatever I decide, that's true. It started with him. With that night."

"It started with him," Jake agreed. "But whatever happens next belongs to you. Not him. Not me either, before you start worrying about that."

"I'm not ready to decide anything today."

"Then don't." He finally turned the key. "I'll help with whatever you need—rides, money for a specialist, whatever. But the choice is yours. All of it."

I looked out the window instead of at him, because if I looked at him right then, I might have cried, and I'd promised myself I was done crying over things men decided for me. This, at least, he wasn't deciding.

We were three blocks from the shop when his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, jaw tightening slightly before he answered.

"Nash." A pause. "Say that again."

I watched his knuckles whiten slightly on the wheel.

"When?" Another pause, longer. "Copy. We're heading in."

He set the phone down and looked at me, not away from me, which I'd learned by now meant the news wasn't good but he wasn't going to soften it into something smaller than it was.

"Someone was asking around your building this morning," he said. "Landlord says a man matching one of Derek's known guys showed a picture of you, asked which room was yours. He didn't get an answer—my guy's already got someone watching the building—but he was there. And Nash thinks the same car might've tailed us partway to the clinic before peeling off."

My stomach dropped, but it wasn't the same lurching panic from that first night. It was quieter now, more familiar, like my body had already made room for this kind of fear and simply expanded to hold it.

"He knows about the room," I said.

"He knows you exist somewhere near there. That's all we can confirm right now." Jake's voice stayed level. "I'm not going to pretend it's nothing. But I'm also not going to make a decision about where you sleep tonight without you in the room for it."

"What are my options?"

"Stay at the penthouse—it's already secured, and no one's tied you to that address yet. Or we look at somewhere else entirely, further out. Or you tell me what would actually make you feel safe, and we build around that instead of around what I think safe looks like."

I thought about the narrow rented room with its thin walls, the couch at the shop, the wide quiet of Jake's penthouse with its locks that clicked heavy and sure.

"I want to stay at your place," I said. "For now. And I want to help figure out the plan—not just be told where I'm sleeping."

Something shifted in his expression, small and unguarded. "Then that's what we'll do."

He pulled into the shop lot, and through the windshield I could see Nash already waiting by the door, phone in hand, expression grim enough that I understood before either of them said a word.

Derek wasn't done looking.

And this time, he was getting closer.