Chapter Four
1561 Words
The first time I felt the baby kick, I was alone.
I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of my room at the hostel, a slice of light bleeding through the broken blinds, and I’d just finished writing a new verse. It wasn’t even good. The rhyme was clumsy, the melody unsure. But I sang it anyway, low and tired, more prayer than performance.
And then—it happened.
A flutter. Not gas, not nerves. Something real. Like a tiny knock from the inside out.
I froze. Pressed both hands to my stomach. Waited.
It happened again.
I laughed. Then I cried. Hard. The kind of crying that made my throat hurt and my chest heave. The kind I hadn’t done since I left New York.
This wasn’t just real—it was undeniable.
There was a life inside me.
And it wanted me to know it was here.
I wanted to tell someone. But not just someone. I wanted to tell him.
So I called Drake.
He picked up on the second ring. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah. Yes. I just—” I exhaled shakily. “The baby kicked.”
There was a pause on his end. A soft inhale. And then—gentler than I’d ever heard him—he said, “That’s amazing.”
“It’s weird,” I said, wiping tears off my cheeks with the back of my sleeve. “I thought I’d be scared. But I’m not. I’m just… not alone.”
“You never were.”
I smiled into the silence.
“I’ll be there in twenty,” he added.
“No, it’s fine. I just needed to say it out loud.”
“And I needed to hear it. I’m still coming.”
He hung up before I could argue.
Twenty-two minutes later, he was at my door with a brown paper bag full of takeout and a look on his face like maybe—just maybe—he wanted to believe in something again.
We didn’t talk about Charles that night. Or the lawsuit. Or the fact that every day, the pressure on my chest grew tighter as the bump under my sweatshirt grew rounder.
We ate Thai food on my floor and listened to old soul records on my busted speaker. And when the baby kicked again, I grabbed his hand without thinking and placed it low on my stomach.
“There,” I whispered.
Drake didn’t speak.
He just stared down at where his palm rested against my body, like he was listening for something ancient and holy.
After a moment, he looked up at me. “They’re strong.”
I nodded, heart pounding. “So far, yeah.”
“You’re going to be a good mom,” he said quietly.
I laughed once—sharp and bitter. “You don’t know that.”
“I know you sing like you’re surviving something. And that you haven’t quit yet. That counts.”
He didn’t say more. He didn’t have to.
Sometimes the truth is small. Just enough to light the next step.
I met Ivy the next morning.
She looked exactly like I’d imagined—messy bun, chipped nail polish, sharp eyes that missed nothing. Her office smelled like burnt coffee and old books. The walls were lined with framed articles and protest posters, one of which read: The law is a tool, not a weapon.
“You’re a musician,” she said by way of greeting.
I nodded.
“You’re also being harassed, intimidated, and threatened with a bullshit lawsuit designed to silence and punish you for leaving a man who thinks he owns your narrative.”
I blinked. “You get all that from a voicemail?”
“I get that from your face.”
She motioned for me to sit. I did.
“What he’s doing is emotional a***e. Plain and simple. Now, we can either go quiet—file motions, ask for a cease and desist, try to settle privately—or we go loud. Public countersuit. We control the narrative. I can leak just enough to flip the story in your favor.”
I stared at her. “I don’t want to be famous for this. I just want it to stop.”
Ivy leaned forward. “Then we bleed him dry. Not in court—through silence. Deny him oxygen. Don’t respond. Don’t post. Let me do the work.”
I hesitated. “What does that cost?”
She smiled. “Drake’s covering it.”
Of course he was.
I should’ve felt grateful. I did. But I also felt… watched. Not in a sinister way. In a seen way. And being seen, when you’ve spent years trying to disappear, feels dangerous.
“Is this what you want?” Ivy asked. “To fight this?”
I nodded. “Yes. But not just for me.”
“For the baby?”
“No. For who I used to be. For the girl who stayed too long and called it love.”
Ivy sat back, impressed. “Good. Let’s burn his house down. Metaphorically, of course.”
By the following week, the threats had slowed. Charles’s legal team sent a series of formal letters, each more desperate than the last. Ivy ignored most of them. She sent one back—a polite, professional version of f**k off.
Meanwhile, the indie music blog “West Echo” wrote a glowing review of my latest set. The piece was titled: Heartbreak, Grit, and Grace: L.A.’s Quietest Rebellion. I didn’t even know they were in the crowd that night.
I forwarded it to Drake.
He texted back one word: “Told you.”
A few nights later, I played at a small venue downtown. Bigger than the bookstore, smaller than the club I’d opened in last month. The crowd was mixed—some familiar faces, some new. I wore a loose black dress, one that skimmed over the bump just enough. I hadn’t made a statement. I wasn’t hiding either.
I sang three originals and one cover—Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” I almost didn’t do it. That song felt like too much. Too raw. But when the first chords left my fingers, the room hushed. Something about the stillness made me brave.
When I finished, the applause was slow, then steady.
After the show, a man from the venue approached me. Clean-cut, maybe late thirties, expensive sneakers.
“You ever record?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“I’ve got a friend with a home studio. He works with up-and-coming artists. Would love to get you in.”
I gave him my email, but didn’t get my hopes up. L.A. was full of people with “friends.”
Still, something stirred in my chest. Not excitement. Not yet.
Possibility.
That night, back at the hostel, Drake was waiting.
He leaned against his car like he had all the time in the world.
“You looked happy up there,” he said when I reached him.
“I was.”
He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “That song—you wrote that for him?”
I shook my head. “I wrote it for me. He just happened to be the echo.”
We didn’t kiss. Not that night.
But he held my hand all the way up the stairs.
And when he left, he kissed my forehead like a promise he wasn’t ready to say out loud.
The next morning, I woke up to my name trending on Twitter.
At first, I thought it was a glitch. Then I saw the headline:
“Charles Tinsley Speaks Out: ‘I Was Used, Lied To, and Left.’”
He’d done an interview. Not a tabloid, either. A respected magazine. They framed it as a “candid look at heartbreak in the public eye.” He painted himself as the victim. Said I’d manipulated him, used his influence to boost my “failing music career,” and then announced a pregnancy to “secure attention.”
He never said my name directly.
But he didn’t have to.
My inbox exploded. Hate. Sympathy. Offers for interviews. Questions. Judgments. People dissecting my lyrics like scripture, trying to find the villain in the story.
I didn’t cry.
I threw my phone against the wall.
It didn’t break.
I kind of wished it had.
Drake showed up twenty minutes later. He didn’t ask how I was. He just gathered the pieces of me silently—one coffee, one bagel, one stupid cracked phone at a time.
Ivy called soon after. “We need to respond.”
“I don’t want to talk to the press,” I said.
“Then give me something I can say. Something real.”
I thought about it. About truth and control and what it meant to reclaim a narrative that was never mine to begin with.
“Tell them this,” I said. “Tell them I didn’t leave him to hurt him. I left him to save myself.”
Ivy paused. “That’s a headline.”
“Let them use it.”
I hung up.
And then I wrote.
Not a song.
A statement.
Not for them. For me.
Because survival is messy.
And healing isn’t linear.
But this—this moment—was mine.
- Writer
