Chapter 4
761 Words
Lena’s POV
The house was quiet.
Too quiet, considering we were now responsible for a whole human life.
Mateo had finally fallen asleep in the bassinet beside my bed, a tiny bundle of warmth wrapped in a soft yellow swaddle the program had provided. His breath was shallow and steady, his fingers curled near his face like he was holding onto a dream.
I stood in the doorway, afraid to move too fast. Afraid that if I blinked, it would all slip away.
Not just the moment.
The feeling.
This… pull in my chest.
It started the second I held him in the orientation room, this squirmy, blinking four-month-old with no idea where he was or why. He’d looked at me like I was a question and an answer at the same time.
And now he was here.
In our apartment.
Ours.
Ours?
God.
How do you let go of something like that?
How do you hold a baby this small and leave?
I moved through the hallway, letting my hand brush along the wall. There were framed prints already hung up watercolor animals, alphabet letters, a growth chart in the kitchen that we probably wouldn’t need but was there anyway.
The program had thought of everything.
Except what it would feel like to stare into a pair of brown eyes and wonder who couldn’t stay.
“Couldn’t” or wouldn’t?
I hated how fast my heart ached at the question.
I sank onto the couch in the living room, folding my legs beneath me. The place still smelled like new furniture and overly sanitized surfaces, but it was warm. Lived-in. Ethan’s hoodie was draped over the arm of the chair. A bottle warmer blinked softly on the counter.
His voice broke the silence.
“You okay?”
I looked up.
He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, barefoot, hair a mess, a mug of tea in one hand. Not coffee. Tea. That detail nearly broke me.
I nodded, but it wasn’t convincing.
He walked over slowly, offering the mug. “Chamomile. Thought it might help.”
I took it. Held it. Didn’t drink.
“I keep thinking about her,” I said quietly.
“The birth mom?”
I nodded. “Or dad. Or both. I don’t know. I just… I keep thinking about what it would take to walk away from him. To hand him over and never look back.”
Ethan sank down beside me. “You think they didn’t look back?”
The question sat between us.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But it’s easier to be angry than to imagine they’re hurting, too.”
He didn’t offer clichés. Didn’t rush to fix it.
Just… sat with it.
Sat with me.
“Maybe this program isn’t just about teaching us how to parent,” I said after a while. “Maybe it’s about what parenting pulls out of you. What it makes you face.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Like what kind of person you are when it’s 2 a.m. and you’re holding a screaming infant you didn’t make but you’re still responsible for.”
“Or when you realize your heart is breaking for a kid you met this morning.”
My eyes filled again. I wiped at them with my sleeve.
“I already love him,” I admitted. “Is that crazy?”
“No.” Ethan’s voice was steady. Sure. “It’s not crazy at all.”
There was something in the way he looked at me then. Not pity. Not surprise.
Understanding.
Like maybe he felt it, too.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the soft hum of the apartment: the fridge cycling, the creak of the pipes, the quiet coo Mateo let out from the bedroom like a sigh in his sleep.
“I walked through the place earlier,” I said suddenly. “Room by room. Touched everything. Like I needed to know what kind of life we were building.”
“What did you find?”
I looked over at him. “That I’m scared. And that maybe I want this more than I thought.”
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “You’re not the only one.”
I swallowed hard.
This wasn’t about romance.
Not yet.
This was about two people slowly unpeeling themselves in a place where a baby slept in the next room, already depending on them like they were solid ground.
And maybe, just maybe, they could be.
Not just for Mateo.
But for each other.
- Writer
