Chapter 2
1250 Words
Lena’s POV
The second we stepped out of the classroom, my brain started spinning.
Callie walked beside me like we hadn’t just been told we were about to move into shared townhouses and co-parent actual children. Not theory. Not future hypotheticals. Real kids. Real responsibility. Starting in two days.
She, of course, had already moved past the shock.
“So Logan thinks toddlers don’t need routine,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses like this was all some kind of casual experiment. “But I told him: structure is love. And aesthetically, I’m going for cozy-chic daycare vibes. Think woven baskets and a toy rotation that doesn’t make me lose my mind.”
I smiled. Nodded. Tried to absorb what she was saying.
But the whole walk to her house, my mind kept circling back to the announcement on that final slide:
Lena Morgan and Ethan Walker. Unit 4B. Infant Placement. Age: 4 months. Orientation begins Monday.
When we pulled into her driveway, I lingered in the driver’s seat.
“I should check in with my aunt,” I said, too quickly. “She’s been texting all morning.”
Callie barely looked up from her phone. “All good. Send me your nursery board when you get a sec! Logan wants to put the changing table in the kitchen. I told him absolutely not.”
She slipped inside without waiting for a response. I stayed where I was, fingers tight around the wheel.
It wasn’t the baby.
It wasn’t the townhouse, or the feeding schedules, or even the sleepless nights that were definitely coming.
It was who I’d be doing all of that with.
Ethan.
His name used to make my chest flutter. Now it made my stomach twist. Not because of anything big or messy but because of what never happened. Of what we never let happen.
The long glances. The late-night study sessions that lingered too long. The shared silences that weren’t empty.
And then came Callie. Him and her. Sudden, bright, and brief.
Now, they were “just friends.” Comfortable, casual, like it never mattered. But I’d seen the way she looked at him sometimes when she thought no one was watching.
Not jealous. Just… quiet.
And now he and I were going to live together. For a year. As co-parents.
With a baby.
This wasn’t a practice run anymore.
It was real.
And I had no idea how to protect my heart in it.
Ethan’s POV
By the time I got back to the house, Logan was already inside like he paid rent.
“You know I have a door, right?” I muttered as I tossed my backpack onto the floor.
He glanced up from the couch, where he was half-buried under a mess of toddler toy catalogs. “Doors are for people not about to be co-dads. Get with the program.”
“You don’t even have the kid yet.”
He smirked. “Neither do you. But you’ve got a baby on the way. That’s like parenting on expert mode.”
I grabbed a soda from the fridge and leaned against the counter. “It’s not expert mode. Just… earlier hours. Less coordination.”
“And higher stakes,” Logan said, eyes sharp now. “You and Lena. Tiny infant. Sleepless nights. And oh yeah, Callie’s your ex, Lena’s her best friend, and we’re all stuck in this twisted group project for the next twelve months.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
He didn’t drop it. “You cool with it?”
“What choice do I have?”
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no either.”
He gave me a look. “You think Callie’s really fine? With you and Lena doing this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, quieter now. “She says she is.”
“Yeah, but saying it and meaning it aren’t always the same.”
I didn’t answer. Because I’d seen the look in Callie’s eyes too when Lena walked into a room. When I laughed at something Lena said.
But that wasn’t the story anymore.
“Lena’s nervous,” I said instead. “I could tell.”
“Of course she is. She’s about to raise a baby with a guy she maybe-almost-sorta had a thing with. While her best friend is parenting a toddler with the same guy she once dated. Honestly? I don’t know how any of you are still upright.”
I ran a hand over my face. “Can’t wait for the group therapy sessions.”
Logan grinned. “We’ll all bond over spit-up and unspoken trauma.”
When he finally left, the house felt too quiet.
And all I could think about was Monday. The townhouse. Lena.
And the baby who’d look up at us with nothing but trust.
Lena’s POV
Mrs. Pearl handed out the final folders at the end of our session. No ceremony. No big announcement. Just a thick packet with our names on it.
Inside: housing details. Daily logs. Feeding guidelines. And the one line that made my stomach flip.
Assigned Child: Male. Age: 4 months. Placement: Monday.
I met Ethan at the coffee shop the next day. Neutral territory.
He was already there when I arrived, flipping through the paperwork with the kind of intensity that looked like focus but felt like avoidance.
“Unit 4B,” I said as I slid into the seat across from him.
“Two bedrooms. One bath. Baby monitor pre-installed. Crib already set up.”
“Luxury living.”
He gave a low laugh. “It’s happening.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Monday.”
I pulled out my own folder and stared at the blank space where the baby’s name would go.
“He’s already alive,” I said, quietly. “Breathing somewhere. Probably being held right now.”
Ethan nodded. “And in a few days, he’ll be ours.”
“Our responsibility,” I corrected.
But that didn’t sound right either. It was more than that.
“You ever held a four-month-old before?” I asked.
“Once. He puked on me.”
“Cool. I’ll make you the burp cloth guy.”
He smiled faintly, but there was something in his eyes. Something quieter.
“This is real,” I said. “Not a simulation. Not a group project. This baby’s going to look at us and think we’re his whole world.”
“We will be,” he said. “For a little while.”
The words lingered longer than they should’ve.
“I know this is complicated,” I said. “You and Callie. Me and you. Me and Callie.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said gently.
I met his eyes. “But it is.”
He hesitated, then said, “I’m not here to make anything worse. I want to do this right. For the baby. For you. For whatever we are.”
There was that softness again. That edge of something unspoken.
I nodded slowly. “Okay. Then we work.”
He smiled. Just a little. “We work.”
But as we started scribbling out feeding schedules and night shift rotations, something knotted tight in my chest.
Because in two days, we’d move into a townhouse.
And hold a baby who had no idea how tangled all of this already was.
But one day, he would.
And we’d have to be something more than fine by then.
- Writer
