SWEET RUIN

CHAPTER 5

Kylie POV

I walked until my feet screamed, and the city swallowed me whole.

I had no plan. I had a few coins in my pocket and a card with a number I did not trust. My suitcase weighed less than my pride. The night air smelled like rain and car exhaust, nothing like the warm, yeasty smell of the bakery. For the first time in my life, I was outside of a routine I knew how to survive. It felt like falling without the promise of a landing.

I found a cheap room above a corner shop. It was small, smelled of old paint and laundry detergent, and the bed dipped when I sat on it. The window looked out on a neon sign that buzzed half the night. I tried to tell myself I would go back in the morning and explain. I tried to tell myself that Antonio would understand. But the truth was louder than my wishes. I did not trust his understanding. I did not trust myself to ask for it.

The next morning I folded my clothes and went to a café where people pretended they were important. I had tea and a piece of cake I did not really enjoy and a phone that vibrated with a name I had seen carved into more than one billboard.

Antonio.

I ignored it.

I opened the cake box and stared at a single fork. I thought about calling him. I thought about walking back to his house and saying the words I had been too frightened to say. I thought about telling him I was not temporary. But the easier choice was to keep walking. The safer choice was to be alone and small and not risk being pushed away.

“Hey.” A voice. Familiar. Tasha.

She slid into the seat opposite me like she had always been there. Her hair was a mess of curls and color and hope. She owned a tiny salon two blocks from the bakery. She had a laugh that could make panic shrink.

“Kyle?” she said. She always called me Kyle when she wanted to make me smile. “What are you doing here? I thought you were at work.”

“I am not,” I said. The words felt foreign when they left my mouth. “I quit.”

Tasha's eyes widened. “You quit? Why would you do that?”

I did not know how to explain it without sounding pathetic. “It is a long story.”

She pushed a slice of cake toward me. “Then tell me the short version.”

So I told her. I told her about Miriam, and the slap, and Antonio stepping in like a figure out of a movie. I told her about the card he gave me and the way his eyes looked when he told me I was safe. I told her about Bianca and the way she smiled like a knife. I told her about the woman in my room who said I was not the first. I told her about how I walked when I felt small under someone I was trying to trust.

Tasha listened. She did not interrupt. She only squeezed my hand when my voice cracked.

“You okay?” she asked when I finished.

“No.” The answer felt honest. “But I am not dead.”

She laughed, short and sharp. “Good. At least you are not dead. Come work at my shop for a few days. Keep your head clear. I will pay you. We can handle the salon for an hour or two and you can save some cash. You do not have to rush into anything. No men, no mansions, no drama.”

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “I do not want to be anyone's pity.”

“This is not pity.” She tapped my hand. “This is Tash saving you from being an idiot.”

I let myself be saved because I could not be my own rescuer right now. I went to the salon the next day. I swept hair, washed scalps, and learned the rhythm of small tasks that made my brain stop spinning. Tasha fed me better food than I had eaten in weeks. People came in and out. The world moved and I had a place to stand in it.

But at night the silence came back. The quiet that held Antonio's absence like a weight. I kept saying I would call him back. I kept saying I would go to him when I felt better. I kept making lists of reasons to stay away. The lists were longer.

On the third night Tasha left the salon early and slept at a friend's house. I unlocked the door of my little room and found a message on the table. An envelope. No name. My heart started to beat a strange rhythm.

Inside was a small box for a pregnancy test. Someone had slid it under the door and left.

My first thought was paranoia. Who would give me that? Why leave it anonymous? My second thought was a memory, sharp and sudden, like a cut. The night at the mansion. The way his hands felt on me. The closeness between a man who does not do feelings and a woman who is both fragile and stubborn. My stomach clenched and twisted.

I stood there staring at the box for a long time. The idea of it made me dizzy. I thought about the life I had before, about rent and overdue bills and cheap dinners. I thought about a child and all the ways the world makes space for children by making space for less of the mother.

What scared me most was not the thought of being a mother. It was the thought of being a single mother in a city that never forgives weakness. It was the thought of Antonio thinking he had the right to decide everything by not deciding at all. It was the thought of telling him and being dismissed again as temporary.

I did not know why someone had left the test. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was a message. Maybe Lina had found it in the house and decided to poke at the wound. Maybe Bianca had sent it as a trap. The city is full of people who want to hurt others.

I put the box down and paced the room. I thought of the cheap clinics Tasha told me about. I thought of tests in boxes and bathrooms at three in the morning. I thought of decisions and consequences.

At two in the morning I could not stand the waiting anymore. I walked to the tiny grocery store on the corner where the lights never fully went out. I bought coffee and a second test, an anonymous one with a faded label. The cashier looked at me with that kind of pity that is worse than scorn.

Back in my room, I locked the door and turned the kettle on. My hands shook as I removed the tests from their wrappers. The fluorescent bulb in the ceiling hummed like a mosquito. The silence of the city outside was a steady thing. My breath sounded like thunder in my ears.

I thought about what it would mean if the test was positive. I thought about names, old movies I had seen where parents made impossible choices and somehow survived. I thought about Antonio's face when he had told me he did not do love. I thought about the way he had stood in front of me like a shield. I thought about the way he had left.

I used one test first because I was afraid. I waited. I watched the small window. Time slowed.

A single line appeared.

I let out a sound like someone breathing underwater. Not a laugh. Not a cry. Just a sound.

I hated myself for being relieved. I hated myself for wanting it to mean nothing. I hated myself for wanting it to mean everything.

Then I heard a knock at the door.

Hard. Insistent.

My heart leapt.

I looked at the test again. The second test still in its wrapper stared back at me like a judge. The knock sounded again, louder.

I wrapped my fingers around the test and moved to the door. My stomach was a stone of ice. I did not know who would be outside. I did not know if I wanted to face it.

I cracked the door open a fraction.

Antonio stood there. He was not looking at me. He was looking past me, at the hallway. Rain had left dark curls on his coat. His face was pale in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. His jaw was tight as if he had been holding in a storm.

“Kylie.” His voice was low. “We need to talk.”

My fingers tightened on the test case until it dug into my palm.

“I am not ready,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them.

He looked at me then, and for the first time since I met him I saw something that was nearly real. Not fury. Not control. Not the cold I knew. Fear. And something else that made the world tilt.

“Do you have any idea what you just left me with?” he asked.

My throat closed. I wanted to hide the tests. I wanted to tell him he had no right to ask that. I wanted to ask him what he meant. I wanted to run.

The rain started falling harder then, as if the sky had decided to settle this between us.

I realized I had not answered his question because I had not understood it.

And I realized, as the last streetlight flickered, what I had in my hand.

The test box felt like a secret on my skin.

My mouth went dry. I had stepped out of one life and into something that could not be walked away from.

I looked at Antonio.

And before I could say anything at all, the second test slipped from between my fingers and clattered to the floor.

It landed with the wrapper torn open, the small plastic window peeking up at us both.

We both froze.

My heart pounded so loud I could hear it in my teeth.

He bent down slowly to pick it up.

His fingers touched mine for a second.

Electric.

He lifted the test and held it up so the two of us could see.

There was a single line.

One line.

I let out a breath that might have been a sob.

Antonio’s face changed.

It was not the look of a man who had been dismissed. It was the look of a man who had been told a truth that would not be ignored.

“Is it one line?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He closed his eyes for a beat.

When he opened them again, they were hard and clear in a way I had never seen.

“Then we need to do this together,” he said.

My chest tightened.

Do this together.

I wanted to ask what together would look like.

Instead, I wrapped my hands around the box as if it could keep a secret.

And outside, the rain kept beating on the world like a relentless drum.