I couldn’t cry at first, not when they wheeled me into the emergency room, when they strapped the machines to my belly, or even when I heard my baby’s heartbeat thumping steady through the static but later when the nurses dimmed the lights and left me alone, it came all at once.
The sob didn’t come from my throat. It cracked up from my chest like something splitting open.
Noah sat silently in the chair beside me, hands laced, head bowed as if he’d been holding the pain in for both of us.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He looked at me, eyes bloodshot but still sharp. “For what?”
“For dragging you into my mess.”
“This isn’t your mess, Grace. It’s ours.”
I wanted to believe him but deep down, all I could hear were the whispers, the headlines, the judgment crawling through every comment sect
