I chose the venue, the audience, the timing, and the terms.

And I waited, patiently, for two months, for the moment when all of them would align.

Julian handed me that moment on a freezing platform, thinking he was breaking me.

He was, in fact, springing a trap I had spent two months setting, and he walked into it smiling.

Chapter 5 — Fifteen Years

The heater in the airport Uber was working flawlessly, sending warm, dry air across my frozen fingertips, and I sank into the soft leather of the back seat and shut my eyes and rested one protective hand over my coat, over the small, steady rhythm of the life growing inside me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, so softly the driver could not possibly hear.