I looked directly at him.
“Yes.”
The word seemed to empty the strength from his body.
He reached for the wall and pressed his palm against it.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then his eyes filled.
Elias had never cried in front of me.
Not once.
He treated emotion like a crack in a foundation—something to conceal before anyone noticed the structure was vulnerable.
Now he stood beneath the fluorescent lights with tears gathering along his lower lashes.
“A son or a daughter?”
“A daughter.”
He let out a broken breath.
“Sophie was right,” he whispered.
“She always wanted a sister.”
I hated the tenderness in his voice because part of me had imagined that exact reaction.
I had pictured telling him in a hundred different ways.
At his kitchen table.
On the balcony of his penthouse.
With the test in my hand.
With an ultrasound photograph tucked into an envelope.
In none of those fantasies had I been wearing hospital scrubs while his injured child slept twenty feet away.
“When did you find out?” he asked.
“Three weeks after I left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The question carried enough accusation to ignite something cold inside me.
“You do not get to make me the guilty person here.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
He lowered his voice.
“I had a right to know.”
“And I had a right not to be abandoned after asking the man I loved for honesty.”
His mouth closed.
I stepped closer, keeping my tone controlled because nurses, parents, and sleeping children surrounded us.
“You told me you could not build a family.
I believed you.
I spent months preparing to raise this child without you because those were the terms you gave me.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was I.
I was simply the only one who stayed.”
He absorbed that without defending himself.
Dr.
Naomi appeared at the far end of the corridor.
She studied my face, then Elias’s, and understood enough not to ask questions.
“I’ll take over Sophie’s care for the night,” she said.
“Adelaide, go home.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have been on your feet for twelve hours.”
Elias immediately looked at my shoes, as if noticing for the first time that my ankles were swollen.
“I can drive you,” he said.
“No.”
“At least let me call a car.”
“I have a car.”
“Adelaide—”
“Your daughter is in that room.
Stay with her.”
