I Left with His Baby, He Knelt Too Late

It wasn't that he couldn't sleep alone. It was that he'd grown used to sleeping with Eudora beside him.

Even on nights they didn't touch, all he needed was to reach over and feel the warmth of her body, and something in him would settle.

“Gavin, are you……thinking about Eudora?”

Lauren's voice was careful, testing.

Gavin cut into his steak without looking up, his expression cold.

“Why would I think about her? Ungrateful wretch I never should've fed.”

“It's just……I found this in the back of the closet.”

Lauren held out a crumpled sheet of paper.

A lab report from the hospital.

Gavin took it, glanced down with casual disinterest, and his pupils contracted sharply.

“Pregnancy test positive……”

The date was……a month ago?

That day she'd said she wanted to have a baby. He'd assumed she was scheming, and he'd humiliated her for it.

She was already pregnant then?

His hand began to shake. His wine glass tipped, and dark red pooled across the white tablecloth like a stain that looked too much like blood.

“She's pregnant……”

The words left him barely above a whisper. Eudora's face flashed through his mind, pale as it had been that day, and then that final resolute look in her eyes.

“I want your seed. But I don't want you anymore.”

The words looped through his skull like a curse.

He'd always believed she'd said it out of anger.

She'd meant every word.

She had taken his child and run.

“Get the car. The care facility. Now!”

He shoved back from the table, the chair shrieking across the floor.

If she was going to leave, she'd take her sickly grandmother with her. Find the grandmother, find her.

The room at the care facility was already empty.

“Stella Henson? She was transferred out two weeks ago.”

The nurse scrolled through the records.

“It looks like she was moved to……I'm sorry, the family requested confidentiality.”

Gavin stood in the middle of the empty room, and it felt like every drop of blood in his body was running the wrong way.

She had planned all of this. Every step, him included, and then she'd walked away without a trace.

“Eudora Henson……”

He ground her name between his teeth, and the panic rising in his chest finally drowned out the anger.

He couldn't find her.

The woman who had always come when called, who had always stood exactly half a step behind him, had vanished from his world completely.

“President Delgado, we found something!”

His assistant rushed in, sweat beading across his forehead.

“A property under Connor Harding's name, there's been recent power usage, and……someone spotted a woman matching Ms. Henson's description nearby.”

“Where?”

“Seabrook. A seaside village.”

Gavin was out the door before the sentence ended.

Eudora Henson, when I get my hands on you, I'll break your legs.

He was vicious in his head, but his trembling fingers gave him away.

He was afraid.

Afraid that she truly didn't want him anymore.

Seabrook—the sea breeze tasting faintly of salt.

I'd rented a little courtyard house by the shore. Sun on my skin every morning, flowers to tend, days that unfolded slow and easy.

My belly had started to round. Connor found me a dependable auntie to handle meals and keep the house running, and every weekend he flew down himself, arms loaded with supplements and baby things.

“How's this rocking horse look? Gotta have something for my future godson to ride.”

Connor crouched in the courtyard assembling it, sweat beading across his forehead.

I sat in the rocking chair and watched him, smiling.

“How do you know it's a boy? What if it's a girl?”

“Even better! A girl who looks like you. Beautiful.”

Connor lifted his head, and sunlight spilled across his face—bright enough to make me squint.