Five Years of IVF While He Already Had Twins Chapter 07
After that fight, the apartment fell silent again.
No more tomato–basil soup. No extra breath in the air. Alec had vanished from my sight, just like I’d demanded.
I thought he’d gone back to New York. Thought he’d finally given up.
But the next morning, when I opened the door, there was a bouquet of white roses. No card. No name. Just that bunch of flowers leaning against the doorframe.
looked at it for three seconds, then threw it in the trash.
The next morning, another bouquet.
The fourth day. The fifth. Every single day. I threw away thirteen mornings of white roses.
Zoe and I stopped mentioning his name. We pretended life was back on track, pretended the man who
dontrolled the East Coast underworld had never set foot in this tiny town.
One night, I worked late at the office. The Nora offices had moved from my living room to a real building.
Heavy fog. Visibility terrible. To get home faster, I took a shortcut I rarely used. A narrow alley with two
broken streetlights, black as an abyss.
Two blocks from home, I heard footsteps behind me
I walked faster. The footsteps sped up. I slowed down. They slowed down.
The footsteps were rapid, messy–cheap rubber soles on pavement.
I hurried. Just as I reached the alley’s end, a dirty hand smelling of sweat and cheap drugs grabbed my bag.
“Money, bitch! Now!”
A junkie. In that instant, I smelled rust and cheap narcotics.
if this had been before, I’d have had a hundred ways to take him down. But my heavy body made me a helpless sheep.
“Let go!” I shoved at him, stumbling backward, trying to protect my belly.
The junkie got angry. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket. The blade glittered murderously in the dim light.
“If you don’t want to die-”
Thud.
Before he could finish, a massive shadow blocked out the world.
A dull thud. The junkie didn’t even have time to scream. He flew like a broken doll, slamming into the brick wall a few meters away and sliding down limp.
Alec stood there.
He wore tactical gear, breathing hard, eyes as savage as a wolf that had just killed.
But when he turned to me, that violence vanished into pure panic.
“Ella!”
His hands were shaking. He wanted to hold me but didn’t dare–the carefulness of someone who’d been rejected too many times.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. Are you hurt? Did he hit your belly?”
Then the fear and adrenaline faded. In their place, tearing pain.
Something warm ran down my leg.
Ah-“I tried to grab something, anything, but could only double over.
My water had broken.
“The baby… Alec, the baby…”
His face went white under the streetlight. Then I was in the air. He’d swept me up, holding me in a way that needed no thought–as if I was part of his bones.
The rest was fragments.
Tires screaming on asphalt. Horns blaring as we ran red lights. The suffocating smell of a hospital.
And his voice.
“Hold on. Please. Hold on.”
He kept repeating it, his voice shattered like broken glass.
Hours later, a cry cut through the operating room air.
Weak, like a kitten’s. But the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
When I woke, the hospital room was dim.
Alec sat in the chair by the bed, still wearing that tactical jacket stained with dust and blood. His head was in his hands, his whole body sagging like his spine had been pulled out.
When he heard me stir, his head snapped up. His eyes were terrifyingly red, carrying the exhaustion of someone who’d survived his own death.
“A boy,” his voice was barely audible. “He’s in the incubator. The doctor says he’s healthy.”
I looked at him and let out a breath.
“Thank you.” I forced the word out.
He smiled bitterly. Shook his head. “Don’t thank me. If not for me, you might never have ”
“You saved us.”
Silence filled the room.
After a long time, he stood, like he’d made a decision.
“I’ll sleep on the bench in the hall. Or in the car. need anything, press the call button. They’ll tell me. When you’re discharged, I’ll leave.”
He turned toward the door. His back was hunched.
“Don’t go.”
The words came out of my mouth before I knew it.
Alec stopped. His hand gripped the doorknob.
Knuckles white.
“I didn’t say you could stay.” I looked at the ceiling. My voice was light. “But for the next few days… the couch yours.”
He turned back. A flicker of impossible hope in his eyes.
“Don’t think I’m playing along with some dramatic act,” I added, “It’s for the baby. You should do your fatherly duty.”
“okay.”
He agreed so fast, like he was afraid I’d change my mind.
“And,” I closed my eyes, hiding the complicated feelings, “stop sending those damn white roses. I don’t like them.”
“I understand.” There was finally some warmth in his voice. “What about baby’s breath instead?”
I didn’t answer.
Some cracks can’t be healed. Some wounds never fully close. But watching the dawn light filter through the window, the night that had once suffocated me seemed finally over.
The door closed softly, but not all the way.
Like there was finally a crack of air between us.
THE END