LOGIN**Angela's POV**Marcus looked at me.I looked at Marcus.Eli was already gone. He was in a fast, deep sleep that only children can fall into, his small chest rising and falling, and one hand still loosely gripping the edge of the duvet."I can take the couch," Marcus said quietly."The couch is small," I said. Also quietly. Because the room required it."I've slept on smaller, you do not have to worry""I know you have."We were both whispering now without deciding to. The way the presence of a sleeping child pulls adults into a different register .... softer, slower, more careful."Marcus." I looked at Eli between us. "Just stay on your side."He nodded.I turned the lamp off.---The dark settled.Eli shifted in his sleep and burrowed instinctively toward warmth, toward Marcus, as it happened and Marcus adjusted without waking him, pulling the duvet up around his small shoulders with the practiced ease of a father who had done this a thousand times in a life where he wasn't the one
**Angela's POV**I told myself this was fine.Marcus coming over was fine. It was necessary. Eli needed his father and I was not the kind of woman who used a child as a weapon in an adult argument. Whatever happened was between Marcus and me and right now what was between us was a lot but it had nothing to do with my son's right to have his father in his life.So yes. Marcus was in my living room. Playing aeroplanes with Eli, lifting him above his head while Eli screamed with laughter. And I was in the kitchen making tea I didn't want and pretending to be very interested in the wall."Angela." Marcus's voice floated in. "There's no sugar in this house.""It's on the top cupboard," I said. To the wall."I checked the top cupboard.""Check the second shelf."He paused, He was rustling. "Found it." Another pause. "Thank you."I said nothing.Eli came barreling into the kitchen with the energy of someone who had been airplaned and was not yet ready for the experience to be over. He grabb
**Liam's POV**---She came home quiet, she did not speak much and it bothered me. This was not the easy settled silence that had become normal between us. This was another kind. The kind that had weight to it. That sat in the room and made itself known.I looked up from my laptop the moment she walked in."Hey." I closed it, giving her all my attention. "What happened?""Nothing.""It does not look like nothing ."She sat down on the edge of the sofa and stared at the wall for a moment. Then she turned and looked at me with an expression that told me she had been carrying something the entire drive home and had finally run out of road."I went to see my mum," she said."Okay." I waited."And before that..." She stopped and started again. "Liam, do you know a nurse on your father's ward? Angela?"I thought about it. "The one with dark hair? That works the afternoon shift?""Yes." She looked at her hands. "I ran into her at the hospital café a few weeks ago. She said something to me t
**Elena's POV**The door opened before I could knock.My mother stood in the doorway like she had been frozen for close to an hour, that's how rigid she was. One of her hand was still on the handle of the door, the other was holding a dish towel, her face doing something complicated that moved through surprise and relief and something else I couldn't immediately name, all in the space of about two seconds.We stared at each other without a word even though we had plenty things to say to each other. "Elena, welcome" she said."Hi, Mum."She looked at my bump.Then back at my face.Then at the bump again."You didn't call before coming," she said."I know.""You should have called.""I know, Mum."She stepped aside without another word and I walked in.---The living room was exactly the same way I left it.. Same curtains, same photographs on the wall, same particular smell of the house I had grown up in. I sat on the sofa and she sat across from me and we existed in the specific awkw
**Elena's POV**---I was still deciding between my several options when I felt it.That specific awareness, the kind that happens when someone you know has entered a space you're in, before you've even seen them. Like a shift in the air.I glanced sideways.Liam was walking toward the treadmill section with a water bottle in his hand and the calm, unhurried stride of a man with nowhere urgent to be. He saw me. He saw Derek. He read the situation in approximately one second.And then he did the last thing I expected.He didn't pull up. Didn't fold his arms. Didn't do the husband thing.He walked straight up to the treadmill on my other side, stepped on, set it to my exact speed, and looked at Derek with a completely straight face."Sorry, am I interrupting?" he said pleasantly."Little bit," Derek said, equally pleasant."Great." Liam turned to me. "Hi. I couldn't help noticing you from across the gym. You have an incredible energy."I stared at him."I'm sorry what?...""I'm sorry, d
**Elena's POV**"I cannot believe I let you talk me into this.""You agreed," Liam said, holding the gym door open with the energy of a man who had won a very long negotiation and was savouring it."Under duress.""You set the terms yourself.""I said I would only come if you came with me." I waddled through the door and immediately resented the smell . It smelled of rubber and effort and people who made voluntary choices about their mornings. "That was a condition. Not an agreement.""Those are the same thing.""They are absolutely not the same thing."The gym was bright and spacious and full of people who had clearly been awake since five AM and were very pleased about it. I looked at them the way a person looks at something they cannot relate to on any fundamental level.Liam was already at the equipment section, pulling out a light resistance band and laying it on a mat like a man who had a plan and had consulted the colour-coded pregnancy book before arriving."Start here," he sa
*Liam's POV*I couldn’t help it. The second Elena’s eyes flew open in pure horror after she’d just thrown up on me, a deep belly laugh exploded out of me. It started low and rumbled through my whole body until I was doubled over, clutching my stomach. Her face was priceless!. Those wide, mortified
*Angela's POV*The house was dark when I got home.I checked my phone. 11:43 PM. I pressed my eyes shut for a second, standing at the front door with my bag on my shoulder and my feet aching and the particular exhaustion that lives not just in the body but somewhere deeper — in the part of you that
*Elena's POV*I was having the most perfect dream.I don't even remember what it was about. Something warm and quiet and entirely undisturbed. The kind of sleep that holds you so gently you don't even know you're in it until something interrupts it.There was a knock on my door.A soft knock. Three
*Angela's POV*My phone rang at 6:47 AM.I was already awake. I had been awake since five, sitting at the kitchen table with my third cup of coffee and a patient file I had brought home — which I knew I wasn't supposed to do, which Marcus had told me three times this week alone was a problem, which







