All Chapters of LOVE ME OR HATE ME: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Aria's POVThe doctor came at eight in the morning.I had been awake since six. Not because the hospital had been uncomfortable exactly. Because hospitals had a specific quality of light and sound at six in the morning that made sleep feel like something happening in a different room that you were not quite invited into. The monitors. The corridor sounds. The particular quality of a place that did not fully stop at any hour.Daniel was still in the chair.He had not left.I had woken at two and at four and each time he had been in the chair with his hand still near mine and his jacket off and the specific quality of a man who had decided where he was going to be and was being there completely.At six I had looked at him and he had looked at me and neither of us had said anything because nothing needed to be said.The doctor came at eight.She looked at the monitors. She reviewed the notes from overnight. She asked me questions that I answered and she listened to the answers with the f

Aria's POVI started writing them in the second trimester.Not because I had planned to. Because one evening I was sitting at the kitchen table with my tea and the MBA module open on my laptop and the specific quality of a quiet Tuesday that had nowhere to be and I found myself thinking about the baby and then thinking about all the things I wanted the baby to know and then opening a fresh page in the small notebook and writing the first one.It was short.The first ones were always short. The specific brevity of someone who has not yet found the full register of what they are trying to say and is beginning with what is immediately available.I wrote more over the following weeks.Not every day. Not with any particular schedule. Just when something arrived that felt like it belonged in the notebook. A thought about Daniel. Something I had noticed. A moment from the floor or the apartment or the Sunday mornings that had continued to be mine even through pregnancy because running had be

Aria's POVThe results came on a Thursday afternoon.Not dramatically. Just an email notification from the university portal with the specific subject line that the program used for grade releases. I had been checking the portal every day for two weeks with the specific focused attention of a woman who had submitted work she was confident in and was still checking compulsively because confidence and certainty were not the same thing.I opened it at my desk.I read it.I read it again.Distinction across the board.Every module. Every assessment. The specific clean achievement of a result that left no room for interpretation or uncertainty. Not adequate. Not good. The top category. The one that had always been the goal and that I had worked toward through the first trimester exhaustion and the hospital scare and the weeks of working from home and the specific discipline of a woman who had decided she was going to do this and was doing it.I stared at the screen."I got distinctions," I

Daniel's POVI started on a Saturday morning.Not because Saturday was the planned day. Because I had been looking at the flat-packed boxes in the spare room for two weeks and on Saturday morning I woke up at six and lay in the dark for twenty minutes and then got up and went to the spare room and started.The boxes had been sitting there since the delivery. Seven of them. The specific careful stack of a furniture order that had been placed after considerable research into what a nursery required and what the specific dimensions of the room could accommodate and what was actually necessary versus what was marketed as necessary.I had done the research.I had ordered accordingly.I had not yet opened the boxes because opening the boxes meant building what was inside them and building what was inside them was something I had been carrying as the next thing for two weeks without yet doing it.On Saturday morning at six fifteen I opened the first box.---Aria appeared at the doorway at n

Aria's POVThe announcement went out on a Friday morning.Daniel had prepared it with the specific clean efficiency he brought to things he had decided and was communicating without ambiguity. Not a long statement. Not the elaborate professional language of a corporate restructuring designed to soften the edges of a significant change. Just the facts of it. The new role. The responsibilities. The effective date.And one sentence at the end that was not strictly necessary from a professional communications standpoint and that he had included anyway.*Mrs. Cole's contribution to this organization has been significantly undervalued by her previous title. This promotion corrects that.*I read it at my desk.Then I read the last sentence again.I picked up my coffee.I went back to work.---Becca found out at nine fifteen.She appeared at the door of what was still technically my old desk space with her coffee and the expression of a woman who had just read something on her screen and was