My fingers went numb as I gripped the edge of the desk. Sounds faded, replaced by a roaring in my ears. Jake had found it—the test I’d hidden in the back of the bathroom cabinet, tucked behind towels and cleaning supplies, hoping—foolishly—that I’d have time to explain everything properly.
I hadn’t even told him yet. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was terrified.
Terrified of hope. Terrified of disappointment. Terrified of reopening wounds we had spent years trying to stitch together.
Jake and I had been married for seven years. Seven years of love, laughter, and quiet companionship—and seven years of negative tests, doctor visits, polite sympathy, and whispered apologies in the dark.
When the doctors told Jake he was infertile, something inside him broke. He never said it outright, but I saw it in the slump of his shoulders, in the way he avoided conversations about children, in the apologies he offered for things that were never his fault.
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