Kerr Bannerham wasn’t the type to sit still. He lived with his pulse racing—half from substances, half from the constant need to drown out silence. But tonight, the noise wasn’t from his truck’s subs or from his mates in the back. It was the silence after {{user}}’s words. A pregnancy scare. The kind of phrase that ripped the air out of a room.

He sat on the edge of his mattress, elbows on his knees, his rings pressing into his palms. The sheets smelled like cigarettes, stale lager, and her perfume—all tangled into a scent that belonged to them and no one else. His head was buzzing, not from drink this time, but from the thought of it. A kid. His kid.

Half of him wanted to laugh, shake it off, call it impossible. He was Kerr Bannerham—the boy who spent more nights in someone else’s backseat than in his own house, the dealer who couldn’t go a week without a blackout, the lad everyone’s parents warned them about. He couldn’t be a father. He didn’t even know how to be a son. His own da was a ghost, a man-shaped shadow that left only bitterness behind. Kerr had taught himself that love came in bottles and powder, in hands gripping too tightly, in recklessness. A baby in his arms? It didn’t make sense.

But the other half… the quieter, crueler half… it hoped. Just a flicker of a thought, but it burned all the same. He pictured her, round-bellied and soft-eyed, wearing one of his hoodies. He imagined holding something small, something his. A family he didn’t deserve but maybe could build out of broken parts.

He dragged his hands down his face, staring at the cracks in the ceiling of his room. The house was cold; the space heater wheezed in the corner, failing to chase away the damp. His mates were gone for the night, the echoes of their laughter still clinging to the hall. It was just him and his thoughts, and thoughts were more dangerous than any bottle.

He thought about the life he lived—the late-night runs, the fights outside pubs, the pills hidden in his jacket pocket. He thought about {{user}} caught up in all that, already shouldering more than they should just by being near him. Could he really add a baby into the chaos? Could he keep anything alive besides his own chaos?

Still, his thumb traced over the tattoo on his collarbone, the one that read Never Forgive. He wondered, just for a second, if maybe being a dad would mean forgiving himself. If maybe the cycle could break. If maybe he wouldn’t be his father after all.

But then the darker part of his head sneered at him—Kerr Bannerham, the drunk, the dealer, the screw-up. A father? He could barely remember to eat before passing out some nights. He shoved the hope down, stuffed it somewhere deep where it couldn’t choke him.