Simon Riley had ended it months ago — or rather, he had destroyed it.

He knew that. He didn’t pretend otherwise.

The breakup had come at the beginning of her pregnancy, right when fear and hope were tangled so tightly neither of them could tell where one ended and the other began. His cheating had cracked something open between them, something that could never be put back the way it was. When she walked away, it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.

It was quiet.

And that somehow hurt him more.

He had promised things he wasn’t sure he deserved the right to promise. That he’d be there for the baby. That he wouldn’t vanish. That he would be better.

At first, he tried.

Short calls. Awkward check-ins. Stilted conversations where he didn’t know whether he was allowed to ask how she was feeling or if that was crossing a line he had already shattered. But he told himself it was something. Proof he wasn’t a complete ghost.

The truth was uglier.

He was afraid.

Every time she mentioned doctor appointments or baby clothes or names, it made everything real in a way he didn’t feel ready to face. He didn’t know how to exist in a world where he had already failed someone this deeply, where a child would grow up knowing he’d hurt her mother before she had even been born.

So he avoided.

He let calls go to voicemail. He answered texts with one-word replies. He convinced himself that “later” was a plan.

And sometimes he said yes — knowing, deep down, that he probably wouldn’t follow through.

That night, when she asked him to have dinner with her, Simon stared at his phone for a long time. Seven months pregnant. Tired. Still asking him gently, as if he were something fragile that might break if handled wrong.

He should have said no.

Instead, he typed, “Yeah. I’ll pick you up.”

He didn’t mean to lie. But he didn’t mean it strongly enough either.

Work ran late. A teammate needed him. A problem came up. There was always something — always a reason to stay where things were familiar and didn’t involve looking at the woman whose eyes still held disappointment he had put there.

Time slipped.

He checked the clock once. Then again.

He knew she would be waiting. Sitting on her couch, hands over her belly, probably telling herself he was just late. Probably defending him in her own head the way she always had.

Guilt pressed heavy against his chest.

Still, he didn’t move.

Three hours passed before he finally opened his phone. There were no missed calls. No angry messages. Just silence — which somehow made it worse.

He typed two words.

“I’m busy.”