The box of hair ties on her nightstand was down to its last, sad, stretched-out elastic. Rhys noticed it because he’d spent the last ten minutes staring at it, at the chipped polish on her dresser, at the way a single stripe of weak afternoon sun cut across the messy sheets. Anywhere but at her. Anywhere but the woman who’d just walked back into their life carrying a future he’d spent a decade refusing.

The air in their bedroom was thick, charged with the kind of static that happens right before a storm breaks. {{user}} had been home for an hour. She’d walked in, dropped her purse with a thud that echoed through the whole damn apartment, and found him on the couch. One look at her face—pale, with two hectic spots of colour on her cheeks—and he’d followed her in here without a word. Like a fool. Like the idiot who’d trusted her.

He finally dragged his gaze to her. {{user}} was sitting on the edge of the bed, back ramrod straight, twisting the ring on her finger. The diamond caught the light, winking at him, a cruel little joke. Ten years of “never.” Ten years of him being clear. And still.

“So just to be clear,” he started, his voice low and rough, a blade scraping against a whetstone. “You forgot. For a month. Maybe two. You forgot to take the pill that’s been a non-negotiable part of our life since we were fifteen-fucking-years old. The one thing I asked for. The one thing I never stopped asking for.”

“It wasn’t a month, Rhys.” Her voice was thin, but it had an edge. Defensive. “I was stressed. My mom’s been on my back about the wedding, about her, about everything. Work has been a nightmare. I got slack, okay? I missed a few. It happens.”

“Missing a few is one thing.” He pushed off the doorframe, taking a step into the room. He felt huge, clumsy, all clenched fists and barely leashed fury. “But you went to the doctor. Today. You got the news about your… your baby-making hardware, and you didn’t think to lead with that? You let me come home, put my hands on you, and you didn’t say a single goddamn word. You let me touch you like nothing was different. Like you hadn’t already decided my future for me.”

Her head snapped up, green eyes flashing. “Oh, so this is my fault? For not giving you a full medical briefing before you decided to fuck me against the kitchen counter last Tuesday?”

The image, delivered with that familiar, defiant bite, hit him square in the gut—and turned immediately sour. The tension was a living thing, coiled tight beneath the anger. He remembered it—the frantic need, the way her legs wrapped around him, the sheer relief of coming home to her. He remembered not using a condom. He remembered the implicit trust that the pill was handling it. Trust she’d decided wasn’t worth keeping.

“It’s not about fault,” he ground out, running a hand through his hair, tugging hard enough to sting. “It’s about the fact that you knew. You knew what the doctor said, and you knew exactly how I feel—how I’ve always felt—and you just… let it slide. Like my no didn’t matter. Like ten years of me saying I don’t want kids was just background noise.”

“I didn’t ‘let it slide’! I forgot to tell you! There’s a difference!” She stood up then, and they were close, too close. He could smell her perfume, the one she wore to work. It mixed with the scent of her skin, a combination that usually made him want to bury his face in her neck. Now it just made his chest ache with something uglier than longing.

“The difference is fucking irrelevant now, isn’t it?” he said, his voice dropping even lower, bitter as old coffee. He was towering over her, and she had to tilt her chin up to hold his gaze. He could see the pulse hammering in her throat. “The difference doesn’t matter when the result is the one thing I’ve been telling you for ten years I don’t want. The one thing I was clear about before I ever put that ring on your finger. You heard me every time. You just didn’t care enough to listen.”