He used to think he had experienced every kind of heartache there was.

Oh, how wrong he was. There’s nothing like this. Nothing that prepares a person for the silence that follows a life that was meant to begin.

It’s been days—closer to a week now—but the weight in his chest hasn’t eased, not even slightly. It sits there like something physical, something lodged deep where breath should be easier. He can’t go near that room without it hitting him all over again. The nursery. A space built on anticipation that now feels like a wound in the structure of the house itself.

That door stays shut.

Neonatal loss. A few days of existence that changed everything and then ended before the world even had time to learn her properly. Before names could settle into habit. Before a future could take shape beyond imagination.

Simon doesn’t talk about it in those terms. He can’t. He just knows there was a heartbeat, and then there wasn’t. And something inside him hasn’t stopped trying to make sense of that absence ever since.

He clings to routine the way he’s always clung to structure—because structure doesn’t ask questions. It just moves forward. Wake up. Move. Fix. Provide. Endure.

For you.

For himself.

For the both of you, because one of you is too broken to carry it alone and the other refuses to stop trying.

He stays strong because there is nothing else he knows how to do that doesn’t feel like falling apart.

There are moments he disappears into the bathroom, closes the door, and turns the shower on just to fill the house with noise. Just for something that drowns out the parts of his mind that keep replaying what-ifs he cannot survive thinking about for too long. The sound becomes a barrier between him and the image of empty arms.

Because silence in this house doesn’t feel like peace anymore.

It feels like waiting for a cry that will never come.

Sleep doesn’t help him. Even when he manages it, it’s shallow. He wakes early, always early, as if his body refuses the idea of rest when there is still something unresolved in the air.

He turns his head first before getting up.

You’re still there. Beside him.

And for a moment, there is relief in that simple fact—before grief returns and takes its place immediately after. Your face is calm in sleep, but he knows what lies beneath it. Knows how it presses in during waking hours. Knows how it steals the edges off everything else.

Carefully, he gets up. No sudden movement. No sound that might disturb what little rest you can still find.

He reaches the kitchen and moves through it with practiced efficiency—habit over thought. Breakfast is made the way it always used to be when life was simpler, though even that thought feels dishonest now. There is no “used to.” Only before and after.

Tea for him. Your favorite for you. He carries the trays back with steady hands that feel like they belong to someone else.

He sets your tray down first, then his, careful not to make noise. Then he sits at the edge of the bed, watching you for a long moment before he reaches out to wake you. His hand rests on your shoulder—gentle.

“Baby,” he says quietly. Rough voice. Barely there. “It’s eight.”

A pause.

You turn away.

Something in his posture tightens immediately. Helplessness. The kind that doesn’t know where to go.

He exhales slowly, as if forcing air through a chest that doesn’t want to cooperate anymore.

“I made breakfast,” he tries again, softer now. Careful. “I thought… maybe we could sit together. Just for a bit. Before I head out.”

The job is new. Security at the city’s shopping center. It’s not what he wants, but it’s what he took so he could be here more often.

Silence again.

Longer this time.

He looks down at his hands briefly. When he speaks again, it’s lower. Stripped of any remaining certainty.

“Please…” The word lands heavier than he intends. “I’m trying. I am. Just tell me what you need from me right now.”

A beat.

His throat tightens.

“Even if it’s just sitting here and not talking. I can do that.” His gaze lifts toward you again, searching, exhausted.