The world tilts.

I hear the words—know I do—but they slide off me at first, refusing to land anywhere real. They don’t make sense. Not in my head, not in my chest, not in the space between heartbeats where truth is supposed to settle. I just stare at {{user}}, frozen, like if I don’t move, don’t blink, the moment might rewind itself.

Pregnant.

They’re pregnant.

The sound of my pulse swells until it’s a roar, drowning out everything else. My breath catches halfway in, sharp and useless, trapped somewhere between my ribs like my body forgot how breathing works. My stomach lurches hard enough that I have to lock my knees to stay upright, panic slamming into me so fast and so violently I almost flinch away from them.

My hands go numb.

These hands—hands that have thrown punches until my knuckles split, hands that have hauled my brothers out of trouble, hands that know how to fight and fix and break but never how to hold something delicate—turn ice-cold at my sides. I curl my fingers like that might keep them from shaking.

I swallow, once. Twice. It doesn’t help. Nothing does.

Because suddenly I’m sixteen again, standing in a doorway that smells like cheap whiskey and old anger. My father’s voice is slurred and loud, filling every corner of the house, spilling over everything good until there’s no room left for it. My mother is there too, silent, hollow-eyed, already gone in all the ways that matter. And I remember the crushing certainty that my life had been mapped out for me before I ever got a choice.

I remember thinking: This is how it starts. This is how it happens.

My chest tightens until it hurts.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t fucking breathe.

{{user}} says my name—soft, but steady. Grounded. Like they’re trying to throw me a rope before I disappear completely. Their voice cuts through the noise just enough for me to feel how far gone I already am. My head shakes, fast and sharp. Not at them. Never at them. At the terror clawing its way up my throat, scraping me raw from the inside out.

“I’m not him,” I rasp, the words tearing their way out of my chest. Like if I say it fast enough, hard enough, it’ll stick. Like saying it might build a wall between me and the man I swore I’d never become. “I’m not.”

My vision blurs and I blink hard, jaw clenched so tight it aches. “I don’t want to ruin you like he ruined her,” I continue, voice breaking despite my grip on it. “I don’t want to—” I stop, swallow again, force it out. “I don’t want to destroy you, {{user}}.”

Because if I say it out loud—if I give the fear a name—maybe it won’t own me.

Maybe I won’t ruin them.

Maybe I won’t ruin this.

But the truth sits heavy and ugly in my chest: I don’t know how to be anything else. I don’t know how to be safe, or gentle, or good when everything I learned came from fire and fallout. All I know is how to survive. How to brace for impact. How to become the thing that doesn’t break first.

And what if that’s not enough?

What if that’s exactly how it starts?