Doctor Boss Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Two Years

Rhys's POV

The helipad on the roof of St. Brendan's is the one place in the building where nobody pages me.

I drove there in a dinner jacket with the heater off.

The security guard looked at my face and decided not to say good evening.

I took the stairs.

At the top, I propped the steel door with a chair and walked out into the falling snow.

It came down slowly through the floodlights and settled on my shoulders.

I stood in the middle of the painted circle and said it aloud to see if it was true.

"She chose it."

The wind took the words.

For two years, I had kept a small room in myself for a child who stopped at nine weeks.

I had furnished it carefully.

I had put in every apology I never made.

I had put in every hour I spent in a theater with my hands inside a stranger while the people I loved were somewhere else.

I had taken the bracelet out of the box at night and read the name on it.

Tonight a woman in a white dress had stood in a microphone's light and told two hundred people that the room was a stage set.

And the worst of it was that she was right about one thing.

It made me bend over with my hands on my knees.

There had been a baby.

She had been carrying it, and then she had not, and I had mourned it exactly as she had meant me to.

I had held her through it.

I had gone quiet and apologized for the quiet.

I had let her tell me I'd failed her, and I had agreed.

On Tuesday, in my own kitchen, I had looked at the one person who tried to tell me the truth.

I had said, you'd want this to be true.

I said that to Valeria.

I said it to a woman who was twenty-nine weeks pregnant, with my child kicking her ribs.

She had stood up in a ballroom to say it out loud so that I would not have to.

The door scraped behind me.

I did not turn around.

Footsteps came across the concrete, slow, with a pause every few feet.

"Eight flights," Valeria said, behind me, breathing hard. "I'd like it noted that there is a perfectly good elevator."

"You shouldn't be climbing."

"I know. Jody's downstairs in the car with the heater on, sulking. She says if I faint she'll tell everyone it was her idea."

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend