Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing came out.
Charlotte stood up.
“Answer me.”
Still silence.
Then the doctor sighed.
“Mr. Collins,” she said quietly, “I think we’re beyond pretending.”
Lucas turned sharply.
“What?”
She looked at him carefully.
“I recognize your name.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
Lucas froze.
“I saw your records during intake.”
Charlotte frowned.
“What records?”
The doctor hesitated.
Then she spoke.
“The procedure wasn’t a vasectomy.”
The room exploded into silence.
Lucas looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
“What?” I whispered.
The doctor looked directly at me.
“It was fertility testing.”
Charlotte’s face lost every trace of color.
Lucas’s eyes widened.
“No—”
“You’d been tested because of concerns about infertility.”
Charlotte took a slow step backward.
“No…”
The doctor continued.
“The results showed extremely low fertility levels.”
I stared.
I couldn’t breathe.
Lucas looked sick.
Actually sick.
Then Charlotte suddenly grabbed her stomach.
Her hand trembled.
“No,” she whispered.
No no no no—
Her eyes snapped toward Lucas.
Because beside me…
Charlotte was pregnant too.
She had been showing it subtly for weeks.
The hand on her stomach.
The careful smiles.
The secret glances.
And now…
Now she understood before anyone said it.
If Lucas could barely father children—
Then whose baby was she carrying?
Charlotte stared at him.
Lucas stared at Charlotte.
And I—
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because after months of losing everything…
For the first time—
I wasn’t the one whose world was falling apart.
