Chapter 5

Ethan’s face went white.

"Nina —" His voice rose, sharp with something like panic.

"How can you say that? That was my first child too. Why would I ever have let you fall on purpose?"

I looked down at his hand. The hand still gripping mine.

The hand that, three years ago, hadn't caught me.

The same hand that was now holding mine — and asking me, very tenderly, to lose another one.

"So." I drew my hand, slowly, out of his.

My voice was very quiet now.

"Your mother shoving me. You not catching me. Our baby dying."

"That was all just an accident."

"Yes," he said, almost desperate.

"Yes. It was an accident. Nobody wanted it to happen."

"Then tell me." I held his eyes. "Is this one an accident, too?"

He didn't answer.

This is for the baby he wants me to kill.

"Her getting pregnant is an accident. You asking me to abort our baby is an accident."

"Tell me something, Ethan. Why is it that every Lockwood accident always happens to me?"

The color came rushing back into his face in a furious red wave.

The room was silent for a long time.

For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't speak again at all.

Then, in a voice cracking at the edges, he said: "Nina. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, raw, like he hadn't slept in days.

"There's you on one side. Her on the other. And two babies."

"What the hell am I supposed to do?"

I looked at him.

"What are you supposed to do?" My voice was deadly quiet.

"I'm the one asking what I am supposed to do."

And then, because I couldn't hold it in for one more second, I broke.

"She's young. First pregnancy. Bad for her body. So she gets to walk away unscathed — and I deserve to suffer?"

I was shaking.

"She gets a Presidential Suite and twins and a future. And I get the operating table. Is that the math, Ethan?"

"That's not what I meant —"

"Then what did you mean?"

He didn't answer.

I looked at this face I had looked at across a pillow for three years, and suddenly it felt foreign.

"Ethan." My voice came out so quiet, it didn't even sound like me.

"Do you know what that's called?"

His lips moved, but nothing came out.

"It's called murder," I said, slow and even.

"You're asking me to kill my own baby with my own hands."

"So I can raise your bastards."

"Nina —"

I didn't think about it. I didn't decide.

I raised my hand and slapped him across the face as hard as I could.

The crack of it rang through the apartment.

His head snapped sideways. He didn't move. He just stayed frozen there, half-kneeling on the carpet at my feet, one hand drifting up to cover his cheek.

My palm was numb.

My chest was worse.

"That slap," I said, "was for the baby in my stomach."

I stood up. I didn't shake. I didn't cry.

"Ethan. You are the one who didn't want him."

I looked down at him and took a breath.

"I want a divorce."