I locked the front door anyway.
I grabbed my overnight bag from the trunk, got in my car, and drove straight to my mom’s house across town.
My phone started buzzing before I hit the end of the street.
Harper calling. Again. Again. Again.
Blocked.
Blake texting:
Rowan, please. Let me explain. It was a mistake. Think of the baby.
I stared at those words until something cold and final settled inside me.
Then I typed back:
I am. That’s exactly why I’m done.
Blocked.
I didn’t drive to my mother’s house like I was fleeing.
I drove like I was crossing a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
The streets blurred past in late-afternoon sun, and my hands stayed locked at ten and two on the steering wheel with a kind of calm that frightened me. It wasn’t peace. It wasn’t relief. It was shock—your body’s emergency setting when reality arrives too fast.
My phone buzzed, buzzed, buzzed.
I didn’t look.
My eyes stayed on the road.
I kept one hand near my stomach, as if holding my baby could hold my life together.
When I pulled into my mom’s driveway, my chest finally tightened enough that I had to sit there for a second, breathing shallowly, staring at the familiar front porch and the potted mums she always kept in the fall.
My mom opened the door before I even knocked.
She took one look at my face and didn’t ask what happened.
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into warmth and safety so fast it made my knees go weak.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered into my hair. “Oh, Rowan.”
That was when my control cracked—not fully, not the way movies show it, but enough. A choked sound came out of me and my shoulders shook.
“I feel stupid,” I managed.
My mom pulled back just enough to look directly into my eyes.
“No,” she said firmly, like she could command the word into my bones. “No. They are cruel. You are not stupid. Don’t you dare carry their shame for them.”
She guided me inside, down the hallway, into the guest room that had always been waiting for me in ways I never appreciated until that moment. Clean sheets. A lamp turned on. A glass of water on the nightstand like she’d already predicted I’d need it.
She didn’t push questions.
She didn’t demand details.
She just said, “Sit,” like it was the only thing that mattered.
I sat.
And for the first time since the black balloons rose into the sky, I let the sound of my own breathing catch up to me.
1. The First Night
That night, I didn’t sleep.
I lay on my side with my hand on my stomach, feeling the tiny shifting life inside me, and I kept picturing Blake’s face in the backyard—how fast his charm had evaporated, how instantly he’d turned on me like I’d broken some unspoken rule.
As if I was the one who had done something wrong.
His texts kept coming until I blocked him.
Before I blocked him, I read one of them by accident—my thumb sliding across the screen.
Rowan, please. Let me explain. It’s not what you think. Harper made a mistake too. Don’t do this in front of everyone.
That last line made my teeth clench.
Don’t do this in front of everyone.
As if betrayal was fine as long as it stayed hidden.
As if my pain was acceptable in private but unacceptable in public.
As if my dignity was an inconvenience.
My mom came into the room around midnight, holding a mug of tea.
