“Dr. who?” I growl.
“She’s a friend. Off-grid. One I can trust. She’s the one I called from the cabin and ran the labs. She’s the reason I’m spiraling out of control right now.”
“Okay.” If she says we can trust her, I have to trust her judgment.
Kiera snorts. “I’m telling you because you’re… involved,” she says. “Biologically. Emotionally. Idiotically. Pick your adverb. I’m not asking you to decide for me. That’s not fucking happening. But if you were going to bolt, I’d rather know now than halfway through whatever this turns into. You get to have a voice, too. I just need to prepare for how you feel.”
The idea of bolting hadn’t even made it onto the list. Neither had the idea of being allowed to love something so pure. “I’m not going anywhere,” I swear. The words come easier than I expected. “If you keep it, I’m in. If you don’t, I’m still fucking in. If you want to hide it from everyone until you’re ready to say it out loud again, I’m in.You are mine. Whether we keep this child or not.” I pull her into me. “Just remember, while you’re deciding, that this wasn’t Cicada. This was us. They had no part in the opera, and they have no part in this child. That was all us,Thorn, no one else.” I’m practically begging her not to spiral and make a decision based on someone else.
Kiera looks at me, searching my eyes, like she’s checking for cracks. “And if I decide I want it? If I decide I want the opera to be where this started, what then?”
“Then we make it ours,” I say before I can overthink it. “Not theirs. We build whatever paranoid, fucked-up version of safe we can manage around you and…” I swallow the word kid. It feels too big. “Around this.” I place my hands gently on her stomach.
Something in Kiera’s expression flickers, then steadies. “You know that probably means running. Eventually. We can’t keep doing this job with… that in the equation.”
“I know,” I agree. “I’m not married to Cicada’s to-do list. And we have friends who can help carry out the rest of the plan if needed. We can take a step back and figure this out.” She starts to cut me off, but I stop her. “No, I’m not saying you can’t be involved, but it will be behind the scenes, calling the shots if you decide to keep it.
“Since when do you compromise?” she asks, skeptical.
“Since before I walked into a condemned chapel and let you carve your name under my ribs,” I raise my shoulder. “This just… accelerates the timeline.”
Kiera exhales, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders. “Okay,” she says quietly. “That’s… more than I expected, honestly.”
I rest my forearms on the railing beside hers. “We don’t have to tell Cam or Lila yet,” I say. “You get to pick who knows and when. For once, you get to be the one choosing what gets written down.”
“Lila’s going to sniff it out by breakfast,” she giggles lightly. “But yeah. I’d like a few hours where it’s just ours.”
“Ours,” I parrot, letting the words sink in.
Kiera lets go of the railing with one hand and reaches for mine, fingers hooking into my palm with more certainty this time. “If I decide to keep it, that’s the story. Just…two idiots on a balcony, and my body decided to follow through.”
“Then that’s the story.”
Kiera squeezes my hand once, hard, then releases it, like she’s testing the truth of that. “Okay,” she says. “Then I can actually… think about it now, instead of just panicking around it.”
Below us, the warehouse hums a little louder as the heat kicks fully on, warm air bleeding into the chill. For the first time, the future doesn’t feel like a cliff we’re unthinkingly racing toward. It feels like a road—twisted, dangerous, badly lit—but a road we’re on together.
Down on the main floor, Lila laughs at something Cam says, the sound faint and distorted by distance. It feels like it belongs to another life—one where the worst thing we had to worry about was heartbreak and bad coffee. Up here, it’s just us and a word that keeps echoing in my head.Pregnant. I clear my throat because if I don’t say something now, I’ll start pacing and she’ll think I’m looking for exits instead of air. “Tell me what you need from me tonight.” I rush out. “Let me help.”
Kiera’s eyebrows lift, like she wasn’t expecting me to narrow it that way. “Tonight?” she repeats.
“Tonight,” I say. “Between now and when you try to pretend to sleep.”
Kiera huffs out a breath that might be a laugh if you’re generous; her grip tightens on my hand. “I need you not to look at me like I’m a bomb,” she says. “Even if I am.”
“Too late,” I say. “I’ve always looked at you like you’re a bomb; this just changes the blast radius.”
That pulls the ghost of a real smile out of her. “True.”
Kiera tips her head back, staring up at the exposed beams above us. “I don’t know how to do this without turning it into a mission,” she admits. “My brain keeps trying to make flowcharts. If I keep it, then run. If not, then compartmentalize and weaponize the guilt. It’s fucking exhausting.”
“You’re allowed not to solve it in one night,” I say. “You’re allowed just to be… freaked out. That’s normal.”
Kiera glances at me sideways. “What about you?”
“Same,” I admit, a blip of vulnerability spilling out.
“Good, I’d hate to be the only one.” A smirk slides into place as we fall quiet again, but it’s softer now, less like a chokehold. I shift so my shoulder brushes hers, a small point of contact. After a moment, she leans into it, just enough that I can feel some of her weight. “You know what else I need?” she says.