Page 30 of Until You

I even want to tell him.

Every morning I wake up and think, today. And every morning, I find a reason not to. He’s already gone. He came home too late. He looks tired. I’m clutching the toilet. The timing hasn’t been right. The words haven’t come.

Excuses. All of them. I know they’re excuses.

But here’s the one that keeps me quiet, the one that sits heavy in my chest like a stone I can’t cough up: Once I tell him, this ends.

Not the pregnancy. Not the baby. But this. This house. This room. This job. This strange, tender, unexpected life I’ve stumbled into, where an elderly couple argues about whether I need iron or naps and a man I barely know washes his plate every night without being asked.

Once Oliver Blankenship finds out that his one-night stand is pregnant with his child and living in his grandparents’ house, he will do the math.

He will look at me with those shifting hazel eyes, and he will see exactly what anyone uninformed would think. Especially in light of the Blankenship/West money situation. Here I am, a girl with no family, no roots, no safety net, who showed up in his grandparents’ lives at a very convenient time with a very convenient need.

And he will ask me to leave.

Not cruelly. I don’t think he’s cruel. But firmly. Certainly. In that low, measured way of his, where every word lands like a fencepost being driven into the ground.

I think it’s best if you find somewhere else to stay.

I can hear it already. I’ve rehearsed it in my head so many times it feels like a memory instead of a fear.

So I keep scanning photos. I keep my secret. And I tell myself I’m not hiding—I’m just finishing something important before the ground shifts beneath me again. The way it always does.

“You’re making excuses,” Jules says.

It’s Wednesday night. I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed with the laptop open, a half-scanned photo of Mimz in bell-bottoms glowing on the screen. Jules is on speaker. Hope is on the line too, because apparently my emotional crises now require a quorum.

“I’m not making excuses,” I say, carefully peeling a Polaroid off the back of another print. “I’m prioritizing.”

“Prioritizing what?” Hope asks gently. Hope is always gentle. Even when she’s about to gut you with the truth. Especially then.

“The slideshow. Their anniversary party is in two days. I want to finish it before⁠—”

“Before you tell the father of your child that he’s the father of your child?” Jules cuts in. “Yeah, that’s an excuse, babe.”

“It’s not an excuse. It’s a timeline.”

“It’s a timeline designed to delay the one conversation you actually need to have.”

I don’t answer. I peel the Polaroid free and hold it up to the lamplight. Mimz and Pops at what looks like a county fair. She’s holding a stuffed bear. He’s looking at her instead of the camera.

“Cora.” Hope’s voice is careful. The way she sounds when she’s choosing her words like they’re stones she’s placing across a river, one at a time, making sure each one is steady before she puts weight on it. “What are you actually afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You’re terrified,” Jules says flatly.

“I’m cautious.”

“You’re living in the same house as this man. You’re carrying his baby. And you’re what—hoping he just won’t notice when you start showing?”

“I already have a belly, so I don’t think you can tell if I’m showing. It feels different to the touch, but he’s obviously not touching me.”

“You told me yesterday your jeans don’t button.”

“They button. They just... protest.”

“Cora.”