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“Then why?” I demand. “Why now, Dalton? Why after that room? Why after what he did? Why after—” I break off, breathing too hard. “Why couldn’t you wait?”

“Because I’m not going to stand there and let him turn this into certainty if there isn’t certainty.”

That stops me for half a second.

He sees it and pushes forward. “The dates matter. The medication matters. The insemination matters. What happened between us matters.”

I hold up my hand again. “Stop.”

He does. Barely. But he does.

I press my fingertips to my forehead. “I don’t want a timeline. I don’t want your probabilities. I don’t want whatever neat explanation you’ve built for yourself.”

“It’s not neat.”

“No? Then why do you sound like you’ve rehearsed it?”

He says, more tightly now, “I’m trying to tell you something that could change everything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know enough.”

“No,” I say. “You think you do.”

His face hardens. “That’s unfair.”

A short, ugly laugh breaks out of me. “That’s your line?”

“Yes.”

I stare at him. And there it is—not shouting, not drama, not some huge spectacular fight. Just the two of us standing too close in a room that still smells like sex and anger, suddenly on opposite sides of something neither of us knows how to cross.

He looks tired now. More than angry. More than frustrated.

So do I.

“I’m not doing this here,” I say.

“Maggie.”

“No.” My voice shakes, but I keep going. “You don’t get to tell me something like that in the middle of all this and then expect me to sort through it on your schedule.”

“It’s not about my schedule.”

“It feels like it is.”

He opens his mouth.

I stop him before he can speak. “I said I can’t do this right now.”

This time he hears it. Really hears it. Something in his face closes, not cold exactly, but contained. He knows pushing now would make it worse.

“I’m not taking it back,” he says.

I nod once. “I know.”

“I’m not saying it because of him.”