Cole’s POV
I push the grocery cart while Grace compares prenatal vitamins with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb, reading every label twice, checking dosages and ingredients against the list on her phone.
She's wearing the sundress I bought her, the yellow one that makes her skin glow, and I hate how domestic this feels, how natural, how much like a real life we're playing at but can't actually have.
"This one has more folic acid," she says, holding up a bottle. "But this one has better reviews. What do you think?"
What I think is that we look like any young couple preparing for their first child—husband pushing the cart while his pregnant wife obsesses over doing everything perfectly for their baby. Except I'm not her husband.
Ryan is at work, running his meetings and reviewing his contracts while I'm here, pretending this is my real life, that the baby growing inside her is something we planned together.
"Get both," I say, because that's easier than choosing, easier than pretending my opinion matters when Ryan will be the one raising this child. "Better safe than sorry."
We hit three stores in total. Groceries first, where Grace stocks up on ginger tea and crackers for the morning sickness that's starting to hit.
The pharmacy for the vitamins and those pregnancy books she pretends she's just browsing but reads intently.
Then the bookstore where she lingers in the children's section, running her fingers along spine after spine of baby name books she picks up but doesn't buy.
"Just looking," she says when she catches me watching, but her hand drifts to her still-flat stomach in that unconscious way that's become habit over the past week.
My child growing inside her. The thought makes my chest tight with equal parts terror and something dangerously close to pride that I have no right to feel.
I did that. I put life inside her when Ryan couldn't.
It's primitive and wrong and I hate myself for the satisfaction it brings, but it's there anyway—this possessive knowledge that part of me is literally growing inside the woman I love but can't have.
After we finish the errands, after the trunk is loaded with supplies for a future I won't be part of, Grace suggests walking through Riverside Park.
The afternoon sun filters through the trees, creating patterns on the path, and Grace practically skips ahead of me like a kid let out of school early.
She stops every few feet to pick dandelions from the grass, gathering them into a messy bouquet that she treats like they're roses from a fancy florist.
"They're weeds," I point out, but I'm smiling at her joy.
"They're wishes," she corrects, blowing on one and sending seeds floating through the air. "Every seed is a wish waiting to come true."
"What did you wish for?"
"Can't tell you or it won't come true." But her eyes are sad when she says it, and I know she wished for something impossible, same as me.
I trail behind her, unable to look away from this version of Grace—hair loose the way I like it because she knows I like it, sundress swaying with each step, laughing at something only she finds funny.
A woman carrying my child through a park on a Tuesday afternoon, gathering weeds and wishes while my heart warms and breaks simultaneously.
She looks back at me over her shoulder, smiling with such pure happiness that it physically hurts to see.
And before I can stop myself, before I can think about why this is a terrible idea, I catch her hand and spin her around right there on the busy path.
Joggers swerve around us, mothers with strollers give us dirty looks, but I don't care because I need to kiss her right now or I might die from wanting.
But this kiss is different from all the others we've shared. Not the hungry, desperate claiming we usually do, all teeth and need and barely controlled want. This is tender, aching, real.
I cradle her face between my hands like she's made of spun glass, press my lips to hers with the gentleness, pour everything I can't say into this moment—love, loss, the impossible wish that this could be our real life.
Grace blinks up at me when I finally pull back, confused and beautiful with dandelion seeds in her hair. My hands still frame her face because I can't bear to let go yet.
"What was that for?" she asks softly.
"Fulfilling the contract terms," I say, forcing a smile that probably looks like a grimace. "Got to get my money's worth before it ends."
"You're not even getting paid for this." She tries to match my light tone but fails.
"I've always been a volunteer at heart. Community service is good for the soul."
Her expression shifts suddenly, becomes serious in a way that makes my stomach drop. "Do you want it to end?"
The question catches me completely off-guard, strips away all my defenses and leaves me standing naked in the middle of a public park.
I struggle for words, for lies, for anything safe to say that won't reveal how completely fucked I am.
"I've been thinking about it constantly." Grace admits quietly when I don't answer.
"What happens after the baby comes. Every option feels wrong. You leaving feels wrong. You staying feels wrong. Continuing this arrangement with a child involved feels wrong."
She swallows hard, and I watch her throat work. "But letting you go... that feels the most wrong. Does that make me terrible?"
"Grace…"
"Does it feel wrong to you?" Her eyes search mine desperately. "The idea of walking away? Of ending this?"
My throat tightens until breathing becomes difficult. "Yeah," I whisper, the admission scraped raw from somewhere deep. "Letting you go feels impossible. Like cutting off a limb. Like forgetting how to breathe."
"Then what do we do?"
"I don't know."
It's the most honest thing I've said in weeks.
"I don't know how to stay and I don't know how to leave and I don't know how to be a father and I don't know how to not be this baby's father. I don't know anything except that I—"
I stop myself before saying it, before admitting the thing that will ruin everything definitively. But Grace knows. I can see it in her eyes that she knows what I was about to say.
I kiss her again instead, right there with the dandelions crushed between us and strangers judging us and the sun making everything look like a movie scene.
We stand there kissing in the middle of the path like we're not a ticking time bomb, like we're not destroying three lives plus one that hasn't even started yet.
Like we're just two people in love instead of what we really are—complications in each other's lives that should never have happened.
When we finally break apart, Grace keeps her hand in mine as we walk back to the car. "We should get home. Ryan will wonder where we are."
Home. Ryan. Reality crashing back like cold water.
"Yeah," I agree, squeezing her fingers one last time before letting go. "We should get back."
But none of us moves. And that’s exactly when I kiss her again, claiming a woman who doesn’t belong to me.