The world had been spinning for three days straight.
I pushed through it—attending classes, showing up to practice, pretending everything was normal while my body waged war against me. I'd learned to keep crackers in my bag for the nausea, to sit down slowly so the dizziness didn't knock me over, to smile and nod when people asked if I was okay.
I'm fine. I'm always fine.
I just needed to make it through one more day. And then another. And eventually I'd figure out what to do about the life growing inside me.
Thursday afternoon, I was crossing the main quad, heading to my literature lecture, when the world tilted violently sideways.
The trees blurred into the sky. The ground rushed up to meet me. I had just enough time to think this is bad before my knees buckled.
I didn't hit the concrete.
Strong arms caught me, pulling me against a solid chest. Ashton's voice cut through the fog, sharp and urgent. "I've got you. I've got you."
He half-carried me to a bench away from the gathering crowd of concerned students, waving them off with a curt "She's fine. Just dehydrated. Give her space."
I sat with my head between my knees, breathing slowly, waiting for the world to stop spinning. My vision was spotted with black. My hands were shaking.
Ashton crouched in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, his face tight with barely controlled fear. I'd never seen him look so scared—not even when he talked about Kian finding out what we'd done.
"What's going on with you?" His voice was low, urgent. "And don't tell me it's stress. You've been exhausted for weeks. You can barely eat. You almost fainted at practice twice." His grip tightened slightly. "I've watched you run to the bathroom every morning like clockwork."
I opened my mouth to deflect. To offer another excuse, another lie, another wall between us.
"Tell me the truth, Lyra." His eyes searched mine. "Please."
I looked at him—really looked at him—and saw the worry etched into every line of his face. Not the cold bodyguard. Not the dangerous man who'd threatened Nate. Just Ashton. Terrified and desperate and waiting for me to let him in.
"I'm fine," I whispered. "It's probably just a virus. Maybe food poisoning. I'll see a doctor if it doesn't—"
"I saw the test."
His words stopped me cold.
"In your bathroom. Last week, when you missed practice. I came to check on you and the door was unlocked." His voice was steady, but I could hear the strain beneath it. "I saw it, Lyra. I know."
The air left my lungs. I stared at him, frozen, my mind racing through the implications. He'd known for a week. He'd been watching me, waiting, giving me space to come to him on my own. And I'd been hiding, lying, pretending he wouldn't find out.
"How long?" I managed. "How long have you known?"
"For a week." He exhaled slowly. "I wasn't sure at first. It could have been Angel's. But then I watched you. The way you hold your stomach when you think no one's looking. The morning sickness. The exhaustion." His voice cracked slightly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
I felt tears burning behind my eyes, threatening to spill over. "I didn't know how. I didn't know what you'd want. What you'd think." I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat. "I needed time to figure out what I wanted first. Before I involved you. Before everything got more complicated than it already is."
"More complicated?" A harsh laugh escaped him. "Lyra, we passed complicated the night I touched you."
He was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing absent circles on my knee. The campus moved around us—students walking to class, bikes rattling past, life continuing as if nothing had changed—while we sat frozen in our own private earthquake.
Then he asked the question that had been hanging between us since the moment he found that test.
"It's mine, isn't it?"
I nodded. Just once.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything unsaid. I waited for the anger. The denial. The cold withdrawal of a man who didn't want this complication, this burden, this evidence of his greatest mistake.
Instead, Ashton took my hand. His fingers intertwined with mine, warm and solid and certain.
"I'm not going anywhere." His voice was quiet but firm. "Whatever you decide. Whatever happens. I'm here." He met my eyes, and I saw something in his expression I'd never seen before. Tenderness. Determination. Maybe even hope. "This isn't just your burden to carry, Lyra. It's mine too. And I won't let you face it alone."
I didn't realize I was crying until he reached up to wipe a tear from my cheek. His touch was gentle—so different from the hands that had broken bones and taken lives.
"I don't know what I want yet," I admitted. "I don't know if I can do this. Any of it."
"We'll figure it out together." He squeezed my hand. "One day at a time."
For the first time since I saw those two pink lines, I didn't feel completely alone.
We sat together on the bench as the afternoon light faded, not speaking, just holding on to each other and the fragile new truth between us. Students passed without a second glance. The world kept turning. And somehow, impossibly, I felt something loosen in my chest. Something that had been wound tight for weeks.
That night, I returned to my dorm exhausted but strangely lighter.
Angel was out—probably at the library or with her study group. The room was quiet and dark. I was about to turn on the light when I noticed something on the floor.
An envelope. Plain white. No name. No return address.
It had been slipped under my door.
I picked it up with trembling fingers and tore it open.
Inside were photographs.
Ashton meeting with men I didn't recognize in a dimly lit parking garage. Hard faces. Expensive suits. The kind of people who didn't exist in normal college life. The kind of people I'd grown up around—dangerous men who did dangerous things.
There was a partial document, too. Most of it was redacted, black bars covering entire paragraphs. But my name jumped out like a brand, highlighted in yellow: LYRA MORRIS.
And at the bottom, a handwritten note in block letters:
ASK HIM WHO HE REALLY REPORTS TO.
I stared at the photos, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. The men looked like my father's associates—the ones who came to the house late at night and spoke in voices too low to hear. The document was too censored to understand, but seeing my name on it made my skin crawl.
I thought of Donovan's folder. The gaps in Ashton's history. The sealed records. The questions I'd been too afraid to ask.
And I thought of the man who'd held my hand an hour ago. Who'd wiped tears from my cheek. Who'd promised he wasn't going anywhere.
Which version was real?
The doubt I thought I'd buried crawled back up my throat and refused to let go.
I hid the envelope under my mattress and sat on the edge of my bed in the dark, staring at nothing, wondering if I'd just made the biggest mistake of my life by letting him in.