Tobias's POV
The hospital chair has molded itself to my spine over the past eighteen hours, but I can't bring myself to move more than a few inches from Ava's bedside.
My campaign clothes from yesterday hang wrinkled and stale, my usually perfect appearance abandoned in favor of maintaining this vigil.
She looks so small in the hospital bed, bandages covering the cuts from shattered glass, her right leg elevated and wrapped from ankle to knee.
The heart monitor beeps steadily beside her, the most beautiful sound I've ever heard because it means she's alive.
When Jordan found me in that campaign meeting, his face pale as death, I knew something terrible had happened before he even spoke. "There's been an accident," he'd said, and my world tilted off its axis completely.
The drive to the hospital was pure torture—sirens wailing, Jordan giving me updates through his phone while I gripped the dashboard and prayed to every deity I could remember. Hit and run. Critical condition. Surgery.
I've been here ever since, ignoring calls from campaign staff, from reporters who somehow got wind of my "personal emergency," from Veronica whose messages I delete without reading.
Ava's eyelids flutter, and I lean forward instantly, my hand tightening around hers.
"Ava? Can you hear me?"
Her grey eyes open slowly, unfocused at first, then sharpening as they find my face. "Tobias?"
"I'm here, baby. You're safe. You're alive." I press kisses to her forehead, her temple, anywhere I can reach. "That's all that matters. You're alive."
But even as I say the words, I watch her hand drift instinctively to her abdomen, her fingers pressing against the hospital gown with desperate hope.
The look she gives me breaks my heart because I can see she already knows, somewhere deep down, what Dr. Martinez is about to confirm.
The door opens with a soft knock, and Dr. Martinez enters wearing the careful expression medical professionals reserve for delivering devastating news.
She's known Ava since childhood, and the pain in her eyes tells me everything before she speaks a word.
"How are you feeling, mija?" she asks gently, checking Ava's chart.
"The baby," Ava whispers, her voice raw from the breathing tube. "Is the baby…"
Dr. Martinez pulls a chair beside the bed, her movements deliberate and kind.
"Ava, you suffered significant trauma in the accident. While your injuries will heal, the broken ribs, the sprained ankle, the lacerations, the impact caused complete placental abruption."
The medical term hangs in the air like a death sentence.
"We did everything possible," she continues softly. "But the baby didn't survive the trauma. I'm so very sorry."
The sound that tears from Ava's throat could shatter windows. It's pure anguish, the kind of grief that comes from the deepest part of the soul, and hearing it nearly destroys me.
"No," she sobs, curling into herself as much as her injuries allow. "No, no, no. Please, there has to be something…"
"I'm so sorry," Dr. Martinez repeats, tears in her own eyes. "There was nothing anyone could have done. The trauma was too severe."
When the doctor leaves us alone, I can't maintain professional distance anymore. Protocol be damned—I climb into the narrow hospital bed despite the tubes and wires, gathering Ava against my chest as carefully as her injuries allow.
"I'm sorry," she sobs into my shirt, her body shaking with grief. "I'm so sorry, Tobias. I failed. I couldn't protect our baby."
"Stop." The word comes out rougher than intended, my own tears falling freely now. "This is not your fault. None of this is your fault."
"But I was supposed to keep the baby safe…"
"Someone did this to you,"
I say fiercely, rocking her like she's something infinitely precious.
"This wasn't an accident, Ava. It was a hit and run, but we'll find them. I've got every connection I have looking—traffic cameras, witnesses, forensics. We'll find who did this, I promise you."
She clings to me with desperate strength, and I let her cry until she's exhausted, until there are no more tears left. Through her breakdown, I see the deeper fear in her eyes, the one she's afraid to voice.
"Tell me," I whisper against her hair. "Whatever you're thinking, just tell me."
"Without the baby..." Her voice breaks completely. "You don't have to stay now. You don't have to choose between your career and an obligation you never wanted."
The words hit me like physical blows. I pull back to frame her face with shaking hands, needing her to see the truth in my eyes.
"Listen to me very carefully. I loved you before I knew about the baby."
I proceed, my voice cracking with emotion.
“I loved you when you were eighteen years old, standing in my kitchen debating urban development policy like you owned the world. I loved you through three years of torture, watching you with my son and hating myself for it."
"Tobias…"
"I loved you that night at your birthday party, when you were drunk and heartbroken and still the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I loved you every stolen moment since then, every secret touch, every time I had to pretend you didn't mean everything."
My voice breaks completely as the truth pours out. "You're my entire world, Ava. With or without children, with or without my career—I choose you. I will always choose you."
The kiss tastes of salt and grief and promises neither of us is sure we can keep. But it's real, desperate, two months of hidden love poured into shared loss.
"I love you too," she whispers against my mouth. "So much it terrifies me."
"Then we'll be terrified together."
Neither of us hears the door open until a sharp gasp cuts through our grief like a knife.
"What the fuck are you two doing?" the voice whispers, her voice small and broken. And with horror, with a chill that covers me from within, I recognize my own daughter's voice even before I turn around. I couldn't help but recognize it.
We turn to find Chloe frozen in the doorway, a bouquet of flowers falling from her shocked hands to scatter across the linoleum floor.
Her eyes move from me to Ava, taking in our intimate positioning, the way we're clinging to each other, the unmistakable evidence of a relationship that goes far beyond professional or familial concern.
The future cracks wide open in that moment, every carefully constructed secret crumbling into dust. There's no going back now, no more hiding, no more pretending.
My daughter has just discovered that her best friend and her father are in love, and in her eyes, I can see everything we've ever been to each other dying in real time.
"Chloe…" I start, but she's already backing away, her face cycling through betrayal, disgust, and something that looks dangerously close to hatred.
The silence stretches like a chasm opening between us, swallowing twenty-two years of being her father, four years of Ava being her closest friend, every moment of trust we've built now collapsing into ash.
She turns and runs, her footsteps echoing down the hospital corridor like gunshots, leaving behind only scattered flowers and the smoking ruins of our lives.
The daughter I raised, who once looked at me like I hung the moon, will probably never speak to me again. And Ava, my broken, beautiful Ava, will blame herself for all of it.
There's no coming back from this. No redemption arc. No happy ending.
Just the terrible truth, finally spoken aloud, and the wreckage it leaves behind.