Ava’s POV
The steering wheel blurs in front of me as I grip it with white knuckles, my body moving on pure instinct. I don't remember leaving the clinic. Don't remember starting the car or navigating through downtown traffic.
But somehow I'm here, at Willow Creek Park, parked under the same massive oak tree where Mom used to spread out our blanket for picnic lunches when I was seven and she couldn't afford anything else.
My hands are still shaking as I kill the engine. The silence floods in, broken only by my ragged breathing and the distant sound of children playing on the swings. Children. God.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars, trying to push back the tsunami of implications threatening to drown me. But they crash over me anyway, each one more devastating than the last.
My mother. Diane Brennan, who spent eighteen years of her life working double shifts at the hospital, her hands cracked from constant washing, her back aching from lifting patients twice her size.
She'd come home at dawn, sleep for three hours, then get up to make sure I had breakfast before school.
Every sacrifice, every missed meal so I could eat, every thrift store coat she wore so I could have something new—all of it was to ensure I'd have opportunities she never did.
"You're going to be different, baby," she used to tell me, brushing my hair before bed in our cramped apartment. "You're going to college. You're going to have choices. You're not going to struggle like Mama does."
And here I am. Twenty-one years old and pregnant. Just like she was. History repeating itself in the cruelest possible way, making a mockery of every dream she had for me.
The scholarship she cried over when I got accepted to university, the proud way she tells her coworkers about her daughter the political intern—all of it crumbling because I couldn't keep my legs closed on my birthday night.
"I'm so sorry, Mom," I whisper to the empty car, my voice cracking. "I'm so fucking sorry."
My career is barely six months old and already hanging by a thread. What employer is going to want an intern who got knocked up by her boss?
Every recommendation letter I've earned, every connection I've carefully built, every late night I spent perfecting proposals—worthless the moment this comes out.
They won't see a dedicated young professional anymore. They'll see a cliché. The stupid girl who slept her way into a scandal.
"Municipal intern spreads legs for politician twice her age." I can already see the headline, can already imagine the comment sections filled with strangers calling me a whore, a homewrecker, an opportunist.
And Tobias. Jesus Christ, Tobias.
He's been working toward the governorship for a decade. Every vote, every policy, every careful step building toward this moment when he could actually make the changes he believes in.
The education reform he's passionate about, the healthcare expansion he's drafted, the criminal justice overhaul he stays up late perfecting—all of it dies the moment this scandal breaks.
"Gubernatorial candidate impregnates twenty-one-year-old intern." The opposition ads write themselves. His face photoshopped next to mine with salacious headlines. Late-night comedians making jokes about him robbing the cradle.
"Why couldn't I just shut up?" I slam my palm against the steering wheel, welcoming the sting. "Why couldn't I just suffer in silence like I had for five years?"
Then there's Veronica. That calculating bitch who looked at me like I was dirt beneath her designer heels even before she had reason to suspect anything. She already sees me as a threat, already watches with those sharp eyes whenever I'm near Tobias.
If she discovered I'm carrying his baby? She wouldn't just destroy me—she'd weaponize it. Use it to control Tobias, to worm her way back into his life, to play the wounded ex-wife betrayed by her husband's affair with a child.
Because that's what I am in her eyes. A child. A stupid little girl who couldn't keep her hands off what belonged to Veronica first.
"She'll destroy us both," I say to my reflection in the rearview mirror, seeing my mother's eyes staring back at me. "She'll burn everything down just to stand in the ashes and smile."
And Tyler… His wounded ego that's already festering from rejection. If he found out I left him and then fucked his father the same night, got pregnant by him, that wounded pride would transform into something truly vindictive.
My hand drifts to my stomach without conscious thought, palm pressing against the flat surface that shows no sign of the catastrophe growing inside.
Four weeks. Just a cluster of cells, really. Nothing that looks human yet. Nothing with a heartbeat or fingers or dreams.
But even as I think it, another part of me remembers the way Tobias looked at me that night.
Not like I was too young or too wrong or too connected to his family. He looked at me like I was precious. Like I mattered. Like those five years of wanting had been mutual torture.
"You have no idea what you've been doing to me, do you?" His voice echoes in my memory, rough with need. The way he touched me like he'd been imagining it for years, the reverence in his hands even as control shattered.
"I've wanted this. Wanted you." The words I thought I heard in his voice before I fled through his window like a coward. Maybe I imagined them. Maybe I'm projecting what I need to hear onto a moment of weakness he probably regrets.
But God, what if I didn't imagine it? What if he meant it? What if this baby isn't just a mistake but something that could somehow, impossibly, bring us together?
"Stop it," I tell myself harshly. "Stop building fairy tales. This isn't a romance novel where the older man chooses love over everything else. This is real life, where scandals destroy careers and babies trap people in situations they never wanted."
The practical part of me, the part that inherited my mother's pragmatism along with her eyes, knows what needs to happen.
A simple appointment. A pill or a procedure. Problem solved before it becomes a problem. While it's still early. While no one knows. While there's still time to pretend that night never happened.
"It would be the kind thing," I whisper, trying to convince myself. "The selfless thing. Protecting everyone from the fallout."
Should I tell Tobias and destroy his career? Don't tell him and carry this secret forever? Keep the baby and watch everyone I love suffer? Or end the pregnancy and lose the only piece of him I might ever have?
"I don't know what to do," I admit to the empty park, to the oak tree that's heard so many of my childhood secrets. "I don't know who to tell or if I should tell anyone at all."
But I have time. A few weeks before I start showing. A few weeks to figure out which destruction I can live with. A few weeks to decide whose life I'm willing to ruin—mine, his, or the one that barely exists yet.
I'm going to use every single one.