"Among all the things you could do, you chose to go behind my back and destroy my husband's career?"
The words leave my mouth before Finn opens his.
Finn's hands tighten on the steering wheel, and I watch the tendons flex beneath his skin. "Aubrey, I was trying to help you. Daniel is a threat, and I had the resources to neutralize that threat, so I used them."
"Pull over." My voice comes out flat and hard. "Pull the car over right now, Finn."
He glances at me, his expression shifting from defensive to concerned, and something in my face must convince him that arguing is not an option. The car slows, drifts toward the shoulder, and the tires crunch against gravel as he brings us to a stop.
The engine idles, filling the silence with a low mechanical hum that does nothing to ease the pressure building behind my sternum. The AC continues to blow, raising goosebumps along my arms that have nothing to do with temperature.
Isn't this poetic? The roadside again.
"I asked you not to interfere." I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn to face him fully, needing him to see every shade of the anger and fear warring across my features. "I told you that I needed to handle my own situation, and you nodded like you understood."
"He was hurting you." Finn's voice drops low, rough with frustration that mirrors my own. "You were asking me to do nothing while the woman I love lived in constant danger. That is not a request I am capable of honoring, Aubrey."
"You should have trusted me to know what I can handle." I press my palms against my thighs, feeling the fabric of my dress bunch beneath my fingers. "Daniel is not the kind of person who accepts defeat gracefully. He does not just lose and walk away."
"I am not afraid of Daniel Palmer." The certainty in Finn's voice would be reassuring if it were not so dangerously naive. "He is a disgraced attorney with no power."
He says it like power is a title you can strip away, a license you can revoke.
He does not understand that men like Daniel carry their power in their fists, in the architecture of fear they build inside the people who love them.
You cannot disbar that kind of authority. You can only survive it or escape it.
"You should be afraid, Finn, because I am terrified right now." The admission tears out of me, raw and unpolished. "You think you have neutralized the threat, but you have done the opposite. You have backed a wounded animal into a corner, and wounded animals are the most dangerous kind."
"Aubrey…"
"Daniel knows I am pregnant." The sentence hangs between us, heavy with implications I have been avoiding since I fled the apartment three days ago. "He found the test in my bag the night before I left. I intended to take it that night, just to confirm what the first one told me, but—"
"Wait." Finn holds up one hand, his brow furrowing with confusion that I do not immediately understand. "You did not take the second test? Daniel found an unopened box?"
"Yes, but I do not see how that changes anything. He saw the box."
"But he does not know for certain." Finn's voice shifts, calculation entering his tone that makes me uneasy. "He suspects, but he has no proof. And more importantly, he does not know that he is the father for sure."
I stare at him, trying to follow the thread of logic he is weaving, and the destination becomes clearer with each passing second.
"Finn, that will not stop him from pursuing this. A disbarred attorney cannot practice law, but he can still use it. He will hire someone else to file the paperwork."
The afternoon sun slants through the windshield, warming my skin through the glass, but I feel cold down to my bones. The heat presses against my face while ice spreads through my veins, and the contradiction makes me dizzy.
The future I glimpsed this weekend—the one where Finn and I build a life together, where I raise my child in safety and love—begins to crack around the edges.
What did I expect? That happiness would just... stay? That the universe would look at Aubrey and decide she had suffered enough?
"Think about what you are suggesting." My voice wavers despite my efforts to keep it steady. "Every motion he makes will keep me tethered to him for years. He will drag this out as long as possible. And the public exposure alone will be devastating for someone in your position."
Finn's jaw tightens, and I watch him run the calculations I have already completed.
"There is another option." He turns toward me, and the determination in his hazel eyes makes my breath catch. "We tell the world that the baby is mine. We make that the official story from the beginning, before Daniel has a chance to establish any claim."
The suggestion lands between us like a grenade with the pin already pulled. I feel the impact in my chest before I have fully processed the implications. My lungs forget their rhythm, and I have to consciously force air past the tightness in my throat.
He wants to claim a child that is not his.
He wants to build our future on a foundation of lies and call it protection.
And the worst part—the part that makes me hate myself—is that I want to let him.
"You want to lie." The words come out barely above a whisper. "You want to just hope that Daniel never challenges it."
"I want to protect you and this baby by any means necessary."
Finn reaches across the console and takes my hand, his fingers warm and steady against my trembling ones.
"If the world believes the child is mine, Daniel loses his leverage. No court will take claims of a disgraced former attorney seriously without evidence to support them."
"And what about the actual evidence? DNA tests exist, Finn. If he demands one—"
"Then we pay him." The certainty in his voice does not waver. "We offer him enough money to walk away and never look back. Men like Daniel always have a price, and I am willing to pay whatever that price is to ensure he never touches you or this child again."
The worst part is that Finn might be right.
I know how much debt Daniel carries.
The sports betting apps bled our savings dry. The poker games always ended with another credit card maxed out. And I learned to screen the loan shark calls before he woke up.
Disbarred and desperate, with creditors circling like vultures? Daniel might take the money.
The thought should comfort me, but it sits wrong in my chest. The idea that my freedom has a price tag, that my child's future can be purchased like a settlement.
I stare at Finn, this man who stopped a bus on a highway to find me, who spent a weekend in my mother's trailer, who is now proposing to officially claim another man's child as his own.
The sunlight catches the stubble along his jaw, the exhaustion beneath his eyes, the fierce protectiveness carved into every line of his face.
The love I feel for him is a tangible thing, pressing against my ribs with an intensity that borders on pain. But beneath the love, fear still coils—cold and patient and waiting.
"You would do that?" My voice cracks on the question. "You would tell the entire world that this baby is yours, knowing the truth?"
Finn lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles, his eyes never leaving mine.
"I would burn everything I have ever built to keep you safe, Aubrey. And I would do it smiling because nothing I own matters more than you."