Lysander's POV
The pregnancy test is still in my jacket pocket when I land in Denver.
I felt it through the entire flight—this small plastic rectangle pressing against my ribs like a second heartbeat, two pink lines carrying the weight of a child I chose to walk away from.
Colorado greets me with February sunshine that feels like a personal insult. Boston was gray and miserable and appropriately punishing. Denver has no right to be this bright.
I sit in my car at the airport parking garage for eleven minutes. I know because I count every one of them, staring at Caroline's last text: ‘Yes, when you're ready.’
What a concept. I haven't been ready for a single thing that's happened to me in six months.
But Claire made her decision. She zipped that suitcase with the finality of a woman who will not be convinced, chose to raise a child alone rather than settle for a man who couldn't give her his whole heart. The least I can do is respect that choice by not wasting what it cost us both.
I call Caroline before the courage evaporates.
"Lysander?" The cautious and careful voice of a woman burned by my indecision before. "Are you back?"
"Landed twenty minutes ago. Can we meet?" I press my forehead against the steering wheel. "I need to talk to you in person."
"When?"
"Now. Today… Before I lose whatever nerve I've scraped together."
She's quiet for a moment—that particular silence Caroline gets when she's weighing risk against reward. "The Lucky Leaf in thirty minutes?"
The coffee shop where everything started. Where she ordered me ridiculous lattes and my wolf woke up for the first time.
"Perfect! And Caroline? Thank you for picking up."
"I almost didn't," she pauses. "But the thing about you, Lysander, is that you always sound the most honest when you're the most terrified. You sound like this right now."
"It’s true. Because right now, I’m absolutely fucking petrified."
"Good. See you."
She's already here when I arrive, seated in that corner booth with a single coffee between her hands. Just Caroline in a cream sweater, hair down, watching me with an expression that's equal parts curiosity and caution.
"You look terrible," she says as I slide into the booth.
"I know. And guess what? I'm starting to accept it as objective fact."
"It is objective indeed. You've lost weight, your eyes look like you haven't slept in a month, and your jacket has a stain on the left pocket that I'm choosing not to investigate."
I glance down. A faint pink line visible through the fabric. I pull it out and set it on the table between us. Caroline stares at it. Her coffee cup freezes halfway to her mouth.
"That's a pregnancy test."
"It's Claire's. She's pregnant, about eight weeks, and she left Boston on a bus to Portland this morning. She doesn't want me involved, not with my money or my presence, and told me she'd disappear forever if I tried to force the issue."
Caroline sets her coffee down with exaggerated care. "You flew to Boston to find her."
"I tried to behave like a decent human being about the situation." I stare at the test between us. "She wanted me to choose her completely, and I couldn't. She knew it, I knew it, and she made the smart call."
"And the baby?"
"I'll send support if she lets me and try to be involved if she'll allow it. But I accept that I may never know my own child because I spent years being incapable of committing to their mother."
My jaw clenches. "That's the truth of who I am, Caroline. That's what you'd be signing up for."
She's quiet for a long time. The espresso machine hisses in the silence between us.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I've never been fully honest with you. I gave you pieces—enough to seem vulnerable, enough to keep you interested, never enough to let you see the full disaster." I lean forward. "You deserve every ugly detail before you decide if I'm worth a single minute more of your time."
"So this is what, a confession? You're clearing your conscience?"
"This is me telling the woman I want to be with everything she needs and deserves to know. I'm telling you that the reason I kept going back and forth wasn't confusion—it was that I genuinely cared about Claire and didn't want to hurt her, and I failed spectacularly."
I hold her gaze. "I'm telling you all of it so you can make an informed decision."
Caroline picks up the pregnancy test, studies it like evidence. Which, I suppose, it is.
"You kept this."
"I don't know why."
She sets it back down. "It's proof that your choices have consequences. You're carrying it as a reminder."
Those blue eyes find mine—bright, sharp, cutting through every defense I've ever built. "That's either incredibly self-aware or self-punishing. Knowing you, probably both."
"Both is my default setting, apparently."
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm from the coffee cup, and my wolf stirs with that familiar pull—the one I've been trying to ignore, rationalize, explain away since a grocery store collision rewired my chest.
"I'm not going to pretend this doesn't complicate things," she says. "A baby with another woman is significant, and I'd be lying if I said it doesn't scare me."
"It should… I understand."
"Let me finish," her grip tightens. "It means you're capable of creating a life and walking away from it. That's a pattern I need to know won't repeat."
"It won't—"
"Don't make promises," she takes a breath. "Show me instead. Be here, be present, be the man who sits in an airport parking lot finding courage instead of the man who runs between options hoping one of them will decide for him."
Something cracks open in my chest: releasing. A pressure valve rusted shut finally giving way.
"I want to try," she says, and her voice is steady, deliberate, stripped of every casual deflection she usually wraps around vulnerability. "I want to try it with you, knowing all of it—everything on the table where I can see it."
"I come with enough baggage to fill this entire coffee shop."
"I've been sure since the grocery store," her smile is small but real. "I just needed you to catch up."
My wolf settles in my chest with a satisfaction so deep it feels like coming home. Not the frantic pull, not the desperate wanting—just quiet recognition of someone who sees exactly what I am and chooses to stay.
I turn her hand over in mine and press my lips to her palm. "Then I should probably start by telling you everything else."
Her eyebrow arches. "There's more?"
"You have no idea."