The words hit me like a shockwave, my mind struggling to process them as the rain continued to fall around us, and he urged me gently to get into the car, explaining that it wasn’t safe for a baby to remain out in the storm, and when I looked down at Emma, her lips pale and her body trembling, I realized I had no real choice, so I nodded and stepped inside.
The warmth of the car wrapped around us instantly, the silence inside almost surreal after the chaos outside, as Adrian handed me a towel and adjusted the heat, while Emma quickly drifted to sleep in my arms, her breathing soft and steady, and as I watched her, a deep ache filled my chest, a mixture of confusion, fear, and something I couldn’t yet name.
“Please… just listen,” Adrian began, his voice careful, as he asked if I remembered my honeymoon in Hawaii two years earlier, and as fragments of that night resurfaced in my mind—the strange drink, the dizziness, Ethan leaving suddenly—my stomach tightened.
“You drank more than usual that night, didn’t you?” he asked, and I nodded slowly, recalling the hazy memory of returning to the hotel room alone, assuming Ethan would follow, never questioning what happened next.