I was tired when I got home, but all I had managed to do once I was back in my own bed was cry. I had left early. The only way I had managed to do it was to leave without telling him. It was wrong. It was a horrible thing to do, but I had to get out. I had called a cab because I had forgotten my MetroCard in San Francisco. I had been a sobbing mess in the subway before, but the privacy of the cab was appreciated.

The cabbie, an Iranian man who noticed I was crying, stopped during the trip to buy me a lukewarm coffee from a bodega to comfort me. I said thank you, but it just made me cry harder because I was pregnant. I wasn’t drinking coffee.

My mother had come to the door, and after panicking for about ten minutes because nothing good happens after one AM, she let me go to sleep in my old room. She let me go to sleep, but I spent a good chunk of time crying into my pillow, feeling sorry for myself, instantly wishing I hadn’t come all the way to Brooklyn. Shit, I wished I hadn’t even asked to use the spare bedroom.

I wanted to be near him again, but I was mad at him for what he did. I could have reacted better, maybe, but my insecurity took over, and I ran. I got away from him before he distanced himself from me. I tried to tell myself that he deserved it for his behavior, but that didn’t make me feel better either. You didn’t punish the person you were with when they did something you didn’t like. You talked about it like adults. I just felt worse for it the more I tried to justify it because I was just wrong whatever way you sliced it.

I had turned my phone off somewhere over the East River because I knew that once Levi woke up and didn’t find me he’d try calling and I was chicken shit. I would talk to him in the morning. I would. I just needed to last that long.

I woke up, nauseated and dry heaved over the toilet for a while before sitting on the bathroom floor and feeling sorry for myself some more. I hadn’t eaten much of the dinner Levi had ordered the night before, so I was probably just going to puke my pancreas up at some point.

Mom was waiting for me in my room with a cup of hot coffee when I came back. She had changed my room completely, but it was still a bedroom because she was still fostering kids. My old room was free because the kid who had slept there, Maddie, was actually away at college. When she’d aged out of the foster system earlier during the year, my mother still let her stay there, renting the room like she would her own place for the summer before she moved into the dorms.

“Good morning,” I said to her when she wouldn’t say anything. She was in her dressing gown sitting on the bed, waiting for me to sit so she could interrogate me. She had definitely heard me in the bathroom.

“I brought this for you, but I guess you won’t have it,” she said, referring to the coffee. “I drank coffee throughout my pregnancy with you. You turned out great.”

“Thanks, Mom, that’s reassuring, but I’ll pass,” I said, grateful that I hadn’t had to make a confession to her.

“How far along are you?”

“A few weeks. I found out two weeks ago.”

“And you flew all the way across the country to tell me?” she said.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” I asked.

“Not when you show up at my door crying at one in the morning. What’s going on, Audra? What happened?”

My mother and I had always had a pretty open relationship. We were friends. She was the cool mom because she was younger than everyone else’s mother, and she absolutely let me read books that were way too mature for me when I was a kid. Her understudy would babysit me backstage when she was performing. When I was big enough, she’d let me sneak into the orchestra pit sometimes to watch shows. I had never hidden anything from her.

How did I start telling her about Levi though? I hadn’t up to this point because I hadn’t thought there would be a this point with a guy like him. This was just our first visit together anyway, and it was already going south.

“Last night? I got into a fight with someone… with my boyfriend and I had to get away from him.”

“Why? With Brandon? Did he try to hurt you?”

“No, Mom. Not with Brandon. He and I broke up. This is another guy. It was just a fight. Not a big deal.”

“Who is this guy; why didn’t you tell me you were dating someone new?”

“We sort of had a weird start. I didn’t want to say anything until we had been together a little longer.”

“It’s his?” she asked referring to the baby.

“Yeah,” I said looking down. I wasn’t ashamed. I was nervous, though. I didn’t know what to expect from my mother. She had met Brandon and two other exes and had never really pushed any specific family ideal on me. She hadn’t gone about raising her family in the traditional way, so why would she expect it of me? I just didn’t want to disappoint her, or for her to think I was stupid, or making a mistake. I didn’t want to tell her about Levi and have her tell me she hated him.

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m going back. I’m just-”

“You’re hiding. You got here at one AM; does he know where you are?”

“He doesn’t.”

“Who is this guy to you? You said he was your boyfriend?”

I told her everything. Not the fucking against the door of my apartment, the blowout before the auction or the second time we fucked when he had bound me, but everything. We were close, but you spared your parents some of the more sordid details of your life. They didn’t need to know all that. I also skipped those details because I needed to tell her everything fairly fast because she worked on Saturdays.

“Strickland, huh?” she said, drinking the rest of the coffee in the cup that had been meant for me. “The guy who owns your auction house.”

“I know, it’s… I don’t know. We’re together. We’re dating, but I feel like he didn’t even give me a choice. He just engineered the situation to suit what he wanted.”

“You feel like he made decisions about your life for you?”

“Exactly. Am I wrong?”

“Does he know about the baby?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“You haven’t told him yet or aren’t going to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“I think both of you are doing something you need to apologize for then,” she said. I sighed. She had a point. He was my boyfriend; I had to get used to thinking about him like that. He wasn’t just the guy who had impregnated me. I wanted this guy in my life, and pregnancy was a secret that eventually told itself. He might have done something I didn’t like, but I was lying to him too. It wasn’t like I was going to have the pregnancy terminated, was I?

No. No, I wasn’t. I had been researching all the things I could and couldn’t do during pregnancy, but I hadn’t gone to the hospital. I had told three people already, but none of whom was a doctor. I had placed myself in this weird limbo where I was and wasn’t having the baby.

Was I just waiting till I was too far into the pregnancy that no doctor would perform an abortion even if I had wanted one? Was I waiting to see whether I had a miscarriage; basically, waiting for the choice to be made for me?

I couldn’t do that.

Not with this. Not with Levi.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said.

“You should. Don’t leave him hanging. I know it’s hard, but you have to make a concrete decision about this. Whether he’s involved or not, you have to take control of what’s happening to you.”

“I know. I’ll go to the hospital once I get back to the Bay.”

“Has everything been okay?”

“My appetite’s gone to shit, and I’m nauseated and exhausted all the time. I can hardly keep anything down.”

“Your doctor can give you something for the nausea. You shouldn’t lose weight while you’re pregnant. Anything else?”

“I have had some spotting,” I said.

“How much?”

“I don’t know, a moderate amount? I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what’s normal.”

“Spotting isn’t that out of the ordinary. It usually means nothing. If it gets bad or you feel pain at the same time, go see someone. Have you already?”

I hadn’t. I told her that I would, meaning it. I would tell Levi too. No matter what he did, the kid was still coming, and I was carrying it. It was my problem even if he wanted nothing to do with it. Mom gave me crackers with peanut butter on them saying they would help my nausea before she left. She didn’t ask as many questions about Levi as I had thought she would, which bothered me a little. I wanted her to be more interested in him. Were we still even together after the stunt I had pulled the night before?

I turned my phone on and waited for all the missed messages to come in. Levi was frantic. I didn’t read them. I was suddenly scared to. What if he was angry and not worried? I called him before I could psych myself out. He answered before one ring was over.

“Audra, Jesus Christ, where are you?” he sounded the way you sound when you’ve been running and are trying to catch your breath.

“I’m back home. I’m in Brooklyn.”

“Where’s the house? I’m coming to get you.”

“Don’t. I’m coming back. Just let me come back.”

“Audra, no. Tell me where you are. I don’t want you to run away from me. I don’t want you to be scared of me. I’m sorry for what I did. I should have talked to you first. Where are you? Please tell me.”

I sighed. I didn’t argue with him. Running away was stupid. It was childish. It made sense when I was crying and panicking the night before, but in the cold light of day, what Levi had done didn’t warrant that level of dramatics. I was punishing him, and I was wrong for it. I gave him the address, and he told me he’d be there before an hour was up. I didn’t know how he’d do that, but okay, maybe he could fly, and I didn’t know.

The doorbell rang about an hour and a half later. He pulled me really hard into his chest when I opened it and saw him. His hands pressed into my back almost painfully. He kissed my head, resting his chin there.

“Audra, please. Never do that to me again.” He released me and held me at arm’s length to look at me. Did he think I’d trekked the entire way? Was he looking for signs of an attack? I’d escaped across the bridge to Brooklyn, not across the moor to Thrushcross Grange. I stopped myself. I couldn’t be cynical about this. I leaned forward and kissed him, holding his face in my hands. His eyes were wild, panicked. I wanted to reassure him.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left without telling you where I went,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. I felt him inhale and exhale deeply wrapping his arms around my waist. “Come inside.” I led him by the hand into the house, to the kitchen and directed him to the dining room so we could sit and talk at the table.

“When I didn’t find you in the guest room, I thought you’d left. I thought you were back in San Francisco. I’m sorry for what I did, but I won’t apologize for wanting us to be near each other.”

“Don’t make decisions that involve me without talking to me first,” I said.

“Don’t leave in the middle of the night without a word,” he countered. “If I fuck up, tell me. Scream at me. Break something. Throw something at me. Don’t run away from me.”

I grimaced at the thought. Throw something at him? I didn’t want to hurt him. Well, guess I already had. I stood from my seat and sat in his lap so I could kiss him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m not scared of you. I won’t run.” He wrapped his arms around me. “Is there somewhere you have to be?”

“I cleared my weekend so we could be together,” he said. “Come home with me.”

There’s something I have to tell you before we do, I should have said. I didn’t say anything. Not that day, not the next day, not at the airport kissing him goodbye.

He wanted me. I knew that much, but after the fight, I didn’t want to do that to him. I didn’t want to take away from the weekend he’d planned for us. I didn’t want this new, potentially awful thing making the weekend he’d planned even worse. I didn’t want to fuck it up for him more than I had already.

Hiding behind my faux nobility was easier than facing up to my fear. I didn’t want to do anything to push him away. If he was leaving, I wasn’t going to be the one who pushed him away.