"Alright, alright, I'll take the blame." He smiled. Dante Moretti smiled, and the fluorescent light caught the expression full on, and I saw every line of it. The softness around his eyes. The way his mouth relaxed. He looked younger. He looked like the man I thought I'd married. "It's my fault for making my sweetheart eat too much, okay?"
"That's better." Cara smirked, tilting her chin up. "Fine, I'll forgive you... this time."
They bantered like a real couple. Close and inseparable. Their bodies moved in the easy choreography of two people who had learned each other's rhythms, who reached for each other without thinking, who existed in a private world that had no room for anyone else.
And I stood under the hospital's harsh fluorescent lights, feeling like an intruder in my own life.
I was invisible to them.
A nurse passed close to me, glanced at my swollen belly, offered a polite smile. I didn't return it. I couldn't. My face had gone still, the way faces go still when the muscles beneath them are holding something back that the body cannot afford to release. Not here. Not yet.