Page 196 of The Clinch
“I was pregnant. You shoved me into the table. I lost the baby.”
Great. Fantastic. Love that for me.
I drag the sheet down and sit up too fast. My head throbs.
By the time I make it into the kitchen, Eden is already there in sleep shorts and one of Nate’s old black T-shirts, her hair piled on top of her head. She looks up and wisely says nothing.
Then, cautiously, “Good morning.”
I squint at her. “Cruel term.”
One corner of her mouth twitches. “There’s one last cup of coffee. We’re completely out.”
I grunt and reach for the mug she already set out for me. The first swallow is hot, strong, and perfectly decent.
Eden watches me over the rim of her mug. “No messages?”
I hate how quickly my eyes snap to her. “No.”
“And Travis?”
I shake my head.
That should be a relief. Mostly, it is. Travis has always called, texted, pounded on doors, left voicemails that started with apology and ended with accusation. Silence with him was never peace. It was windup.
Nothing was never nothing with him.
And now there is just that. Nothing.
Eden sets her mug down. “Jessica said they have enough for the restraining order.”
I straighten. “She texted you?”
“This morning. The recordings are clean. He said enough on camera to support it. If he contacts you again after this, it gets much worse for him.”
That should make me feel better.
Instead, I see it all again: the cameras, the witnesses, Jessica’s legal pad, a box built around Travis until he finally said out loud what he always was.
“Amazing. Love men and their little operational frameworks.”
Eden gives me a look.
“I know,” I mutter. “Annoyingly effective.”
I walk to the window and brace my forearm against the frame. Outside, the city is already in motion—a delivery van double-parked, a dog walker in a red hoodie, someone jogging with terrible form and expensive shoes. Normal life, as if last night didn’t happen. As if I didn’t stand in a room full of people and let the ugliest facts of my marriage rip open in public. As if Leo didn’t hear them.
That thought sits in me like weight
Leo knows.
He knows, and all I can see is his face in the gym when I said “pregnant”—the way he locked down so completely it stopped looking human.
And underneath that, Leo still hasn’t called.
Not one text. Not one message through Nate. Not one knock on the door.
I tell myself that should be a relief. In some ways, it is. If he showed up here this morning with flowers or coffee or some tormented “I had to do it, baby, you understand that, right?”speech, I would slam the door in his face so hard the walls would file a complaint.
