AVA

The wave of nausea hit me like a sledgehammer. I barely made it to the public restroom before my stomach emptied itself violently. The smell of bleach and old urine made everything worse. I gripped the sides of the grimy toilet, my knuckles white, as another wave crashed over me.

The pregnancy test lay on the dirty floor beside me, those two pink lines staring up at me like an accusation. Two lines that changed everything.

"No, no, no," I whispered to the empty bathroom stall. My voice echoed off the cracked tiles. "This can't be happening."

But it was happening. I was pregnant. With his baby. The stranger who'd made me feel wanted for one perfect night and then vanished like smoke.

I picked up the test with shaking hands and stuffed it in my purse. Maybe my mother would understand. Maybe she'd help me. Maybe things would be different now that I was carrying her grandchild.

I was so wrong.

"Pregnant?" My mother's voice was ice-cold when I told her an hour later. She didn't even look up from her soap opera. "You stupid girl. You're just like me, getting knocked up by some man who doesn't give a damn about you."

"Mom, please." I stood in the doorway of our cramped living room, my heart pounding. "I need help. I need somewhere to stay until I figure things out."

She laughed, that same harsh sound that had haunted my childhood. "Help? You want help? You made your bed, now lie in it. I'm not raising another bastard child."

"I'm not asking you to raise the baby. I'm asking for a place to sleep."

"And I'm telling you no." She stood up from the couch, swaying slightly from the wine she'd been drinking. "You're not my problem anymore. You're eighteen, you're pregnant, and you're on your own. Just like I was."

Tears stung my eyes. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"That's not my problem." She walked to the door and opened it wide. "Get out. And don't come back."

The door slammed behind me with a finality that echoed through my bones. I stood on the cracked sidewalk, my small bag of belongings in one hand, nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

The women's shelter smelled like disinfectant and desperation. It was a place for the forgotten, the abandoned, the broken. I fit right in.

"You can stay for thirty days," the intake worker told me. Her name tag read "Sandra," and she had kind eyes that had seen too much. "After that, you'll need to find other arrangements."

My bed was a narrow cot in a room with five other women. The woman next to me, Maria, was in her fifties with gray-streaked hair and burn scars on her arms.

"First time?" she asked quietly that first night.

I nodded, afraid to speak.

"It gets easier. Sleeping, I mean. The rest..." She shrugged. "The rest you just survive."

I took whatever work I could find. Cleaning offices at night, scrubbing floors on my hands and knees until my back screamed. Washing dishes in restaurants that paid cash under the table. Every dollar went toward saving for when the baby came.

The morning sickness didn't stop at twelve weeks like the free clinic pamphlet said it would. It followed me everywhere. I threw up in restaurant bathrooms, in alleyways, behind dumpsters. I learned to carry plastic bags and mints, to time my meals around work schedules.

"You're getting fat," sneered one of the other women at the shelter. Her name was Kelly, and she had mean eyes and a meaner mouth. "Must be eating too much of that free food."

I didn't tell her I was pregnant. I didn't tell anyone. The shame was too much, the judgment too heavy to bear. I wore baggy clothes and hunched my shoulders, trying to hide the growing evidence of my mistake.

After five months, I couldn't hide it anymore. My supervisor at the cleaning company, Mr. Harrison, cornered me in the supply closet.

"You're knocked up, aren't you?" His eyes were cold, calculating. "Can't have pregnant girls working here. Bad for business."

"Please," I begged, my voice breaking. "I need this job. I'll work twice as hard, I promise."

"Sorry, honey. Nothing personal." He handed me my final paycheck, two days' worth of work. "Good luck with the baby."

I was six months pregnant when I was forced to leave the shelter. Thirty days had turned into sixty through Sandra's kindness, but even she couldn't bend the rules forever.

"I'm sorry, Ava," she said, her eyes filled with genuine regret. "I wish I could do more."

I spent the next three months sleeping wherever I could find shelter. Park benches when the weather was warm. Twenty-four-hour laundromats when it was cold. The public library during the day, pretending to read while I dozed in the back corner.

People stared at me, the pregnant homeless girl with ratty clothes and hollow eyes. I heard their whispers, their judgment.

"Probably on drugs," one woman said as I walked past a coffee shop.

"Should have kept her legs closed," muttered another.

"What kind of mother will she be?" a third voice added.

Each comment was like a knife to my chest, but I kept walking. I had to keep walking. For my baby.

The hunger was the worst part. I was eating for two but could barely afford to feed myself. I learned which restaurants threw out food at closing time, which churches served free meals, which grocery stores didn't check dumpsters too carefully.

My baby deserved better than this. He deserved a mother who could provide for him, who had a home and a job and a future. Instead, he was getting me, broken, homeless, alone.

:::::::

The contractions started at 3 AM in a gas station bathroom. I was cleaning the toilets, trying to earn enough money for a meal, when the pain hit. Sharp, overwhelming, impossible to ignore.

"No," I whispered, gripping the sink. "Not yet. Please, not yet."

But the baby had other plans.

I made it to the free clinic just as my water broke. The nurse, a tired-looking woman named Janet, took one look at me and rushed me to a room.

"Do you have anyone we can call?" she asked as she helped me onto the narrow bed.

"No," I gasped between contractions. "There's no one."

The labor was long and brutal. Eighteen hours of pain with no one to hold my hand, no one to tell me it would be okay. Just me, alone, bringing a life into the world that didn't want either of us.

"Push, Ava," Janet encouraged. "I can see the head."

I screamed as another contraction tore through me. "I can't do this!"

"Yes, you can. You're stronger than you know."

When the baby finally came, Janet placed him on my chest. He was perfect, tiny fingers, perfect toes, a small cry that sounded like music.

"It's a boy," she said with a tired smile. "What will you name him?"

I looked down at my son, my heart breaking and healing at the same time. "Eli," I whispered. "His name is Eli."

As I held him, studying every perfect feature, something stopped me cold. His eyes opened briefly, just for a moment, and I saw them clearly.

They were gray. Storm-cloud gray.

Exactly like his father's…

AVA

"I'm sorry, Miss Parker, but we can't approve your application without the father's information."

The social worker's voice was cold, mechanical. She shuffled through my paperwork like I was just another number, another problem to dismiss. My two-month-old son squirmed in my arms, hungry and fussy.

"I told you, I don't have his information," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "I don't even know his name."

She looked at me over her wire-rimmed glasses, her expression screaming judgment. "Well, then you'll need to provide proof that you've attempted to locate him. Child support enforcement, paternity tests, something."

"How can I find someone when I don't know who they are?"

"That's not my problem." She stamped "DENIED" across my Medicaid application in red ink. "Next."

I walked out of the welfare office with nothing but rejection and shame. Eli was crying now, that desperate hungry cry that broke my heart. I had enough formula for maybe two more days, and my rent was due yesterday.

The diner where I worked was a greasy spoon called "Mel's Place." The owner, Mel, was a heavy-set man in his fifties who thought his wandering hands came with the territory of being the boss.

"You're late again, Ava," he said when I rushed in, still trying to catch my breath from running six blocks.

"I'm sorry, Mel. I had to drop Eli off at daycare and the bus was.."

"I don't want to hear your excuses." His eyes traveled down my body in a way that made my skin crawl. "You know, I've been thinking about your situation. Single mom, no money, no support. I could help you out."

I knew where this was going. "What do you mean?"

He stepped closer, too close. "Come by my office after your shift. We'll discuss your... performance review."

"Mel, I.."

"Unless you'd rather find another job." His smile was cold. "Though I doubt anyone else would hire a girl with your... baggage."

I swallowed my disgust and nodded. I needed this job. Eli needed me to have this job.

The next eight hours were torture. I served greasy burgers and watery coffee to truckers and night shift workers, all while Mel watched me from behind the counter. Every time I passed him, he found an excuse to touch me, a hand on my back, fingers brushing mine when he handed me an order.

"You look tired, sweetheart," he whispered during the dinner rush. "Maybe you should take better care of yourself. For your son's sake."

I wanted to slap him. Instead, I smiled and kept working.

When I got home that night, Eli was burning up with fever. Mrs. Chen, the elderly woman who watched him during my shifts, met me at the door with worry in her eyes.

"He's been crying all day," she said. "Won't eat, won't sleep. I think he's sick."

I took him in my arms, feeling the heat radiating from his tiny body. "How high is his fever?"

"102. I wanted to take him to the hospital, but..." She trailed off, both of us knowing I couldn't afford it.

I spent the night walking the floor with Eli, trying to cool him down with damp clothes and infant Tylenol I bought with my last five dollars. By morning, his fever had broken, but I knew we were lucky. Next time, we might not be.

"You can't keep living like this," Becca said when she stopped by later that morning. She was my only friend, a girl I'd met at the shelter who'd managed to get back on her feet. "You're killing yourself."

"I don't have a choice," I said, bouncing Eli on my hip. "This is my life now."

"No, it doesn't have to be." She pulled out her phone and showed me a job posting. "Look at this. Executive assistant position at Blackwood Enterprises. It pays more in a month than you make in three."

I stared at the screen. "Becca, I don't have the qualifications for something like this."

"You're smart, you're organized, and you're desperate. That's more qualification than half the people they'll interview." She grabbed my hands. "Ava, this could change everything for you and Eli. You could afford a real apartment, health insurance, and a future."

"They'd never hire me. Look at me." I gestured to my second hand clothes and tired face. "I don't belong in a place like that."

"You belong wherever you decide to belong." Her voice was firm. "Promise me you'll try. For Eli."

I looked down at my son, sleeping peacefully in my arms. He deserved so much more than what I could give him. He deserved a mother who could provide for him, who could take him to the doctor when he was sick, who could give him a real home.

"Okay," I whispered. "I'll try."

::::

The next day, I spent what little money I had on a cheap blazer from a thrift store and printed my resume at the library. It was embarrassingly thin, high school diploma, a few months of various jobs, no college. But I typed it carefully, made it look as professional as possible.

Blackwood Enterprises was housed in a gleaming skyscraper downtown. I stood on the sidewalk, craning my neck to see the top, feeling like an ant about to enter a world of giants.

The lobby was all marble and glass, with expensive artwork on the walls and security guards who looked like they belonged in movies. I approached the reception desk, my hands shaking.

"I'm here for the executive assistant interview," I told the perfectly polished receptionist.

She looked me up and down, clearly finding me lacking. "Name?"

"Ava Parker."

She typed something into her computer. "Take the elevator to the fortieth floor. Someone will meet you there."

The elevator ride felt like it lasted forever. I checked my reflection in the polished steel doors, trying to smooth my hair and straighten my blazer. I had to make a good impression. Eli was counting on me.

The fortieth floor was even more intimidating than the lobby. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of the entire city, and everything was decorated in shades of black and silver. A woman in an expensive suit led me down a hallway lined with abstract art.

"Mr. Blackwood will see you now," she said, stopping in front of a pair of imposing double doors.

My heart was pounding as she opened them. I stepped into the office, my eyes taking in the massive space, the wall of windows, the desk that probably cost more than I'd made in my entire life.

And then I saw him.

The man behind the desk looked up from his paperwork, and the world stopped spinning. Storm-gray eyes met mine, and I felt like I was falling through space and time.

It was him. The stranger from that night two years ago. The father of my child.

Liam Blackwood…