𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍 | 𝟏𝟖+

41 | Departure

"You're not leaving," Annie shakes her head.

"I told you, he doesn't want children."

"Yeah, not now, but he might change his mind if you told him you were pregnant."

Cato left earlier in the morning. The moment the front door shut behind him, Annie burst around the corner from where she was hiding, demanding to know what Cato said to me. I told her what he revealed about our future, about how he loved me, but needed to keep our affairs quiet until he figures things out.

Nothing's louder than having a child with your mistress.

Tears sting my eyes, and I finally let them fall openly. "I can't stay here. Cato's better off not knowing that I'm pregnant. If he knows about the child, he'll give up everything."

"And if you leave, he'll be broken."

It's another result I don't want to happen.

Cato will be heartbroken. I know he will, and one day, he'll replace our love with someone else. It will break me to watch that love become a public spectacle. The camera loves him and his romances, but I've learned that he longs to get away from it, to escape the life of stardom his astronaut career built for him.

"Don't you think I want to stay?" I breathe. "I love him. I always have, but I can't hurt him. I've wanted him for so long just to realize that loving him will never work."

"It can!" Annie retorts.

"Not like this. This isn't what he wants."

I hold my stomach as my best friend shakes her head without end. Will I truly be able to give this child a better life outside of the estate without their father nearby? Or will their existence be a looming reminder of Cato and I's separate statuses? Our reputations matter so much, and his can't lie in shambles next to my own.

This fight for our child will be mine, and I will do everything in my power to keep standing on two feet.

"I'm going," I retort, my voice breaking at the seams. "That's final."

Another pair of footsteps enters into Cato's foyer, and it's then I catch the ancient eyes of Clotilde staring back at me.

"And where would you be going?"

Clotilde. She doesn't know about the pregnancy, and she can't. If she knew that I was pregnant with Cato's child, she'd be smacking so much sense into me and Cato. She'd want me to stay at the estate.

I keep my mouth shut.

"She's pregnant," Annie blurts.

I dart my attention over to Annie, my heart pounding in my chest. I love her to pieces, but bloody hell, does she have to tell Clotilde my deepest secret? It's not her news to deliver, whether I wanted it out in the open or not.

Clotilde reaches for my arm. "Is this true, dear?"

My world falls apart around me with every tear that sheds down my cheek.

"I can't stay here. He can't know—"

"Slow down a bit and take a deep breath," Clotilde urges as waves of panic swell within my chest. "It's not the first time I've had a servant girl come to me with a pregnancy."

I give her an odd look. "They're not all... Cato's, are they?"

She laughs at this. "No, none are, but I have a feeling yours belongs to that boy."