Page 92 of Bound By Crimson
But lately, it all felt... fast.
Too fast.
It was early September. Her heart sank when she realized she’d forgotten Kai’s birthday—August 28th.
But what hurt more, was remembering her own birthday, back in April. She hadn’t forgotten it then. She’d waited all day for him to remember.
He never did.
She didn’t fault him for that. Not now.
He had been working so hard, he was so exhausted… and now, she truly understood.
But she didn’t want this life for her baby.Their baby.
She thought of her childhood—not the trauma that followed later, but the early years. Her parents sitting on the porch with tea. Her mother braiding her hair while her father read the paper beside them. There had been love there. Routine. Presence.
That’s what she wanted for her child. Not a blur of meetings and deadlines. Not long stretches of silence between text messages. She wanted family dinners. Fireflies in backyards. Laughing over nothing.
She pressed her hand against her belly and whispered, “You deserve everything good.”
The door opened behind her. Kai’s voice filled the space like light.
“You’re home early.”
She turned to him and smiled, “So are you.”
He stepped inside, shaking off his coat, his hair a little windswept from the breeze. He looked tired—but happy to see her.
She opened her mouth to say something—to finally give him the news.
But he was too excited to share his own thoughts.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, walking toward her. “I have an idea. But let’s sit first.”
Kai poured two glasses of wine before joining her on the couch, his movements strangely careful—as if the weight of whatever he was about to say made everything around him more fragile.
He handed her a glass but didn’t speak right away. Instead, he studied her.
She politely refused the wine.
He noticed the tiredness in her eyes. The way she still tried to smile like everything was okay.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said quietly. “You’ve been carrying so much,” he added with a faint grin. “You’re holding everything together, running yourself into the ground, and still trying to smile through it all. But this life—it’s eating you alive,Lyric. You were made for more than just surviving. You were made for something softer than this chaos.”
Lyric’s heart fluttered. She wasn’t used to him noticing those things.
Not lately.
“I love what I do,” she said, trying to brush it off. “It’s just... a lot right now. But it’ll level out.”
He shook his head slowly. “That’s not what I want for you. We can have a better life…together.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, like he needed to anchor himself before letting the next part out.
“I talked to my mother.”
That caught her off guard. He never talked about his family.
