Page 27 of Slayin Villain
Villain: We need to talk.
My stomach flipped.
Was it fate?Guilt?Timing?
But then another text came through.
Villain: I was at Ember’s.
And just like that, whatever hope I had curled up and died.He was confessing.Fuck that.I wasn’t ready for it.I quickly blocked his number.
Chapter 11
Ember
There’s something cruel about holding your own secret hostage.
Especially when it’s the kind that could blow two lives to hell.
I stared at the second pregnancy test in my hand, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bathroom, cold tile against bare thighs.I'd already taken one days ago.But I didn’t trust it.Didn’t trust myself.
The second test?
Same two pink lines.Bold.Loud.Final.
“Shit,” I whispered, voice cracking.“Fucking shit.”
Rome’s name swirled through my head first.Then Villain’s.Then both of them together, tangled in memory and guilt and the kind of heat that left bruises in places you couldn’t show.
And now here I was.
Pregnant.
I didn’t know who the father was.
And worse.I didn’t know who I wanted it to be.
Villain had been distant today.Still showed up at my place, still fucked me like I was oxygen, still kissed me until I forgot my own name.But something had shifted behind his eyes.
He didn’t say much after.
Just laid there, staring at the ceiling like it held answers he didn’t want to say out loud.
I didn’t ask.I knew better.
But when he left that night, I stayed in bed and cried for the first time in a long time.Not loud.Not messy.Just quiet tears and soft sobs that soaked my pillow and made me hate myself for hoping he’d come back.
Two days later, I was back at Royal Road.Dressed down in jeans, boots, and a black band tee, fiddle case in hand even though we weren’t playing that night.It made me feel like myself.Like I had a reason to exist outside of bedsheets and backrooms.
Villain found me in the back lot, leaning against the chain-link fence where the air still smelled like burned rubber.
“You good?”he asked, lighting a cigarette with one hand, the other resting in his jeans pocket like he didn’t trust it not to reach for me.
“Peachy,” I said, not looking at him.
He took a drag, exhaled slow.“You’ve been quiet.”
“You’ve been distant.”
