Page 95 of Babies for the Big Shot
Time stops.
Actual freeze-frame,scream-into-the-void, did-she-just-say-that level silence.
Nick’s entire body goes statue still. As in, I think he might be actively holding his breath.
Meatball stops licking him mid-slurp, pulls back, and gives a single, confused woof:I’m sorry, what now?
My soul slips free, hovering above as I watch everything unfold, a live scene of humiliation starring me, with a bulldog as the only witness.
“Laura,” I hiss. “What the hell…”
She blinks. Her grin falters. “Wait. You told him… right? I thought you were… Oh my god. You didn’t.”
“Tell me what?” Nick’s voice cuts in, low, sharp, ice cold. The kind of calm that’s less“it’s okay”and more“someone’s about to get fired into the sun.”
I turn to him.
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
And I swear the floor tilts.
Laura stares between us, then does a thing I’ve never seen her do in the history of ever—she panics.
“Oh my god,” she blurts. “Oh no. Oh shit. I… I thought… Sara said… you said you were going to!”
“I was!” I squeal, tangled in the blanket, trying to wrestle myself upright. “I was going to tell him… today! Literally! Right now!”
Nick doesn’t move.
Doesn’t blink.
Even Meatball shifts uneasily, clearly desperate to escape this conversation and retreat to the hallway for some sock chewing.
Laura emits a strangled dolphin-style noise, lets the croissants fall with a sharp gasp, and retreats with the urgency of someone who just stepped on a landmine.
“I’m gonna go,” she says, eyes wide, voice an octave too high. “I’m just gonna go… combust in the stairwell.”
She spins on her heel and runs.
Actually runs.
The door slams behind her so hard it rattles the frame.
And suddenly, it’s just me.
Nick.
Meatball.
And the suffocating silence of a man who has just found out he’s been hit by a freight train namedSurprise Baby.
Shit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nick
The silence hits first.A sharp, suffocating stillness that settles deep in my chest. It drowns everything else, leaving nothing but the sound of my own heart beat. For a moment, I can’t breathe.
