Charlotte didn't sleep that night.
Not really.
She lay on her bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, one hand still resting on her lower abdomen as if trying to convince herself that nothing had changed, nothing was different, nothing had shifted the axis of her life in such a quiet, irreversible way.
But silence had a way of amplifying thoughts she didn't want to hear.
By the time dawn crept in through the curtains, she had already made her decision.
She couldn't stay like this.
Not in uncertainty.
Not in fear.
Not when everything around her—Justin, Silvia, her work, even that cursed pen—felt like it was slipping into something she could no longer control.
She needed certainty.
Proof.
Something solid enough to crush the noise in her head.
So she left.
The clinic was quieter than she expected.
Too clean. Too normal.
That was the worst part.
