Nicholas stayed the entire night.

He didn’t get up when the nurse came in around midnight to check the monitor, or when the doctor leaned in to quietly mutter something about “minimizing emotional triggers,” as if that was something I could cross off a list between blood pressure checks. He didn’t glance at the clock or fidget with his phone or glance toward the door like he was calculating the best excuse to leave.

He stayed.

When the room got dark and the hallway noise thinned to the occasional squeak of sneakers on polished linoleum, he just shifted in his chair.

Sometimes he dozed off, head tilted back against the wall, his features loose in a way I’d never seen before. But even then, even half asleep, one hand remained curled around mine, steady and certain.

Other times, he just sat there. Awake. Watching the slow drip of the IV, the soft rise and fall of my chest, his thumb moving in absent, gentle circles against the inside of my wrist. Like he was grounding me, or maybe himself.

I didn’t ask why he hadn’t gone home.

I didn’t have the energy to.

Around three a.m., when the nurses had stopped checking on me every hour and the vending machines down the hall buzzed into the kind of dull, constant hum you stop hearing only when you’re too tired to care, Nicholas shifted in his chair again. This time he leaned closer, resting his forearm lightly on the edge of my bed.

He looked at me, like he was searching for something but like he’d already found it and was waiting for me to see it too.

Then, in a voice low enough to barely cut through the quiet, he said, “I immediately knew it wasn’t his.”

The words floated between us, heavier than they should have been. I turned my head slowly on the stiff hospital pillow, unsure if I had actually heard him or just imagined it because I needed so badly to hear it.

His eyes were still on me, steady and calm.

He glanced down briefly at our hands, my fingers tangled with his, the contrast between his tanned skin and my pale wrist stark in the dim light.

“I didn’t have proof,” he said, voice even. “I didn’t let myself say it out loud. But I knew.”

Something tight and painful twisted behind my ribs. I swallowed against it, feeling the scratch of tears at the back of my throat.

“How?” I asked, almost scared of the answer.

He exhaled through his nose, a soft breath that sounded more like release than frustration.

“The way you looked at me,” he said. “Or maybe the way you stopped looking at me. Like you were carrying something too big, and trying not to let me see it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, feeling the burn of everything I had tried so hard to hide.

“I didn’t tell you,” I said, my voice cracking slightly, “because I thought you’d pull away. Or stay for the wrong reason.”

His hand tightened just slightly around mine, enough to remind me he was still there, still listening, still steady.

He turned toward me fully, dragging his chair closer so our knees brushed when I shifted slightly under the thin hospital blanket.

“I’m not here because of the baby,” he said, voice unflinching.

I blinked at him, confused. “You’re not?”

He shook his head once. Firm. Absolute. “No. I’m here because I fell for you before I even knew your name.”

The breath I took shuddered out of me before I could stop it.

“You don’t have to earn love from me, Elena,” he said. “You just have to stop running from it.”

Something inside me broke at that. I opened my mouth to respond but couldn’t find the words, couldn’t find anything at all except the terrible, beautiful ache swelling in my chest.

He didn’t push. He just stayed.

His fingers were still wrapped around min, holding steady. Just enough so I could feel it: the choice, the promise.

And for the first time in so long, I realized— I wasn’t the one holding onto him. He was holding onto me.