Chapter 1 Chapter one

Chapter One

Sophia’s POV

“You’re pregnant.”

I sat on the edge of the examination table, clutching the thin paper sheet beneath my fingers until it tore, staring at the middle-aged doctor like she had just spoken to me in a foreign language.

"I'm sorry?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper in the cold clinic room. "I think you have the wrong chart, Dr. Evans."

"I don't, Sophia," she replied gently, setting a white plastic test strip down on the metal counter next to a printout of my morning blood panel. "The beta-hCG levels are unmistakable. You're roughly four to five weeks along."

I shook my head, my mind flat-out rejecting the words.

It shouldn't be possible.

I had been feeling sick for weeks, yes, but I hadn't once thought of a baby. I had blamed the constant morning nausea on exhaustion, surviving on instant noodles, and the crushing stress of midterms.

Most of all, I had blamed it on my heart.

My chest had been aching with that familiar, dull throbbing for months.....the telltale sign that my Fading Heart Syndrome was slowly creeping into its next phase, draining my energy day by day.

I stared at the two bright pink lines on the test strip sitting under the harsh lights.

"Sophia?" Dr. Evans leaned forward, resting her hands on her desk. "Do you have someone you can call? A partner? Family?"

"No," I answered immediately, my throat tight. "There's no one."

She sighed softly, jotting something down on her notepad before looking back up with a cautious expression. Then she asked the question that made everything ten times worse.

“Do you know who the father is?”

The question hit me like a splash of freezing water, and instantly, broken fragments of that night rushed behind my eyelids.

A dimly lit hotel room where it all happened.

The suffocating scent of peach with this underlying combination of spice.

Large, rough hands gripping my hips in the dark, pulling me against a chest that made my aching heart stop fluttering for the first time in years.

Deep, gravelly whispers in my ear that I couldn't quite remember, and the strange intensity of dark eyes staring down into mine before everything blurred together.

I didn't know who he was.

I didn't know his last name, what he did for a living, or even what his face truly looked like in broad daylight. I had been so dizzy, so desperate, and so out of my mind with panic that night that his features had dissolved into vague shadows in my memory.

If he walked past me right now, maybe some instinct buried deep in my gut would recognize him. But if I closed my eyes and tried to picture him, all I had was an outline.

A shadow with a single name murmured against my collarbone in the dark.

Alexander.

I had told myself I would never see him again.

He was just a man who had left an envelope of cash on the bedside table before dawn like I was some slut for hire.....money that had paid my overdue rent, bought my groceries, and kept me from sleeping on the street for the last four weeks.

I had taken the money because I was drowning, and I had promised myself to bury that night and never look back.

And now, a tiny piece of him was growing inside me.

"Sophia?" Dr. Evans called my name again, pulling me out of the spiral. "What are you thinking?"

My first thought wasn't that I was going to be a mother.

It was: How am I supposed to survive this?

I was attending Saint Jude Elite University on a strict academic scholarship that required a spotless GPA. I was completely broke, working late-night shifts as a university cleaner just to pay for my textbooks and daily transit because the scholarship didn't cover living costs.

On top of that, I was hiding a deteriorating heart condition that I couldn't afford specialized treatment for.

And now, I was pregnant.

If the administration found out, or if my grades slipped because of severe morning sickness and exhaustion, I would lose my scholarship in a heartbeat.

I couldn't afford to lose school.

I couldn't afford hospital visits.

I definitely couldn't afford to raise a child all on my own.

And finding the mysterious stranger from a month ago was entirely out of the question. I had no phone number, no address, and no way to track down a man named Alexander in a city of eight million people.

I was hopelessly doomed.

Yet, as I looked down at my flat stomach, warmth flared up inside my chest.

I didn't want to get rid of it.

"What are my options, Dr. Evans?" I asked quietly, my hands resting over my lap.

She walked me through the standard procedures.....termination clinics, adoption agencies, low-income maternal aid programs with endless waitlists.....but none of them resonated with me.

The thought of giving up the only thing that was truly mine made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with my illness.

"Take some prenatal vitamins," Dr. Evans said gently, handing me a small starter sample. "And think about it carefully. With your heart history, carrying to term is going to be incredibly hard on your body."

"Thank you, doctor," I murmured, taking the packet and slipping it deep into my coat pocket.

I left the clinic with one goal in mind: push the pregnancy out of my head for a few hours, get through my work shift, and figure out how to survive the week.

Forty minutes later, I was back on campus, changing into my gray uniform in the basement locker room of the main athletic arena.

I grabbed my mop bucket, put on my yellow rubber gloves, and headed up to the second-floor lobby of the ice rink to clean the viewing lounge before the evening practice started.

As I dragged the wet mop across the floor, the sound of loud, excited chatter caught my attention.

A group of three sorority girls were sitting on the leather couches near the lounge entrance, clutching their university flyers and staring up at the flat-screen television mounted above the trophy display.

"Did you see his stats from last weekend's exhibition match against Northern?" one girl squealed, twirling a strand of hair. "He scored three goals in the first period alone!"

"He's completely untouchable this season," the second girl agreed, sighing loudly. "Every single pro scout in the country is going to be at the arena on Friday just to watch him play. He's basically guaranteed the number one draft pick."

"And he's ridiculously gorgeous," the first girl added. "Captain of the hockey team, heir to the biggest estate in the province... Alexander Blackwood is literally a god on campus."

I froze mid-stride.

The mop slipped slightly in my wet gloves.

Alexander.

The name echoed in my head, pulling at that buried memory from weeks ago.

Slowly, almost against my own will, I turned my head toward the glowing television screen mounted high on the wall.

The sports channel was running a special feature on the university's championship hockey team, the camera panning across the ice before zooming in on a player leaning casually against the penalty box glass.

He had his helmet off, messy dark hair falling over a sculpted jawline, and piercing, intense eyes that practically burned right through the camera lens.

He was grinning arrogantly at the interviewer, looking completely relaxed, untouchable, and perfectly in control of his world.

My breath caught in my throat, the mop handle clattering loudly against the plastic bucket as my hands went completely numb.

It was him.

The father of the baby growing inside me.

Alexander Blackwood.