Chapter 169. Choosing Herself

Teyana’s POV

I kept telling myself it wasn’t possible.

That—maybe the test was faulty. Maybe my body was reacting to stress. To grief. To exhaustion. To watching my mother slowly disappear in front of my eyes. Anything but this.

I cried until my throat hurt, pacing the length of my room like I was trapped inside my own skin. My hands kept going into my hair, tangling, pulling, undoing it again and again like that would somehow undo reality too.

I was nineteen.

Nineteen and barely halfway through my second year in school. My mother was dying. And now my body had decided to carry something I didn’t ask for. A baby. For a man I had separated from. A man I had sworn to walk away from even if it broke me.

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t be someone’s mother.

Not now. Not like this.

I grabbed my keys and drove out, hands shaking on the steering wheel as I headed to the pharmacy. I needed another test. I needed proof that this wasn