Chapter 71. Open Up, Ava

Ava

We stepped through the front door and the air shifted, like someone had opened a freezer and let the cold spill out.

Enzo set my hospital bag down by the stairs, the same way he’d done a hundred times before, only this time his hand didn’t linger on my waist.

He didn’t kiss my forehead. He didn’t even look at me for longer than a second.

I watched him toe off his boots, slow, deliberate, shoulders stiff under the leather jacket he still hadn’t taken off. The silence stretched until it hurt.

I finally broke it.

“Enzo.”

He stopped halfway to the kitchen, back to me.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach like I could already shield the tiny life inside from whatever was coming.

“Talk to me,” I said, voice smaller than I wanted. “Ever since we left the hospital you’ve been… somewhere else. Are you going to love me through this? Through us?”

He turned then, and the look on his face washed me colder than any winter I’d e