The cramps started during a client meeting.

At first, Casey tried to ignore them—just Braxton Hicks, she told herself, like Dr. Conner had mentioned at her last appointment. She was thirteen weeks along now—practically second trimester. Dr. Conner had said some discomfort was normal. But when the third one hit hard enough to make her grip the conference table, and she felt the first trickle of warmth between her legs, the world stopped.

"Excuse me," she managed, cutting off Roger Kingsley mid-sentence. "I need to..."

She didn't finish. Couldn't. Her body moved on autopilot to the bathroom, her mind a litany of desperate prayer: Please no, please no, please no.

Blood. Not much, but enough to turn her world red with terror.

Her fingers shook as she called Drew. It went to voicemail—he was probably at the construction site, where reception was always spotty. She tried again. And again.

"Come on," she whispered, sliding down the bathroom wall. "Pick up, pick up, pick—"

"Casey?" His voice was muffled by background noise. "Hey, I can't really talk right now. The inspector's—"

"I'm bleeding."

Silence. Then the sound of running, doors slamming, engines starting.

"Where are you?"

"Office bathroom." Another cramp hit, stealing her breath. "Drew..."

"I'm coming. Don't move. I'm coming."

She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead to her knees. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, marking time like a metronome of fear.

Please, she thought again. Please don't take this from us. Not when we're just finding our way back.

The bathroom door burst open. Melissa's voice: "Casey? Your mother's on her way, and Drew just called—he's two minutes out."

"I'm fine," she tried to say, but her voice cracked.

"Sure you are." Melissa's hand was cool on her forehead. "Let's get you up, okay? Drew's going to meet us at the hospital.”

The next hour passed in fragments. Drew's face, white with worry, as he helped her to his truck. The emergency room intake forms, her hand shaking too badly to write. The endless waiting.

Now, lying in a hospital bed while monitors beeped steadily around her, Casey watched Drew pace the small room while her mother held her hand and tried to distract her with stories about the latest book club drama. Six steps to the window, pivot, six steps back. The same way he'd paced during their first major fight in college, when neither of them knew how to bridge the gap growing between them.

"Will you please sit down?" she said. "You're making me dizzy."

"The doctor should have been here by now."

"It's been ten minutes."

"Eleven." He checked his phone again. "Almost twelve."

She would have laughed at his anxiety if another contraction hadn't chosen that moment to wrap around her middle. Drew was at her side instantly, one hand finding hers while the other pressed against her lower back—exactly where she needed it, exactly how she liked it.

Some things, it seemed, the body didn't forget.

"Breathe through it," he murmured. "That's it. Just like that."

The contraction eased, leaving Casey shaky and drained. "How do you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"The back thing. It's been five years since..." She trailed off, remembering another hospital room, another loss that had cracked their foundation.

Drew's hand stilled on her back. "I remember everything about that day."

They never talked about it—the miscarriage that had started their slow drift apart. She'd thrown herself into work, he'd buried himself in renovating their house, and somehow they'd never found their way back to each other.

"I was thirteen weeks," she said quietly. "Almost through the first trimester."

"Thirteen weeks, two days." His voice was rough. "You were wearing that blue dress with the little flowers. The one your mom bought you for the announcement party we never got to have."

"You remember what I was wearing?"

"I remember everything." He sat on the edge of the bed, his hand still moving in slow circles on her back. "The way you looked at the ultrasound screen. How quiet the room got. The exact shade of blue in that dress, because I had to help you change out of it when we got home and you couldn't stop crying."

"You cried too."

"Not where you could see." His admission was barely a whisper. "I thought... I thought I had to be strong. For you."

"And I thought I had to prove I was strong by not needing you."

Another contraction interrupted them, shorter this time but still sharp. When it passed, Drew's hand had found hers again.

"We really messed it up, didn't we?" she said.

"The marriage?"

"The whole thing. After we lost the baby..." She swallowed hard. "We stopped talking. Really talking. About anything that mattered."

"You went back to work two days later."

"And you started working sixteen-hour days on the house."

"Because every time I looked at you, I saw—" He broke off, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. "I saw how much I'd failed you. Failed us."

"Failed me? Drew, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."

"I know that. Logically, I know that. But I was supposed to protect you, to take care of you, and instead..." He gestured helplessly. "Instead I watched you pull away, day by day, and I didn't know how to stop it."

"So you pulled away too."

"It seemed easier than watching you leave."

The irony of that hit her like another contraction. "We both left. Just... slowly. One missed dinner at a time. One avoided conversation at a time."

"One renovation project at a time."

"One late meeting at a time."

Dr. Conner chose that moment to sweep into the room, all business and calm efficiency. "Let's take a look," she said calmly, prepping the ultrasound machine. "See what's going on with this little one."

The next few minutes were a blur of examinations and questions. Casey couldn't breathe. Couldn't look. Couldn't—

"False alarm," she announced. "The contractions should ease up with rest and hydration. But this is your body's way of saying slow down."

Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

The familiar whooshing filled the room. Strong. Steady. Alive.

"There's your baby," Dr. Conner said softly. "Heart rate perfect. Size right on track."

Drew made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Casey realized he was holding her hand—had been holding it since the truck, maybe. She couldn't remember.

"Then why...?" She couldn't finish the question.

"Some spotting and cramping can be normal at this stage." Dr. Conner moved the wand, checking angles. "But in this case, I'm seeing a small subchorionic hemorrhage. It's fairly common, usually resolves on its own, but..."

"But?" Drew's grip tightened.

"But you need to take it easy. Real bed rest for at least a week. No work, no stress, no—"

"A week?" Casey sat up too quickly, making the room spin. "I can't just—"

"Yes, you can." Drew's voice was quiet but firm. "You will."

She turned to argue, but the words died at the look on his face. Fear and determination warred there, along with something deeper—something that looked a lot like the way he'd looked the day she'd told him she wanted a divorce.

Like his whole world was slipping through his fingers.

"I'll write the orders," Dr. Conner said, tactfully pretending not to notice the tension. "Marie, why don't you help me with the paperwork?"

Casey's mother squeezed her hand before following the doctor out, leaving them alone with the steady rhythm of their baby's heartbeat. After Dr. Conner left, silence filled the room again. But it was different now—heavy with everything they'd finally said out loud.

"Drew—"

"Don't." His voice was rough. "Don't tell me you have too much work, or that you can handle it, or that I'm being overprotective. Just... don't."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"No?" He finally looked at her, really looked at her. "Then what?"

"I'm scared."

The words hung between them, raw and honest in a way they hadn't been in years. Drew's face softened.

"Me too."

"I can't lose this baby." Her hand drifted to her stomach, still flat but starting to firm with the promise of life. "Not now. Not when…”

"When what?"

"Not when it feels like we might actually figure things out this time."

He brought their joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. An old gesture, achingly familiar.

"Then let me help," he said softly. "Let me take care of you, just for a little while. Not because you need it, but because I need to. Because I can't sit by and watch you run yourself into the ground again. Not with so much at stake."

The words hit home, echoing another one of their big fight before the separation.

"You're killing yourself for this job," he'd said, watching her pack for another business trip. "And you won't let me help, won't let me in, won't even admit there's a problem..."

"Because there isn't a problem! This is what success looks like, Drew. This is what we wanted—"

"No, this is what you wanted. I wanted a partnership. A marriage. A family."

"So did I!"

"Did you? Because from where I'm standing, all you want is the next promotion, the next client, the next reason to stay away from home."

She'd thrown her laptop bag at him then, screaming that he was jealous of her success, that he'd never really supported her career. He'd shouted back that she was running away from their marriage, using work as an excuse to avoid dealing with their problems.

They'd both been right. And they'd both been wrong.

"I don't know if I know how to do it differently," Casey admitted. "Taking it easier. Letting people help. I've spent so long trying to prove I could do everything alone..."

"You don't have to." Drew's voice was soft but certain. "Do it alone, I mean. Even if... even if we're not together-together, I'm still here. I want to be here."

"I know." She looked down at their joined hands, still tangled together on the hospital sheets. "I think that's what scares me most."

"What does?"

"That you're still here. That after everything—the fights, the silence, the divorce papers—you're still the first person I want to call when things go wrong. That you still know exactly where to press on my back during contractions. That we're still..." She gestured between them. "This."

"This?"

"Connected. Like there's still this invisible string between us, no matter how far we try to pull apart."

Drew was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing patterns on her palm. "Maybe we should stop pulling."

"Drew..."

"I'm not saying we jump back in. I'm not saying we forget everything that went wrong." He met her eyes. "I'm just saying... maybe we stop fighting it so hard. This connection. Maybe we figure out what it means now, instead of trying to break it."

Casey thought about the past few months—about soup in her mother's kitchen, about late-night phone calls and doctor's appointments, about all the ways they kept gravitating back to each other despite their best intentions to move on.

"I'm still scared," she admitted.

"Of what?"

"Of messing it up again. Of not being able to change enough. Of losing—" She pressed a hand to her stomach. "Of losing everything again."

"Me too." His honesty was like a balm. "But maybe that's okay. Maybe being scared together is better than being scared apart."

Another contraction rippled through her, gentler this time. Drew's hand found its spot on her back automatically, and Casey let herself lean into his touch.

"Okay," she said now, watching their baby's heart beat on the monitor.

"Okay?"

"Bed rest. One week." She squeezed his hand. "But not at my parents' house."

"Casey—"

"Take me home, Drew."

His breath caught. "Home?"

"To our house. The one we never finished." She met his eyes. "Maybe it's time we finished some things."

The hope that blazed across his face almost broke her heart. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Another cramp made her wince. "But first, I think we need to talk. Really talk. About everything."

"Everything?"

"Why I ran away into my work. Why you stopped telling me when things bothered you. Why we both gave up instead of fighting harder." She touched his face, feeling the stubble of a long, terrifying day. "Why we're both still wearing our rings on chains around our necks instead of signing those divorce papers."

His free hand went to his throat, where she knew his wedding band hung beneath his shirt—just like hers.

"That's a lot of truth for one week," he said softly.

"I think we're overdue."

Dr. Conner returned then, discharge papers in hand. But before they left, before they faced their families and their fears and all the truths they'd been avoiding, Drew pulled Casey close.

"For the record," he whispered against her hair, "I never gave up. I just... got lost for a while. We both did."

She closed her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of sawdust and coffee and him.

"Then maybe it's time we found our way back. Let's stop pulling." She squeezed his fingers. "But slowly. Carefully."

"We can do slowly." His smile was soft, hopeful. "We've got time."

As if in agreement, the baby kicked—just a flutter, but enough to make them both laugh. Outside the hospital window, Pine Grove spread out below them, the town that had watched them grow up and fall apart and maybe, just maybe, find their way back together.

Not to who they were before—they'd both changed too much for that. But to something new. Something stronger.