EVELYN POV
The sunlight hits her face like an accusation.
Evelyn opens her eyes slowly. She's in an unfamiliar bed. Silk sheets. Expensive pillows. Everything smells like him. Everything feels like a dream that's about to end.
Julian's side of the bed is cold.
She reaches across and touches the space where he was. No warmth. No body heat. No evidence that he was ever there. He's been gone for hours. Maybe all night. She doesn't know what time it is. She doesn't care.
She sits up slowly, her body aching in ways that make her remember exactly what happened. They came to his penthouse as the sun rose. He made her tea. They sat on the couch and talked until dawn broke across the city.
Then he carried her to his bedroom.
Then everything else happened.
Evelyn looks around the penthouse and realizes she has no idea where anything is. She doesn't know where the bathroom is. She doesn't know where her clothes went. She doesn't know anything about this man or this place or how she ended up here.
She wraps herself in his shirt because it smells like him and she needs that right now more than she needs anything else.
The penthouse is silent when she walks through it. Too silent. Black and silver and cold. Nothing is warm. Nothing is lived in. Everything is exactly like Julian Hart. Beautiful but untouchable.
There's no note. No message. No explanation anywhere.
She's about to fall apart when she hears the penthouse door open.
Julian walks in wearing a suit like he's been up for hours. Working. Doing whatever he does. His face is cold and professional and he doesn't even look at her. He looks through her like she's invisible.
"Good morning," he says flatly.
Evelyn wraps his shirt tighter around herself.
"You left," she says.
"I had work."
"You could have woken me up. We could have talked about last night. We could have figured out what this is."
Julian walks past her like she doesn't exist. He pours himself coffee and opens his laptop like she's not standing in his penthouse wearing nothing but his shirt.
"Last night was a mistake," he says without looking at her. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I was caught up in the moment. It won't happen again."
The words hit her like a physical blow.
"You're lying," Evelyn says. "You looked at me and you meant it. You held me like I mattered to you."
"I lied very well," Julian says. He finally looks at her and his eyes are dead. Completely dead. "I'm good at that."
Evelyn feels something inside her break into pieces so small they'll never fit back together.
She gets dressed in silence. Her dress from last night. Her shoes. Her mask still on the kitchen counter. When she's fully clothed, she looks like she did before he kissed her. She looks like a stranger.
Julian doesn't watch her leave. He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't even acknowledge that last night happened.
In the elevator, Evelyn falls apart. She cries so hard she can't breathe. She gave herself to a man who was looking for a distraction. She believed him when he said she mattered. She was an idiot for thinking that one night could change her broken life.
The doorman nods when she leaves. He's used to women walking out of Julian Hart's penthouse in the morning.
She walks through the cold city streets in yesterday's clothes and realizes that she's been destroyed twice in two days. First by Darian. Now by Julian. The masked stranger who promised everything and gave her nothing.
She takes a cab to her mother's house. She sits in the backseat and stares out the window and tries to figure out how she's going to survive this.
When she arrives, her mother is cooking breakfast. Her brother is doing homework at the kitchen table. They look up when she comes in, still wearing last night's dress.
Her mother's face goes pale.
"What happened to you?" her mother asks.
"I met a man," Evelyn says. Her voice sounds like it's coming from underwater. "And I was an idiot."
She goes to the bathroom and showers. She stands under the hot water for so long that her skin starts to prune. She's trying to wash away everything. The smell of Julian. The feeling of his hands on her body. The memory of believing that he cared about her.
The water doesn't help.
For two days, she feels nothing. She sits at her mother's kitchen table and doesn't eat. She stares out windows and doesn't see anything. She exists but doesn't live.
On the third day, her body starts to feel wrong.
Her breasts are tender. Her stomach feels heavy. She's nauseous in a way that doesn't make sense. She chalks it up to emotional distress. She tells herself it's just her body processing the trauma.
By the fourth day, she realizes her period is late.
It's probably nothing. Stress can do that. Heartbreak can do that. A complete emotional breakdown can definitely delay a period.
But her body keeps telling her something different.
On the fifth day, she buys a pregnancy test at a pharmacy. She pays cash. She doesn't want anyone to know. She doesn't want anyone to see her like this.
When the test shows two pink lines, she stares at it for so long that the numbers blur.
Pregnant.
She's pregnant.
With Julian Hart's child.
A man who said last night was a mistake. A man who looked at her like she meant nothing. A man who'll never believe the child is his.
She sits on the bathroom floor and her whole body shakes. She's pregnant. She's alone. She has no money, no inheritance, no stability, nothing. And she has a baby growing inside her that she never planned for.
She touches her stomach and whispers words that will define the rest of her life.
"It's just you and me now," she says to the tiny life inside her. "I promise I will never let anyone hurt you the way they hurt me. I promise I will build something so strong that nobody can ever take it from us. I promise you'll never feel alone."
She cries on that bathroom floor for hours. She cries for the girl she was yesterday who believed in love. She cries for the man who used her and left her. She cries for the baby who deserves better than this.
Her mother finds her eventually. She holds Evelyn while she breaks. She doesn't ask questions. She just holds her and whispers that everything will be okay.
But Evelyn knows that nothing will ever be okay again. She's carrying the child of a man who doesn't want her. She's carrying a secret that will destroy her if anyone finds out.
She has a baby. And she has absolutely no one.