BUKKY'S POV
Pregnant.
The word refused to settle.
It echoed in my head long after the doctor left, long after my parents stepped out to make calls, long after the room grew quiet again. My hand stayed on my stomach, fingers trembling—not from fear, but from disbelief.
There was life inside me, something fragile. Something innocent.
Tears slipped silently into my hairline, I wasn't ready, I wasn't prepared.
But somehow… I wasn't empty either.
Demi stood at the far end of the room, ashame to move, ashame to speak. When he finally did, his voice was barely there.
"I swear… I never knew."
I didn't respond.
Not because I didn't hear him—but because I didn't know what to say. How do you respond to a man who broke you without knowing you were carrying his child?
Akanni had already left. I felt his absence like a sudden drop in temperature. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't need to. His presence had already done what words couldn't.
Demi stepped closer, carefully, as though approaching glass that could shatter.
"I'll do anything," he whispered. "Anything."
Still, I stayed quiet, because forgiveness is not a decision, it is a process.
And I wasn't there yet.
Days passed.
My body healed faster than my heart.
Demi didn't leave.
He slept on the chair beside my hospital bed, neck stiff, eyes hollow. He fetched water before I asked. Called nurses at the slightest sound I made. He spoke softly, carefully, like someone handling something already cracked.
One evening, when the ward had gone quiet, he finally knelt beside my bed.
"Please," he said, breaking. "I know I don't deserve it. I know I failed as a husband. But let me be better… let me try."
I looked at him then—really looked, this wasn't the man who raised his hand in anger, this was a man drowning in regret.
My mother's words echoed in my mind. Forgiveness is not saying it didn't hurt. It is choosing not to bleed forever.
"I forgive you," I said at last.
Demi collapsed forward, his forehead pressing against the mattress as he cried like a child who had almost lost everything.
"I won't fail you again," he vowed.
I believed he meant it.
But belief and trust are not the same thing.
After I was discharged, Demi became… gentle.
Too gentle.
He treated me like glass—guiding me by the elbow, adjusting pillows before I complained, waking in the night just to check if I was breathing properly. He spoke to my stomach in whispers, promising protection, promising change.
It felt strange, tender, almost desperate.
He cooked. Cleaned. Followed me with his eyes like I might disappear if he blinked too long.
He was afraid.
Afraid of losing me.
Afraid of losing the child.
Afraid of losing to Akanni—again.
And I let him care for me, not because everything was fixed.
But because broken things need time before you decide whether they can be rebuilt.