When I woke, Ryan looked exhausted—his face drawn, eyes red, as if he’d aged ten years overnight. “She’s here,” he whispered. “She’s perfect.” A nurse placed Lily in my arms: seven pounds, two ounces, impossibly whole. I asked if he wanted to hold her. He nodded, cradled her gently, and then something in his expression shifted—joy flickered into something darker. He handed her back too quickly. “She’s beautiful,” he said, but the warmth wasn’t there.
I blamed exhaustion. We’d both been through hell. But at home, it didn’t fade. He fed her, changed her, did everything right—but rarely looked at her. His gaze hovered just above her face, as if he were afraid to meet it. When I tried to take newborn photos, he found excuses to leave. By the second week, I started waking to the sound of the front door clicking shut. By the fifth night, it had become a pattern.
That night, I pretended to sleep. Around midnight, he slipped out of bed. I grabbed my keys and followed him from a distance. He drove past our old date-night ice cream spot, out past the city, and pulled into a worn-down community center with a flickering sign: HOPE RECOVERY CENTER. He sat in the car for a long minute, then hunched his shoulders and went inside.
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