“I’m going to ask Eunji to marry me.”

Sehun’s attention snapped completely away from his phone, where he’d be monitoring a series of e-mails coming in from his boss, over to where Chen was frying up a piece of beef. His best friend was decidedly not making eye contact, obviously waiting for some kind of reaction from Sehun.

Chanyeol was across the restaurant, wrangling them a few drinks, and like always, Kai was running late. So for the moment, it was just Sehun and Chen, and one little sentence that felt like it was massively important.

“You guys haven’t been dating that long,” Sehun reasoned.

Chen snorted. “Two years, and we’ve been living together for nine months. Her parents were always anxious about that. And when I wake up next to her in the morning, I see the person I want there for the rest of my life. Yeah, I’m going to marry her.”

Sehun kept silent.

And then Chen laughed and added, “I mean, she’s the girl who was willing to come pick my drunk up at the bar the night of the funeral, and make sure I didn’t drown in my own vomit, and still look like a million dollars when she went to work the next morning after two hours of sleep, she must be a keeper.”

The bar. The night of the funeral.

Luhan.

He was thinking again of Luhan when he shouldn’t have been. But as Chen went on about his girlfriend, and why he thought marriage was a good idea, Sehun’s thoughts were completely occupied with Luhan.

From the night of the bar, Sehun just remembered lust. He remembered a pretty face, one that looked too much like Jae’s, slender hands, and soft skin. But from their second confrontation, the one that had left Sehun in pieces once more, he remembered a fire and a passion burning from Luhan that had been mesmerizing. Luhan, whoever he was, was absolutely breathtaking. His beauty aside, Sehun had been able to see in that moment all of his courage and his independence, not to mention his determination. Luhan had been so different from Jae in the moment they’d shared most recently, but just as appealing.

It pained Sehun to admit, even just to himself, how attracted he was to Luhan. It was a betrayal to his husband, who had only been dead a few months, to find himself ually and romantically drawn to another man.

“I want you to be my best man.”

Sehun finally met Chen’s eyes. “Yeah?”

Chen rolled his eyes and popped a piece of hot beef into his mouth. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been my best friend for close to a decade now. Yes, I want you to be my best man.”

Across the restaurant the bell on the door jingled and Sehun raised a hand towards the sight of Kai entering.

“Congratulations, Chen.” Sehun gave him a genuine smile. “I’m happy for you.”

He was, and it certainly wasn’t a lie. Sehun genuinely liked that Chen’s girlfriend made him so happy. She made Chen smile more than any other girl he’d ever dated. If Chen was going to get married, Sehun was glad it was her. Not to mention she was pretty from ever picture he’d ever seen, his career and hers keeping their paths from actually crossing directly, if not comically. But she was brains and beauty all wrapped up into one impressive package. Sehun never would have guessed Chen would end up bagging himself a gorgeous pediatrician.

And even if he hadn’t wanted Chen to marry her, or hand’t liked her at all, he still would have tried to be happy for Chen. Chen had been the first person Sehun had told before he’d asked Jae to marry him, and then again right after when Jae had said yes. Chen had encouraged Sehun with Jae in every way. Sehun could only return the favor.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kai said, a little breathless. “I had a class that ran late. Hey, where’s Chanyeol?”

Sehun glanced over to the last place he’d seen him. It looked liked Chanyeol had completely forgotten about the drinks he was supposed to be bringing back for them, and was now painfully flirting with one of the waiters.

“He’s over there making an of himself,” Sehun volunteered.

Chen shrugged, “So nothing out of the ordinary?”

Sehun’s phone chirped, indicating a new e-mail, but he ignored it. It took some work to get more than a couple of friends in one spot at one time. It had been much easier when they were young and in college, but now they were all adults, moving in different directions. And no work relayed email was going to ruin that.

Chen asked, “You had a class run late?”

With a nod, Kai began to steal an ample amount of their cooking beef. “We just added some Latin dances to the roster. You’d be surprised how fast those salsa and tango classes filled up.”

“Chen,” Sehun said, nudging his friend, “why don’t you and Eunji sign up for some classes? You have to learn how to dance for your wedding anyway.”

Kai’s eyes widened. “You’re getting married, Chen?”

With an exacerbated sigh, Chen called out loudly to Chanyeol, “Hey, loverboy, get over here!” Then he turned back to the rest of them and said, “I’m only going to explain this one more time.”

Feeling a spark of pleasure, brought upon by how much he cared for his friends, Sehun teased to Kai, “That’s totally a lie. He’s going to talk about this for the next year until he actually gets married.”

The row of laughter that followed, and the round of drinks, made Sehun think for just a second that it might be better to leave his house a little more frequently. Maybe.

Furthermore, he went home several hours later, feeling rejuvenated and happy. He entered his quiet house without hesitation, toed off his shoes on the rack next to the door, ed his light blazer, and was making the walk to the staircase before he even realized what he was doing.

He might have stood at the top of the stairs, staring down the master bedroom door for more than fifteen minutes. He’d been moving on autopilot, dreaming of his comfortable bed, and was only just now realizing how close he’d come to stepping foot in a room he’d vowed never to go again. Because it was Jae’s room. It was the bedroom he’d shared with his husband. He had no place going it alone.

His cowardice won out in the end, like he’d expected it to, and he shuffled his way back downstairs towards the couch, set his phone’s alarm clock, then promptly fell asleep.

In the morning, when he woke to the coffee pot auto brewing, and the flashing of his phone. Sehun gave the bedroom not one more thought and instead went directly to his office. He’d have to go down to his job’s main building that day, he had a presentation around noon, but the morning was clear and Sehun had most certainly become a workaholic following Jae’s death.

The line of e-mails waiting for him in his inbox were nothing out of the ordinary. There were a couple work related, one from Kai, another from Chen with a photo of a ring attached, and then one from an address that he didn’t recognize. Most of the e-mails from unknown senders that he received were filtered into his junk box automatically, but occasionally a few slipped through. And the subject line of the e-mail was …

DO NOT IGNORE THIS MESSAGE. IMPORTANT BABY INFORMATION ATTACHED.

Sehun’s cursor hovered over the link.

Luhan. There was no way this wasn’t from Luhan. But how the hell had he gotten Sehun’s e-mail address?

He’d clicked on the e-mail before he had even realized it, and found himself reading out loud, “I know I told you that it was fine if you didn’t want anything to do with our baby. That was a mistake. I’m changing my mind.”

Huh.

He continued reading, “This baby is just as much mine as it is yours. In fact, this baby is fifty percent yours, and that means you need to shoulder fifty percent of the responsibility. So whether you like it or not, I’m going to keep you appraised of what’s going on.”

No. No. Absolutely no. He thought he’d been terribly clear with Luhan earlier when the man had tried to foist the baby on him.

He read on, “I want you to know that I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m not doing it to punish you. I’m doing this for our baby, because our baby deserves better, and I’m going to make sure he or she gets better. You don’t get to hurt our baby just because you’re hurting.”

Sehun clutched at the edge of his desk.

Luhan knew.

Somehow, some way, Luhan knew. He knew about Jae, he knew about their dead baby, and he knew all of the secrets that haunted Sehun restlessly. Someone had told him. Someone had told him everything. There was no mistaking it.

Voice shaking, he barely managed to finish reading, “I’ve attached the information pertaining to my next doctor’s appointment if you want to come. I want you there. The doctor said she’d be able to see the gender for certain by then. We’ve tried before, but our baby is quite stubborn and likes to face away most of the time. If you can’t make it, I’ll forward you what the doctor and I talked about and the updated ultrasound pictures.”

He was frantically clicking the reply button before he could help himself, and typed back, “How did you get this e-mail? LEAVE ME ALONE.”

Succinct and firm, he decided. Luhan would have to get the point now.

Then he sat there, shaking in his chair, waiting for a response that might take days to come back, ignoring the fact that he had a presentation to prepare for.

He nearly wept aloud at the chime of the e-mail from Luhan.

It simply said, much to his chagrin, “I’m eighteen weeks now, which means I’m feeling a lot of movement. Xiumin, he’s my best friend, swears he can’t feel anything, but apparently that isn’t too abnormal, either. Our baby moving is sort of like gas, I hate to admit, but better, obviously.”

That was it? That was the reply?

Sehun typed back, “I will block you.”

And Luhan replied, “I know where you live. I’ll hand deliver all of our baby’s progress to you, if you block me.”

“I will get a restraining order,” he mashed on the keyboard.

The chime of the e-mail was almost as enraging as Sehun read, “Because yes, I’m such a threat to your safety, me lugging your baby around with my caffeine restrictions and possible prenatal diabetes.”

Then he stopped, blinking almost wildly, completely forgetting himself.

Prenatal diabetes? Was Luhan sick? Was their baby hurting?

“It is not my baby,” he made himself repeat, then he had to say it again and again, just to convince himself of it. His baby was dead and buried. His baby was not gestating in someone currently.

But if Luhan was sick …

“Are you okay?” he sent back.

The response was much longer coming now, by minutes, really.

His palms started to sweat his heartbeat picked up, and Sehun realized how unsettled he was at the thought of something being wrong.

Finally he read back from Luhan, “I’m fine. My doctor doesn’t think I should worry yet, but we’re being extra cautious. If you come to the appointment, it’s ten days from now, we can talk about it with her. Xiumin’s sister is someone it trust to tell me the truth. She’d say if our baby was in danger. But never mind any of that, check out this picture. This baby is our future super star footballer.”

But it wasn’t the baby that Sehun thought was in the most danger if Luhan was showing symptoms of being diabetic. Luhan was.

Giving his rolling chair a nudge back, Sehun moved himself away from the keyboard. There was no point in exchanging anymore messages, or really of having any content. He absolutely wasn’t going to the doctor’s appointment. He wasn’t getting involved with Luhan. It wasn’t going to happen.

But he had to find out how Luhan had known. It was a boiling rage under his skin, the belief that someone would go behind his back and do something so terrible. It was a slight against Sehun, but also it was a slight against Jae and their baby.

There was only one person who knew about Luhan and the baby. There was only one single person who had any idea that Sehun had made the worst mistake of his life.

He lunged for his phone, fingers scrolling through his contact list at a maddening pace.

Sehun took a deep breath to ready himself as the phone was ringing, and then the second the line clicked over, launched out with, “How dare you do this to me, you conniving, sneaky, self serving bastard!”

How could Suho, Jae’s own brother, have hurt him like this? Suho had spent all that time claiming they were family, and apparently trying to prove how much he cared about making sure Sehun took care of himself after the funeral. But now he was going around letting people know about the worst thing that had ever happened to him?

“Woah--” Suho said from the other end of the line.

But Sehun was not willing to let him get even a single word in. “You are scum, you , absolute scum. How could you? How could you tell Luhan about Jae and the baby? How could you betray me like that? I told you to leave well enough alone. I told you that I’m not doing this, and I’m not accepting it. But you kept pushing and then you went and did this.”

“Sehun.”

“No,” he snapped viciously, “you listen to me. I hate you. I hate you more than you can imagine. I hate you more than I hate myself, and I’m the person who went off and got some other guy pregnant on the night that I had to put my husband and my baby in the ground. We are not family. We are not friends. And I never want to speak to you ever again.”

He was about to end the call, finger poised over the red angry button when he heard Suho say, “Sehun, I think you called the wrong person by mistake.”

The ground might as well have fallen out from under him.

“Sehun? Are you … okay?”

His eyes fell down to the caller information displayed on the cell phone’s screen and realized that he had misdialed. It wasn’t Suho on the other end of the line.

Later on, when his blood pressure had come down and he’d stopped wanting to crawl under his desk and hide like a child, he’d rationalize it as a simple mistake based on nicknames. Because Suho was a nickname. It was the only name the Sehun had ever really called him by, but it wasn’t the name Sehun had for him in his address book. Instead his name there was dangerously close to Kai’s real name, not that Sehun had ever called him anything but Kai, either.

Kai. He’d called Kai by mistake.

“Sehun, are you at home?

He was so stupid. He was an idiot. He’d called Kai and now he was down a hole he couldn’t climb out of.

“Sehun? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” he managed to whisper. Physically he was, at least.

There was some thudding on Kai’s end, then he said, “I’m coming over right now, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The phone disconnected before Sehun cold tell him not to.

He was still sitting in his office, the computer’s screen saver running due to inactivity, when Kai pounded on his door. Thirty seconds later he let himself in, and was calling out, “Sehun? Where are you?”

“Here,” Sehun called out voice cracking.

When Kai appeared in the doorway he looked out of sorts, and a little how Sehun felt. Kai’s hair was all rucked up from the wind, his shirt was wrinkled, and Sehun was struck with the possibility that he’d woken Kai. Kai worked late into the night at times. He slept in most mornings.

Sehun had probably woken him with his angry rambling.

“So,” Kai eased out, an awkward look on his face. He took a seat on the sofa in the corner of the room, tucking a leg underneath him. “About that phone call.”

Sehun ran a hand over his face roughly. “Any chance you could forget about everything I said.”

Kai winced. “It’s pretty unlikely. Was there truth to what I heard you say?”

The best Sehun could figure, he had two options. Either he could admit the truth to Kai, and come clean to him, or he could do his best to plausibly deny everything he’d said. The worst part was, Kai wasn’t stupid, but he was a very good friend.

Kai had given a speech, right after Chen, at Sehun’s wedding to Jae. It was Kai’s studio that Sehun and Jae had practiced their wedding dancing in. Kai had been there, just a few hours after Jae had died, and he’d stayed with Sehun and everyone else, dumping all his responsibilities to make sure that Sehun was going to make it through the night.

Even if Sehun gave Kai the worst conceived lie on the face of the planet, and regardless of whether Kai believed him or not, he would let the subject go. He wouldn’t be like Suho and press the matter. Kai would let him be.

Maybe that was why Sehun couldn’t lie to him.

“It was all true.”

Kai gave a slow nod. “You got someone pregnant?”

Shame lacing his words, Sehun said, “I went out drinking with Chen the night Jae was buried. I drank a lot, and I slept with someone. He’s pregnant now.

Did it mean something about Kai being a better man that he didn’t ask if Sehun thought it was his baby? There was nothing of the sort on Kai’s face, in fact. He simply seemed to be accepting the idea.

“Sehun,” Kai said softly, “you’re going to be a father.”

His fist crashed down on his desk and Sehun all but shouted, “I’m not going to be a father!”

Almost flippantly, Kai told him, “If you got this guy pregnant, and he’s going to have your baby, trust me, you’re a father.”

“I’m not,” Sehun said again.

“Why are you mad at Suho?” Kai asked instead. “It has something to do with this, right?”

“He,” Sehun started, “he told Luhan. About Jae.”

“Luhan is the guy who’s pregnant?”

Sehun nodded. “Suho was the only person who knew Luhan existed, and he must have contacted him and told him everything that he had no right saying.”

Kai crossed his legs fully and leaned his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know Suho as well as you, Sehun, but he’s a pretty respectful guy. He’s not the kind of person who speaks without thinking. If he told …Luhan, anything about Jae, he must have had a good reason for it.”

Darkly, Sehun said, “There’s no reason that could ever be valid enough.”

Sehun was going to kill him. A phone call had been a poor idea. He was going to go to see Suho in person and he was going to rip him to pieces.

“So what are you going to do about the fact that you’re going to have a little person comprised of half of your genetic material, crawling around by the new year?”

“I don’t want anything to do with that baby, Kai,” Sehun said, almost pleading with him to understand. “I can’t. I just … I can’t.”

“Because Sooyoung died?”

At the first mention of her name, Sehun jerked a bit. “How do you know that?”

Kai asked, “Know her name? Sehun, you were married to Jaehyuk, but you weren’t his best friend. Jae and Baekhyun would go out all the time and talk about this stuff, and sometimes I got roped into driving them around, since Jae couldn’t drive and Baekhyun refuses to. I heard Jae mention it. You two wanted her name to be a surprise, didn’t you? At least until the announcements went out.”

It was a new wave of pain attacking his heart at the mention of his daughter’s name.

“Jae wanted to have a huge reveal,” Sehun was forced to admit, his chest seizing. “He said her name was special and he wanted everyone special to us to find out at just the perfect time.”

They’d agonized over names for months. They’d found out they were having a girl in the fourth month, and from then on out it had been constant arguing, more so than when they’d tried to put he nursery together, over what kind of name would suit her.

Jae had wanted something classic and feminine, something as beautiful as he imagined she was going to be. Adversely, Sehun had wanted something much more interesting. He’d wanted the kind of name for his daughter that would make a statement and act as a precursor for how much of an amazing life she was going to lead. He’d wanted something unique and fascinating and not girly.

They’d only just settled on her name before the accident. Their baby hadn’t even had a name for a week, before she’d died.

It felt like such a jinx now.

“Sehun,” Kai said, leaning towards him, “none of the rest of us will ever understand what you’re going through with that kind of loss. We will never be able to, god willing. And maybe that’s why you can’t see what’s in front of you, but Jae and your daughter dying doesn’t mean that you can’t move on and still have a family.”

“I don’t want a new family!” Sehun thundered.

Unperturbed, Kai told him, “You’re not replacing them by accepting Luhan in your life as the person who’s giving you a child. And yes, stop making that face, you’re having a baby. You don’t want it and you’re clearly going to fight it and act like less of a man than a child deserves for a father, but nothing is going to change the fact that there is a baby coming. You’re going to be a father, Sehun.”

“I was going to be a father,” Sehun clarified. “Jae was going to have my child. Sooyoung was my child.”

Kai shook his head and sighed. “I’m starting to understand why Suho may have pissed you off. I assume he tried to talk some sense into you?”

“You call this sense?” Sehun chocked out in an annoyed way. “Trying to bully me into accepting a child that I just cannot?”

“Why not?” Kai demanded. “Because you think it besmirches Sooyoung some how?”

The risk of blowing up on Kai was gaining momentum, so instead Sehun asked him flatly, “I appreciate you coming over here to check on me, but I think you should go now. And I’d be even more appreciative if you could keep this to yourself. It’s bad enough I have to live with the truth of knowing I betrayed Jae in this way, I don’t want any of our other friends or Jae’s parents finding out.”

Kai got to his feet slowly. “You should be grateful, you know.”

“What?” Sehun demanded. “I swear to god, Kai, if you don’t--”

“You lost your daughter,” Kai said anyway, “in the most senseless and horrible way that a parent can lose a child--in an accident. But it was just that, an accident. You may not have planned or wanted for this new pregnancy to occur, and you may look at it like a burden, but I think it’s a second chance for you.”

“Get out!”

“Pull your head out of your !” Kai threw right back at him.

Sehun drew himself up to his full height. “You get out right now or I’ll make you.”

“Stop being a coward,” Kai said as he headed away from Sehun. “Stop being so damn ungrateful that you get a second chance at having a baby.” He stomped his way to the front door and slammed it behind him.

Sehun collapsed down into his seat and just happened to glance at his laptop where the latest e-mail from Luhan had an attachment with it.

Against his better judgment he downloaded it quickly.

The picture was unrecognizable at first, looking just like a giant smudge of blue against a camera lens. But a closer, more patient look clarified to him that the blue was merely a shirt, material stretched over the swell of what Sehun knew was his child.

His child.

In Luhan’s words, their future superstar footballer.

Jae had said about their daughter, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if she could be a ballet prima donna? Or a fantastic doctor who cures cancer? Or wow, Sehun, she could be Prime Minister!”

Sehun had said back to him, “As long as she’s a footballer, I’ll be happy.”

With a growl of rage Sehun picked up his laptop and threw it against the far wall.

Breathing hard the rest of the contents on his desk were shoved to the floor, and then Sehun was kicking his chair, so angry and so sad and so broken.

Kai wasn’t speaking to him. That was what Sehun learned over the next few days as he drifted to and from work, ignored invitations from Chen to go drinking, and did his best to avoid the outside world completely.

He knew because Chanyeol told him one day, “Baekhyun wants you to know that Kai isn’t talking to you. Sehun, what did you do to piss him off?”

Sehun countered by asking, “How is this any of Baekhyun’s business?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “Baekhyun’s been staying with Kai since his place is being fumigated, remember? Why are you so touchy about this? Did you guys fight?”

Sehun didn’t dignify an answer of any kind. If Kai wanted to ignore him that was fine.

Then Chanyeol asked, “Hey, is that a new laptop?”

Sehun glared at him until Chanyeol took off running, complaining about not wanting to talk to him either.

For the rest of the week, and into then next, Sehun was ignored by Kai, but did his own part in ignoring Suho who was wisely keeping his distance. It seemed like the matter with Luhan had rippled down into the relationships Sehun had with his friends. Now they were all standing on uneven ground with each other, and only a few of them knew why.

It almost pained Sehun to admit it, but Luhan’s infrequent but charming e-mails, the ones that Sehun never responded to, were quickly becoming the highlight of his days.

Some times Luhan would e-mail him two or three times a day, saying things like, “This baby does not like citrus. Good thing we don’t live on an orange farm,” or even things like, “do you think it’s true that if I let the baby listen to music, it’ll be smarter when it’s born?”.

Luhan told him about his ankles starting to swell up, having to go up a pants size, wanting to get a puppy for the baby, and maybe just the things were on the top of his mind.

More than often Luhan’s thoughts put a smile on Sehun’s face, at least until he realized what was happening.

And once in a while he had to stop himself from responding. He couldn’t encourage Luhan. If he showed an kind of interest who knew what would happen.

Then Tuesday was upon Sehun before he knew it, and early in the morning his e-mail inbox rang with Luhan’s now familiar address.

Clicking on the e-mail he was thankful for its briefness, merely asking if he was coming to the doctor’s appointment, reminding him it was at ten.

Sehun was not going. His position on the matter hadn’t changed. More and more he’d been coming to grips with the fact that Luhan’s baby had his genetic material, as Kai had stated. But that didn’t mean Sehun was the father. He wasn’t anyone’s father.

Sehun was heading for the office around nine when the next e-mail came from Luhan, reading, “Can’t make it? That’s too bad. I really want you there. But it’s okay! Xiumin is going to take me. I’ll send you the information later on.”

Scowling, Sehun wondered who this Xiumin was.

Then he put the whole matter from his mind.

He reached his work office by nine-thirty and threw himself into work. At least until he heard the chime.

“T-minus thirty minutes until we find out if it’s a girl or a boy!”

Sehun was befuddled by Luhan. When Luhan had told him about the baby they’d fought, and terribly so. Luhan had screamed at him and called him names and been on fire, in a sense. But the Luhan through correspondence was always cheery and patient and persistent.

What had Suho said to him to make him this way?

Was Luhan just being nice to him because he felt sorry for Sehun’s loss?

Sehun pointedly ignored the clock until he was certain it was after ten.

But then oddly enough he couldn’t look away from it after that. By ten-thirty he was watching the seconds tick by, and by eleven he knew for a fact that Luhan had to know what the gender was. There had to be an e-mail incoming very shortly.

It just never came.

“Something bothering you, Oh?” his boss asked him at half passed three, just as the day was winding down.

Sehun felt an absolute mess, his skin itchy, his mind whirling with possibilities and his stomach churning at the thought that something could be wrong.

God, what if there was something wrong? What if Luhan had gone to the doctor and they’d found something bad? Luhan had wanted him there, and as little as Sehun liked it, he had helped make that baby. He should have been there. He had been there for Jae and for their baby, he should have been there for Luhan. What kind of man was he?

It was an excruciating wait, watching the minutes slowly drag by, trying to convince himself that Luhan had simply forgotten to e-mail him, or had gone out with friends and been delayed in sending it.

Then finally he couldn’t take it anymore.

If something was wrong with Luhan, he deserved to know.

“Suho,” Sehun bit out harshly, still feeling utterly betrayed by him. But he hadn’t had any other choice. He’d had to call the man, because there was no one else Luhan could have gotten Sehun’s e-mail from. Luhan and Suho had to be in constant contact with each other, and Suho would be able to get Sehun a phone number. Or an address.

“Sehun?” Suho asked, surprise spiking his naturally low voice. “It’s nice to hear from you, but I’m not sure why.”

Almost bitterly, Sehun asked, “You knew Luhan had a doctor’s appointment today, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Suho confirmed right away. “I asked him to keep me appraised of his pregnancy. This baby may not mean much to you, but it means something to me.”

“You don’t presume to know what means what to me,” Sehun said, then forced himself to take calm, even breaths. “Luhan said he’d e-mail me what happened. I haven’t heard anything from him.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to know,” Suho replied, sounding absolutely glib.

“Just tell me if you know something.”

After a few beats of silence, Suho said, “I know that Luhan was supposed to have that appointment today, but I didn’t expect to hear from him right away. Maybe you’re just not on his priority list right now, Sehun. You are the man denying his child.”

Eyes narrowing, Sehun demanded, “Why are you so interested in Luhan and the baby? It’s not yours. You don’t know Luhan. There’s nothing trying you to either of them. Why the interest?”

“Other than the fact that my irritating, but ultimately deserving brother-in-law is the father’s child, and I care about said brother-in-law regardless of how little he cares about himself?”

More silence followed.

Then Sehun said, “Luhan has been sending me e-mails over the past few weeks.”

“I asked him to try.”

“Try?” Sehun wondered.

“To make you see that this baby isn’t the horrible thing you think it is. He’s been trying, at my request. Have you been making any effort in response? Or have you just been pissing him off or ignoring him?”

Sehun hated how well Suho was able to read the situation.

Carefully, Suho asked, “What are you going to do, Sehun, when in fifteen years your child shows up on your doorstep and demands to know why you didn’t want him or love her? What are you going to do when you’re asked questions with answers you regret?”

That was something he couldn’t think of at the moment. He could only mumble to Suho, “I’m worried something went wrong at the appointment. Luhan told me the doctor is watching for pregnancy related diabetes. Something must have gone wrong or be bad if he hasn’t e-mailed me. Luhan doesn’t seem the kind of guy to not do something he says he will.”

Eventually Suho admitted, “I have Luhan’s address. I managed to dig it up, though it wasn’t easy considering the lack of information I knew at the time. I just don’t know if I should give it to you. Maybe something did go wrong and he doesn’t want to talk to you right now. You haven’t been the most supportive guy.”

“I want the address,” Sehun said, already gathering his keys up. “That’s my baby he’s carrying Suho.”

“Now it’s your baby?”

Sehun gripped the phone so hard he could feel the plastic start to buckle.

“I am a coward, Suho. I’m a coward who lost the only thing worth living for, and I’m too afraid to try again. But yes, that is my baby. What’s the address?”

Suho cleared his throat. “Do you want me to drive you?”

Sehun slid his shoes on. “No. I just want the address.” He paused, then said, “Suho. Please. Just give it to me.”

“Do you need to write it down?”

“No, I’m good,” Sehun said, never thinking for a second that he’d forget the most important address he might ever memorize. “I’m heading to my car now. What is it?”

He tried not to break the speed limit too frequently as he raced towards the last person he’d thought would so wholly consume his thoughts. And to his baby. The baby who was precious to him, no matter how little Sehun wanted it to be.