Hey hun. I think part 2 of What Loving You Cost has been flagged or something. I just stumbled upon part 1 and I can't see part 2 at all. I'm not sure if you know but still sending a message regardless.
On the other note, love your work. Can't wait for more fanfics. 🫶🏽❤️
that’s weird, it loooooks okay lol but if it’s still being strange here’s the link! thanks for telling me that was happening
I just want to say that you wrote some of the best fan fiction I have ever read
I mean
The second part of Don’t flinch Mr. Shelby? The slow burn? The semi-enemies to lovers? I was FLABBERGASTED I tell you this
I would also LOVE to send you a request some time and read what you make of it, I already have some ideas
Thank you for your service ❤️
KISSESSSSSS I LOVE YOU!! send requests whenever! i’ll have a functioning computer soon lol, but im so eager to write, i’ve gotten many ideas. hearing that you guys enjoy my work means so such to me 🥹 i love the feedback 🤍🤍
Hiii Ana, I’m loving your writing! I’m such a Peaky Blinders fan and huge lover of Tommy Shelby. I have a fic request which you can totally disregard if you don’t feel up to it. But I was wondering if you could write a series with an OC that time travels to 1919 Birmingham (season 1). She has to survive a new environment and catches the eye of Tommy. Perhaps she’ll also be a barmaid with Grace during that period?
Keep up the good work! I’ll read anything you put out🩵
hiii love, thank you so much, this message genuinely made my day! i actually really love this idea, and i could definitely see it working as a shorter mini-series. i’m not sure when i’d start it yet, but i’m definitely keeping this one in mind.
☾ Warnings: pregnancy, hidden pregnancy reveal aftermath, home invasion and threats discussed, betrayal of medical confidentiality, reader injury and mentions of blood, protective/possessive behavior, violence and implied off-screen retaliation, emotional distress, crying, arguments and raised voices, controlling behavior, complicated relationship dynamics, angst with comfort.
The doctor came sometime after midnight, when the rain had settled into a quiet tapping against the windows and your body had begun to give in to the exhaustion you had been fighting since you ran from your home.
Polly had taken charge of Thomas’s bedroom within minutes of arriving. She sent Arthur away for hot water, then sent him away again after he returned with it and remained hovering near the doorway, looking as though he needed someone to blame before the night was over. Frances laid clean towels beside the washbasin and brought another blanket for your legs.
Thomas did none of it.
He stood near the window with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, his coat laid over the back of a chair and his cap resting beside an untouched glass of whisky on the dresser. He had taken a cigarette from his case a little while earlier, but it remained unlit between his fingers.
Every time you looked toward him, his attention was already on you.
The knock at the door came softly. Frances opened it, and the man who entered carried a familiar black leather bag beneath one arm.
You recognized him before he could offer a polite greeting.
“Dr Pritchard.”
He stopped just inside the room.
The pause was brief, but it was there. Then he recovered, smoothing concern into his expression as if he had only just understood the seriousness of what had happened.
“Miss Y/n,” he said. “I understand you have had a bad fall.”
Thomas turned his head from the window.
“You know him?”
You nodded, suddenly feeling less steady beneath the blankets. “He was the doctor I saw before.”
Thomas’s gaze remained on Dr Pritchard a moment longer than necessary.
“Then you already know what you are checking for.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Yes, Mr Shelby. Though I will need a little room to examine her.”
“You have room.”
Polly gave Thomas a sharp look. “She does not need you making the man nervous while he tends to her.”
“I’m staying.”
“Tommy,” you said quietly.
His eyes came to you immediately.
You had no strength for another argument. Not while your hand throbbed beneath the hastily wrapped cloth, not while every unfamiliar ache in your body made panic threaten to rise all over again.
“Just stay out of his way.”
The cigarette shifted in his fingers as he nodded once.
Dr Pritchard approached the bed and set his bag down. When he took your injured hand, his fingers were cold. His eyes lowered to the cut across your palm and the small pieces of glass still caught near the base of your thumb.
“There are fragments remaining,” he said. “Removing them will hurt.”
“It already hurts.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “I expect it does.”
He cleaned your hand slowly. The first sharp pull made you tense beneath the blanket, and Polly moved to sit beside you, resting one hand near your knee without crowding you. You concentrated on the steady pressure of her hand and the sound of the rain rather than the sting in your palm.
Thomas stayed where he was.
He did not pace. He did not interrupt. He barely seemed to breathe whenever you winced. Once, when you pulled your hand back slightly, his shoes shifted against the floorboards before he stopped himself from coming nearer.
The doctor wrapped your palm in a fresh bandage and began asking questions about your escape. Whether you had landed hard. Whether the cramp had returned. Whether you had seen any blood after the fall.
“No,” you said. “I saw blood on my dress, but it was only from my hand.”
Thomas lowered his eyes at that. His thumb ran slowly along the cigarette he had ruined without ever lighting.
The rest of the examination seemed to take forever. You kept your gaze on the blanket, afraid that if you looked too long at Thomas you would remember his hand resting over the curve of your stomach earlier, the hurt still in his face even while he tried to touch you carefully.
Eventually, Dr Pritchard stepped back and closed his bag.
“I see no sign tonight that the pregnancy has been harmed,” he said. “She needs quiet and rest for the next few days. No lifting, no unnecessary stress and certainly no more climbing out of windows.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened at the last remark.
“The baby is all right?” he asked.
“As far as I can determine tonight, yes.”
A breath left Thomas so quietly you might have missed it if you had not been watching him. He lowered the unlit cigarette to the dresser beside his cap and pressed his hand briefly against his mouth.
You closed your eyes.
The baby was all right.
For one small moment, the room loosened around you.
Then Polly, who had reached for your torn coat at the end of the bed, made a low sound beneath her breath.
Something had slipped from the ripped seam near the shoulder and fallen onto the rug by her shoe.
A small folded square of paper.
Thomas saw it before anyone could speak. He crossed the room and picked it up, opening it beneath the bedside lamp.
You watched his eyes move across the page.
His expression emptied so suddenly that your relief vanished with it.
“Tommy?”
He folded the note again.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing you need tonight.”
Your throat tightened.
“Give it to me.”
Instead of answering, Thomas looked toward the doctor.
Dr Pritchard had stopped fastening his bag. His hand remained on the clasp, fingers still, and the look he gave Thomas was over too quickly to be innocent.
You understood before anyone explained it.
“What does he know?” you asked.
The doctor turned back to his bag. “I am afraid I do not know what you mean.”
Thomas’s voice became very quiet.
“Arthur.”
Arthur appeared in the doorway so quickly he must have been standing close by the entire time. “What is it?”
“Take the doctor downstairs.”
Dr Pritchard stiffened. “Mr Shelby, I have completed my work here. I need to return home.”
“You will,” Thomas said. “After we have spoken.”
Arthur stepped into the room, his gaze moving between Thomas and the doctor until his confusion sharpened into suspicion.
You pushed yourself higher against the pillows. “Give me the note.”
“Y/n, lie back.”
“Do not tell me to lie back while you hide something from me.”
Thomas finally looked at you, and in his eyes you saw the mistake already taking shape. He thought he was sparing you something. He thought because you were hurt and shaken, the truth had become his to decide when you were ready to carry it.
Polly stood from the bed.
“Hand it to her, Thomas.”
His gaze cut toward her.
“You have already made one poor choice tonight by assuming what she needed,” Polly said. “Do not make another.”
Arthur glanced toward the floor, his mouth pressing briefly into a line. Even under different circumstances, Thomas would not have appreciated being corrected in front of his brother.
But after a moment, he brought the note to the bed.
You took it with your uninjured hand and opened it.
The writing was large and dark.
TELL SHELBY CONGRATULATIONS.
For several seconds, you could not speak.
Your fingers tightened slowly against the page, bending one edge into your palm. You read the words again even though there was nothing difficult to understand about them.
“They knew,” you said.
Thomas stood beside the bed, silent.
“Those men knew about the baby.”
Dr Pritchard did not meet your eyes.
The sickness that rose inside you was different from anything the pregnancy had brought. You remembered sitting in his surgery alone, your hands twisting in your lap while you tried to explain that the father did not know. He had spoken kindly. He had assured you that nothing discussed there would leave the room.
You had trusted him because you had been too afraid to trust anyone else.
“They knew before he did,” you whispered.
Arthur turned slowly toward the doctor.
“What the fuck does she mean by that?”
Dr Pritchard took one step backward.
Thomas’s voice cut through the room. “Downstairs.”
Arthur moved before the doctor could object. He seized him by the upper arm and pulled him toward the door hard enough that his bag struck the frame on the way out.
You looked at Thomas, the note still crushed slightly in your hand.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out what he told them.”
“And after that?”
His eyes lowered to the paper.
“You do not want an answer to that tonight.”
“That is why I asked.”
His face tightened, but he did not answer.
He reached for his coat and shrugged it on before taking his cap from the dresser.
“You told me you would listen,” you said.
Thomas stopped with his back to you.
“I heard you.”
“That is not the same thing.”
For a moment he stayed there, one hand around the brim of his cap, his shoulders held too firmly beneath his coat.
Then he put the cap on and walked out.
The bedroom door closed softly behind him.
You stared at the message in your hand until the sound of his footsteps disappeared down the stairs. Polly sat on the bed beside you, but she did not reach for the note or tell you Thomas would set everything right.
“I thought it was private,” you said eventually. Your voice sounded distant even to yourself. “I thought at least that much belonged to me.”
Polly looked at the folded paper, then toward the bedroom door through which Thomas had vanished.
“Nothing remains quiet for long when men decide it is useful to them,” she said.
A car engine started outside.
You turned toward the window, knowing Thomas was inside it without needing to see him.
The note remained in your hand long after the car had gone.
༺ ☾ ༻
Dr Pritchard lasted seven minutes in the back room of the betting shop before Arthur put his fist through the cabinet beside his head.
The doctor flinched so violently his chair scraped against the floor, one hand coming up to protect his face while splintered wood dropped onto his shoulder. Arthur stood over him, breathing through his nose, his injured knuckles already beginning to redden.
Thomas remained seated across the table.
His coat was folded neatly over the back of his chair, his cap placed beside the glass of whisky he had not touched. He had said very little since leaving the house, and that silence had only made Arthur worse. Thomas’s anger rarely needed volume to fill a room. It sat in the careful way he watched the doctor, the stillness of his hands, the cigarette case resting unopened beside his drink.
“You examined her tonight,” Arthur said, voice rough with disbelief. “You sat in that bedroom telling her she were all right while knowing bloody well why those men had gone after her.”
“I did not know they would go to her home,” Dr Pritchard said quickly. “I swear to you, I never thought they would lay a hand on her.”
Arthur made a sound in the back of his throat and stepped closer.
Thomas lifted his eyes. “What did you tell them?”
The doctor looked toward him at last. Blood had not been drawn yet, but fear had already taken the strength out of his face.
“They came to me over debts,” he said. “The Hanleys knew I had treated men connected with your family before. They asked for names. Information. Anyone close enough to be useful.”
“And you gave them hers,” Thomas said.
“They threatened my wife.”
Arthur caught the back of the doctor’s chair and turned it sharply, forcing him to face him. “So you handed over another woman instead, did you?”
“I did not hand her over. I did not give them her address.”
“You told them enough.”
“Arthur,” Thomas said.
Arthur’s grip stayed tight for another second, then he let go with a hard shove that made the doctor rock forward in his seat.
Dr Pritchard clutched his hat in both hands. “I told them only that a young woman known to have been seen with you had come to my surgery. That she was pregnant. They asked whether the child was yours, but she had not told me that.”
Thomas looked at him steadily. “You did not need her to tell you.”
The doctor’s mouth opened, then closed again.
“She came to you alone,” Thomas continued. “She kept my name out of your office because she believed that would keep her life private. You looked at her, understood enough, and sold it to men who knew what to do with it.”
“I had no choice.”
Arthur laughed once, sharply. “No choice.”
Thomas did not look away from the doctor. Upstairs, you would still have the note with you. He could see the way your fingers had folded over it, the words doing more damage than the broken glass in your hand. He had spent weeks believing your distance was something you had chosen against him. Now he understood how hard you had fought to keep even one part of your life out of reach of his enemies.
“The Hanleys,” he said. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
Arthur seized the doctor by the collar and jerked him halfway out of the chair.
“You don’t know?”
“I know they have a place near Bordesley!” Dr Pritchard blurted, grabbing at Arthur’s wrist. “Men go in and out at night. I have treated one of them there before. That is all I know, I swear.”
Arthur stared at him, breathing hard. Then he let go with enough force that the doctor collapsed back into the chair.
Arthur struck a match with unnecessary force and lit a cigarette, hands unsteady with rage. “Say the word, Tom. Give me five minutes with him.”
Dr Pritchard went rigid.
Thomas took his cap from the table and rose to his feet.
“No.”
Arthur turned toward him. “No?”
“He has given us the Hanleys.”
“He gave them Y/n.”
“Yes.”
“And you are letting him walk away from it?”
Thomas buttoned his coat slowly before walking around the table. Dr Pritchard pulled himself as far back in the chair as he could, but there was nowhere left for him to go.
“You will close your surgery,” Thomas said. “Tonight. You will take your wife and leave Birmingham by tomorrow evening. You will never speak Y/n’s name again, and you will never mention the pregnancy to anyone, not in confession and not with a gun at your head.”
The doctor nodded desperately.
Thomas leaned down only slightly, his voice dropping further.
“If I hear that you have spoken about either of them, I will send Arthur to find you, and this time I will not be there to say no.”
Dr Pritchard’s breath left him in a shudder. “Yes, Mr Shelby.”
Arthur exhaled smoke through his nose, still staring at the doctor as if Thomas’s decision had cheated him of something necessary.
“Should’ve given me the five minutes.”
Thomas pulled his cap low over his eyes.
“Save it for the men who put their hands on her.”
Arthur went quiet then.
His cigarette lowered slightly between his fingers, and for a moment his anger seemed to settle into something uglier, more focused. He reached for his coat.
“John will want to know.”
“Get him,” Thomas said. “We are going to Bordesley.”
Arthur headed for the door, then paused with one hand against the frame.
“She going to forgive you for this?”
Thomas took his cigarette case from the table, though he made no move to open it.
“No.”
Arthur turned partly back toward him. “Then why do it?”
Thomas’s face remained unreadable, but his eyes shifted once toward the ceiling, as though the distance between the betting shop and his bedroom were nothing at all.
“Because I cannot ask her to understand it.”
Arthur watched him for another second, then opened the door.
Outside, the rain had begun to fall harder. Thomas stepped into it without putting up his collar, and Arthur followed him toward the car.
You slept only because your body eventually stopped giving you a choice.
When you woke, the room held the grey, tired light of early morning. The bed beside you had never been slept in. Your hand ached beneath its dressing, and the note lay on the table near the window, folded carefully now but no less cruel than it had been in your fingers during the night.
You rested your hand over your stomach and stayed quiet for a minute. Dr Pritchard had said everything was well. Whatever he had betrayed, whatever Thomas had gone out to do because of it, you held onto that one fact.
When you sat up, movement beyond the glass caught your attention.
Two men stood outside the house. One remained near the gate, cigarette between his fingers, while the other crossed slowly along the pavement and returned to the same place again. When his coat shifted, you caught the outline of a gun beneath it.
You stared at him until your chest began to feel too tight.
Thomas had not waited until you woke. He had not sat beside you and asked what would make you feel secure. He had simply filled the outside of the house with armed men while you slept inside it.
A soft knock sounded at the bedroom door before Polly entered carrying a tray.
She followed your gaze to the window and sighed.
“Where is he?” you asked.
“Out.”
“Still?”
Her silence answered you.
You pushed the blankets aside and lowered your feet to the floor.
“You ought to remain in bed longer,” Polly said. “You have had no proper sleep.”
“I cannot sleep in here.”
“Y/n—”
“I woke up to men with guns outside the window, Polly.”
Her mouth closed.
“He stood in this room and told me he would listen,” you continued, reaching for the dress Frances had left folded on the chair. “Then he waited until I was asleep and did precisely what I said I could not live with.”
Your bandaged hand made the buttons difficult. You tried once, then again, jaw tightening when the fabric would not cooperate.
Polly set down the tray and came closer.
“I can do it,” you said.
“I know you can.” She held out her hand for the dress rather than taking it from you. “But unless winning an argument with a row of buttons improves the morning somehow, let me help.”
You looked at her for a moment before loosening your grip.
Polly fastened the dress quietly, her fingers quick and practical. When she was finished, you reached for your shoes.
“What do you intend to do?” she asked.
“Leave.”
“You cannot go back to your home yet.”
“I know.”
“There may still be men searching for you.”
“There are men outside already. The only difference is which Shelby told them to be there.”
Polly glanced toward the window again. When she spoke, there was no scolding in her voice.
“Where will you go?”
You shook your head. “I do not know.”
“Yes, you do.” She turned toward the wardrobe and pulled down a warm coat. “You will go to Ada.”
You looked at her. “Ada?”
“She will not turn you away, and she is the one person in this family Thomas cannot intimidate by going quiet in a doorway.”
Despite everything, a small, tired breath of laughter escaped you.
“He will blame you.”
Polly helped you slip one arm into the coat, carefully avoiding your wrapped palm. “Thomas has blamed me for most things since childhood. I should miss it if he stopped.”
“And the men outside?”
“I will tell them I have sent you somewhere on my instructions. If they take issue, they can come inside and explain it directly to me.”
You glanced toward the table and the note resting there.
For a moment, you considered leaving it behind. You wanted nothing else to do with it. You did not want to carry those words into another house and allow them to follow you any farther than they already had.
But it was yours, in the same terrible way the wound on your hand was yours.
You tucked it into your coat pocket.
Polly brought you downstairs by the back staircase. Frances already had a car waiting behind the house, the driver an older man who barely lifted his eyes before opening the door for you.
“You are not coming?” you asked.
“No.” Polly straightened your coat collar once, the movement brief and neat. “If Thomas comes back to an empty bedroom and an empty house, Arthur will not be the one foolish enough to stand in front of him.”
You almost smiled.
Then the emotion rose too quickly, and you looked away before it could show too plainly.
Polly gave your arm a gentle squeeze.
“Go on, love.”
You climbed into the car alone.
As it pulled away, you looked back once at Thomas’s house. The men outside turned at the sound of the engine, but neither attempted to stop you.
Thomas returned shortly after nine.
Arthur followed him through the front door, his coat marked with mud and his expression drawn with the dull aftermath of violence. Thomas had washed his hands before coming home. He had changed nothing else. There was still a dark stain near the cuff of his shirt, hidden only until he removed his coat.
Frances met them in the hall and immediately lowered her gaze.
Thomas noticed.
“Where is Polly?”
Frances hesitated. “In the sitting room, sir.”
He turned toward the stairs instead.
His bedroom door was ajar.
The bed was empty. The breakfast tray sat untouched near the window. Your torn dress had been removed from the chair, but the blanket remained rumpled where you had slept beneath it.
The note was gone.
Arthur came up behind him and looked past his shoulder into the room.
“Oh, fuck.”
Thomas turned.
Polly was standing at the bottom of the staircase, hands folded in front of her.
“Where is she?”
“With Ada.”
His expression hardened. “You let her leave.”
“I helped her into the car.”
“She is injured.”
“She is not imprisoned.”
“There are men who know about her.”
“And she woke to find armed men outside this house without having been told a word about it.”
Thomas descended the stairs slowly.
“They were there for her protection.”
Polly held her ground. “Did you expect that to matter once she looked out of the window and saw precisely the life she had begged you not to give her?”
His jaw flexed.
“She cannot be left without protection.”
“That does not mean you decide how she lives before she is awake enough to object.”
Arthur scrubbed a hand across his mouth, then gestured toward the empty room upstairs.
“She were terrified last night. The men came into her home, the doctor gave her away, and all she kept telling you was that she did not want to live surrounded by this. Then she wakes up and finds your men outside every door.” He shook his head. “What did you think would happen?”
Thomas’s stare turned colder. “You believe I should have done nothing?”
“I believe you should have spoken to her before making her feel like she could not breathe in your house either.”
The words struck harder coming from Arthur, perhaps because he rarely found such careful accuracy when angry.
Arthur stepped down from the stair behind him, voice roughening.
“You cannot close your fist around every person you love and call it protection, Tom. Not if you want them to stay.”
For a moment, Thomas did not answer.
Then he reached for his cap from the entrance table.
“Bring the car.”
This time, Arthur went.
༺ ☾ ༻
Ada opened the door in her dressing gown with a cigarette between two fingers, annoyance already settling across her face at the interruption.
Then she saw you standing on the step alone.
The cigarette lowered.
“What has happened?”
You had managed the car journey without crying. You had managed the walk from the curb to her door, one hand tucked in your coat pocket around the folded note and the other resting lightly near your stomach.
But you could not answer that question.
Ada looked at the bandage around your palm, the coat Polly had wrapped around you, the exhaustion you knew must be plain on your face, and immediately opened the door wider.
“Come inside.”
You followed her into the front room.
She did not question you until she had brought you tea and found a blanket to put across your knees. Then she dressed quickly, tied her hair back and settled into the chair opposite you with her cigarette case near her elbow.
Once you began speaking, the story came out in pieces at first and then all at once.
You told her about discovering the pregnancy and sitting alone with it for weeks. About pulling away from Thomas because you knew exactly what would happen once he learned there was something more important than you for his enemies to threaten. About the men outside your building, the broken door, your escape through the window. About being found in Thomas’s bedroom with nowhere left to hide the truth.
Ada remained quiet, listening.
You told her about his anger, the doctor, the note that still seemed to weigh down the pocket of your coat, and waking to find men stationed around the house while Thomas was out answering danger with blood.
When you finished, your tea had gone untouched.
“He will come here,” Ada said.
“I know.”
“Do you want me to keep him out?”
You stared into the cup in front of you. “I do not know.”
“That is an answer for now.”
You drew the note from your coat pocket and set it on the table without unfolding it.
“I love him,” you said after a moment. “That is the worst part. I knew what he would do once he found out, and still some part of me wanted to tell him.”
Ada rested her cigarette in the ashtray.
“Loving my brother does not make you foolish. It only means you have unfortunately become acquainted with his way of handling anything he cannot bear to lose.”
“I wanted one thing that was not tangled up in all of this. Something nobody else could take and turn against him.”
Ada’s eyes moved briefly toward the folded note.
“Tommy loves like a man preparing for war.”
You looked down at the bandage around your hand. “I don’t want to be another war.”
“Then do not let him make you one.”
A car stopped outside before you could answer.
Ada glanced toward the front window and sighed.
“That will be him.”
Your stomach tightened.
She rose and took her cigarette with her. “Stay where you are. He does not come through this door unless you decide he may.”
A knock sounded a moment later.
Ada opened the door only partway.
Thomas stood on the step with his cap in one hand. Arthur remained near the car, smoking and looking deliberately away from the house.
“Where is she?” Thomas asked.
“Inside.”
“I need to speak to her.”
“You need to consider whether everything you want becomes necessary simply because you have decided so.”
“Ada.”
She looked down briefly at his cuff and then back to his face.
“You look exactly how she feared you would.”
His mouth tightened. “Move.”
“No.”
Thomas took one slow breath.
“She is in danger.”
“She is aware of that. She was rather thoroughly informed of it when men came through her door last night.”
“Ada—”
“She got away from the men who came after her, Tommy. She should not have to escape the house you put her in as well.”
The silence that followed reached all the way into the front room.
You closed your eyes briefly, then turned toward the doorway.
You could ask Ada to send him away. You knew she would do it without hesitation and stand there until he understood that no amount of fury would get him past her.
But you needed to hear what happened after he left you. You needed the truth, even if it only gave you more reason to be angry with him.
“Let him in,” you said.
Ada held Thomas’s gaze for another second before stepping aside.
He came into the room slowly. His eyes found you on the sofa almost immediately, moving over the blanket, the bandage around your hand and the folded note resting beside your cup.
He began to step toward you, then stopped.
Ada remained near the doorway behind him.
“What happened to Dr Pritchard?” you asked.
Thomas looked at the note rather than your face.
“He told the Hanleys you had seen him. Told them you were pregnant.”
The words still landed sharply, even though you had already known.
“Did he tell them where I lived?”
“He denies it.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No.”
You drew a slow breath through your nose.
“What did you do to him?”
“He will no longer practise in Birmingham.”
“That is not really an answer.”
“It is what I can give you.”
Your eyes shifted to the cuff of his shirt.
“And the men who came into my home?”
His silence was brief, but it was enough.
A sick ache moved through you.
“So you left me in your bed after I told you what this life does to me, and you went out and did exactly what you always do.”
“They broke into your home.”
“I know what they did.”
“They laid hands on you while you were pregnant.”
“And I was there, Tommy. I do not need you to make it sound worse so your choices seem kinder.”
A muscle moved in his jaw.
“What would you have had me do?”
“Tell me.” Your voice rose despite your attempt to keep it controlled. “I would have had you tell me about the note without Polly making you. I would have had you tell me where you were going. I would have had you wait until I woke before arranging my life around your fear.”
“My fear?”
“Yes. Your fear.” You pushed the blanket aside enough to sit forward. “You did not put men at that house because I asked you to. You did it because you could not stand the thought of something happening where you could not stop it.”
“I will not apologize for trying to keep you alive.”
“I have not asked you to. I am asking you to understand why being loved by you feels so much like being watched.”
He turned his cap once in his hands, his composure narrowing around anger he was trying, and failing, to contain.
“Do you understand what I found last night?” he asked. “Your home torn apart. Your belongings on the floor. Blood across the window. I believed they had taken you, and I had no way of knowing whether I would find you alive.”
His voice had gone rougher, but you did not look away.
“Then I found you upstairs and learned there was even more to lose than I had known. You expect me to wake the next morning and pretend the danger has not changed?”
“No. I expect you to remember that I am standing inside that danger too.”
“You will be protected.”
There it was again: the decision already made, the sentence with no place for you inside it except obedience.
Your eyes filled.
“You do not even hear yourself.”
“I hear you perfectly well.”
“No, you hear the part where I could be taken from you. You do not hear what it would cost me to spend my life kept in place by your fear of losing me.”
His face hardened, hurt moving too quickly into the words that followed.
“It stopped being only your decision when you kept my baby from me.”
The room went silent.
Ada did not move behind him.
Thomas seemed to realize what he had said only after it was already between you, as if his own anger had handed him a weapon he had not meant to use until it was too late.
You stared at him.
“My baby,” you repeated quietly.
“Y/n—”
“You said it was ours last night.” Your hand moved beneath the blanket, resting instinctively where the small curve of your stomach was hidden. “Now you are angry, and suddenly it is yours. Suddenly I lost the right to choose for myself because I did not trust you soon enough.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
He stepped forward.
You moved back without thinking, your shoulders pressing into the sofa.
Thomas stopped immediately.
The hurt in his face should not have mattered in that moment. You wished it did not.
“Then I was right not to tell you,” you said.
He lowered his gaze for a second, his fingers tightening around the cap in his hand.
When he looked at you again, there was no anger left in him that could defend what he had said.
“I am sorry.”
You shook your head, the tears finally slipping loose. “Not now.”
“Y/n—”
“Please leave.”
Ada stepped forward and opened the front door.
Thomas remained where he was for another moment, his chest rising with one controlled breath. You knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to speak until the words were less final. He wanted to stay in the room until you understood that he had said it from hurt, not because he truly believed you belonged to him.
But staying after you asked him to leave would only prove the very thing he had been trying to deny.
He put on his cap.
At the door, he turned once.
You held his gaze, crying quietly now, but you did not ask him back.
Thomas stepped outside.
Ada shut the door behind him.
You remained still until the sound of his footsteps faded from the path. Then your breath broke, and you pressed your good hand over your mouth as a sob escaped you.
Ada returned to the sofa and sat beside you, pulling you against her shoulder without trying to speak too soon.
“I wanted him to be different about this,” you managed after a while.
Her hand moved slowly through your hair.
“I know.”
“I wanted him to choose me before he chose the fight.”
Ada held you a little more firmly.
For a long moment, the room was quiet except for your breathing and the faint sounds of the street beyond her windows.
Then something strange moved low in your stomach.
You drew back from Ada suddenly.
She looked at you at once. “What is it? Are you in pain?”
“No.” You pressed your hand carefully over the place where you had felt it. “I don’t know. It was just…”
You waited, hardly breathing.
There it was again, a soft fluttering sensation, so delicate you might have mistaken it for nothing if every part of you had not been paying attention.
Your eyes widened.
“I think the baby moved.”
Ada’s expression softened completely. “Oh, love.”
Another tear slipped down your cheek, but this one carried something different with it. Wonder rose through the grief so quickly it was almost painful. You kept your hand there, feeling for it again, a small laugh breaking weakly through your tears.
It was beautiful.
And it hurt, because the first person you wanted to turn toward was the same man you had just sent out of the room.
Ada seemed to understand without needing to ask. She rose quietly and moved to the front window, lifting the curtain only far enough to look into the street.
After a moment, she let it fall back into place.
“He is still outside.”
You looked up. “What?”
“He is sitting in the car across the road. Arthur has gone. Tommy has not.”
You stared toward the window.
For all his faults, for all the ways he had hurt you, Thomas had listened when you asked him to leave. He had managed the distance from Ada’s front door to his car and no farther, because leaving the room was the most he could force himself to do while you remained inside it.
Your hand stayed over your stomach.
“You do not owe him this moment,” Ada said quietly.
“I know.”
“Then only ask for him if it is what you want.”
You nodded once, gathering a breath that still trembled on the way in.
“Will you bring him in?”
Ada studied your face before reaching for the door.
“Yes.”
Thomas entered without his coat.
Either he had removed it because of the stain at his cuff or left it in the car because he did not trust himself to leave again once he came inside. His cap was held loosely in one hand. His hair had been dragged slightly out of place by his fingers, and there was a careful stillness in the way he stopped near the doorway.
Ada closed the door behind him.
“She asked for you,” she said. “Do not mistake that for permission to hurt her again.”
Thomas gave one restrained nod.
Ada left the room, though you knew she had only gone far enough to give you privacy without leaving you alone entirely.
Thomas did not move toward you.
“You asked me to come in.”
“The baby moved.”
His face changed at once.
“What?”
“Just now.” Your hand remained beneath the blanket, over the slight curve of your stomach. “I think it was the first time.”
For a moment, he looked stripped of every prepared sentence.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” You almost smiled, despite yourself. “It is a good thing.”
He nodded, his grip tightening slightly around his cap.
“Good.”
The answer was so quietly Thomas that your mouth trembled with a breath that might have become a laugh under easier circumstances.
You moved the blanket aside a little and held your uninjured hand toward him.
He approached slowly, sitting beside you only after you shifted to make room. His body remained rigid at first, as though he was afraid the smallest wrong movement would end whatever mercy had brought him back into the room.
You took his hand.
His fingers were warm against yours.
When you guided his palm to your stomach, his breath caught softly.
For several seconds, nothing happened. Thomas kept his hand entirely still beneath yours, watching where it rested as though looking hard enough might make him understand the life changing quietly below his palm.
“You may not feel anything,” you whispered. “It was very faint.”
“I can wait.”
You looked at him.
He meant it, and not only about the baby.
Then the flutter came again.
Thomas froze.
His eyes lifted to yours immediately, and for once there was no guardedness in his expression, only a quiet astonishment that made your throat tighten all over again.
You nodded.
“That was it.”
He looked down, his fingers spreading gently beneath your hand.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The note was still on the table. His words were still between you. The men who had come into your home had not disappeared from your memory simply because Thomas was now sitting close enough for you to feel his warmth beside you.
But this moment was yours to give, and you had wanted him in it.
“I am sorry,” he said eventually.
Your eyes remained on his hand.
“What I said before was wrong.” His voice stayed low and steady, but you could hear what it cost him to say each word plainly. “You carrying this baby does not mean your life belongs to me. It does not mean I can decide what happens to you because I am angry you did not tell me.”
“No,” you said quietly. “It does not.”
“I wanted to punish you for keeping me outside of something that mattered more than anything has mattered to me in a very long time.” His thumb shifted almost imperceptibly over the fabric of your dress. “That does not excuse what I said.”
You swallowed hard.
“I cannot be scared to tell you things because you might use them against me when you are hurt.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded.
“No.”
“You cannot put men around me without telling me and expect me to call that love.”
“No.”
“I know there is danger now,” you said. “I know the note changed things. I know you will not simply leave me with no protection at all.”
“I cannot.”
The honesty of it mattered, even though it was not the answer you would have wished for.
“But I cannot wake up to guns outside every window,” you continued. “I cannot feel as though I have simply gone from being watched by your enemies to being watched by you.”
Thomas looked down for a moment.
“You will not see them at your home,” he said. “No men at your door. None outside the window. I cannot leave you without someone close enough to help if trouble comes again, but they will not be placed where you have to live with them in every room.”
You considered him.
“And you will tell me.”
“Yes.”
“Before you decide.”
“Yes.”
“You say that easily now.”
His mouth moved slightly, the shadow of something tired and rueful rather than quite a smile.
“I have recently learned what happens when I do not.”
The answer did not erase the fight. It did not pull the hurt cleanly from you.
But it made room for the possibility that he understood it.
“I am still angry with you,” you said.
“You should be.”
“I do not forgive you simply because you apologized.”
“I know.”
“And I do not know what happens after tonight.”
Thomas lowered his eyes to the place his hand still rested beneath yours.
“Then I will not ask for after tonight.”
The baby moved again.
This time, he was ready for it.
His breath caught in a small, involuntary sound, and the look that crossed his face made fresh tears gather in your eyes. Not because everything had been repaired in one conversation. Not because the danger outside Ada’s house had disappeared, or because the man sitting beside you had suddenly learned all the right ways to love someone.
But because, for the first time since you had discovered you were pregnant, you were not alone with the enormity of it.
Thomas lifted his eyes to yours.
“I love you,” he said.
There was nothing theatrical in the way he spoke. No softness put on for your sake. He said it like a truth he had held back too long and had finally understood he no longer deserved to keep unspoken.
Your lips parted, but he continued.
“I should have told you before this. Before you believed there was no place beside me that would not cost you more than you could bear. Before you had to decide whether it was safer to have our baby without me.”
Tears slipped quietly down your face.
“I love you too,” you said. “That does not make this easy.”
“No.”
“It does not make me yours to manage.”
“No.”
“And it does not make what happened disappear.”
Thomas shook his head once.
“No.”
Your hand remained over his, holding him to the place where the baby had moved beneath his palm.
“May I stay?” he asked after a while.
You looked at him for a long moment.
At the cap forgotten against his knee. At the bruising across his hand. At the man who had hurt you and angered you and still left when you told him to go. He had returned now only because you had asked for him.
“Tonight,” you said.
Something eased in his face.
“Tonight.”
From the next room, Ada called, “The sofa remains the only place available to you, Thomas.”
The smallest laugh escaped you through your tears.
Thomas closed his eyes for half a second. “Of course it does.”
You leaned your head gently against his shoulder.
He remained very still at first. Then, carefully, his cheek rested against your hair and his hand stayed beneath yours over the small curve of your stomach.
Outside, Birmingham had not changed. The men who bore Thomas Shelby’s name or hated it had not become kinder. The future had not been made simple by an apology, and neither of you was foolish enough to pretend otherwise.
But Thomas did not order a car. He did not tell you where you would sleep or what tomorrow would require. He did not try to take the moment from you simply because he loved what it held.
He sat beside you in Ada’s front room, quiet and careful, his hand warm beneath yours when the baby moved once more.
This time, you let him stay because you wanted him there. And for the first time since he learned the truth, Thomas understood that loving you would mean waiting to be chosen.
