Ethereal

Chapter 6: Broken

A/N: Before you read, I want to say that this is not a particularly happy chapter and I struggled to decide whether now would be a good time to post it. I know there is (again) a lot of confusion and sadness around, and I certainly don't want to make anyone feel worse. Personally I have no clue what the heck is going on anymore - I suppose we will have to wait and see to find out whether this new guy is just a fling, Dan vol. 2 or something else.

In the meantime, hugs to all and Happy New Year ♥

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His world rocked, tilted on its axis and for a moment the room seemed to spin; Bradley stared into Irina's blue eyes, swallowed, felt himself start to tremble. She squeezed his hand quickly and he inhaled shakily, tried to think, to process.

"You... how?"

She chuckled slightly, looked away. "I'm sure I don't have to explain to you how it works."

"No, I mean..." He rubbed his free hand over his face. "I thought you were on the pill."

"I was." Irina let go of his hand, sighed. "Do you remember when I was sick with that food poisoning a month ago, throwing up for days? My doctor thinks that the pill... well, it didn't have a chance to absorb at the time and then when we had sex afterwards..."

She shrugged, looking down. "Jackpot."

"Oh." He saw it best to sit down, burying his face into his hands for a moment, then pulling them through his hair. She shook her head, scoffed a little.

"You don't believe me? I didn't get pregnant on purpose, Bradley, trust me; when I took the test this morning, it was just as shocking to me as it obviously is to you."

"I'm not saying that; I do believe you and I remember very well how sick you were." He stared at her, took in the long dark hair, stunning body, endless legs; she was so beautiful, he had thought so from the beginning, had been very attracted to her straight away at the party where they had first met. But only two weeks after that, everything about him and about the entire world had been changed so profoundly and on his mind's eye now, he saw nothing but a tiny blonde, her gorgeous face and bright green eyes, saw her winking at him as she walked into the car outside the MGM Grand and, unbeknownst to them both at that time, took his heart with her. It was still in her possession and always would be; his Ally, the woman forever imprinted into his soul.

Jesus Christ. What was he going to do now?

Clearing his throat, he tried to make some sense of his insanely swirling thoughts. "Irina..."

"Look, you're clearly not happy about this; I wasn't sure how you were going to react, but your face really says it all." A tear escaped her eye and she brushed it from her cheek almost angrily. "I thought you wanted... you told me many times over the past year how much it would mean to you to have a family one day. To be a father."

"It would," he whispered, his voice broken. "It will."

"What then? Why do you look like... like this is the end of the world?" She inhaled shakily, sitting down next to him. "Is it... me? Am I the problem?"

Bradley opened his mouth, tried desperately to come up with something to say; he didn't want to hurt her, that was the last thing he wanted to do, but his heart was splitting in two, one side intensely longing to rush back to Stefani, the other telling him to man up and stay to take care of the mother of his child.

Irina watched him for a long moment, then turned and reached for her phone, pulling up a website. "You said earlier that you really needed to talk to me. Was it... what's this about?"