Taj Reign had always been careful. Careful with his future. Careful with his heart. Careful with his time, energy, and choices. He was the type who coded through the night, kept his dorm neat, and wrote game dev journals for fun. Sex? Dating? Distractions? He'd placed all that on hold. Not out of disinterest, but by design.

Until that night.

It had started like any other day at Graveson University. Taj was in his room, deep into code, debugging a rendering issue for his upcoming 2D stealth game. The glow of dual monitors lit his dark room, his fingers clicking away in quiet rhythm—focused, as always. Then Rico stormed in, grinning, smelling like cologne and chaos.

"Bro. Come to this party with me. You've been locked in here for days."

Taj barely looked up. "I'm good." But Rico wouldn't back down. After twenty minutes of relentless coaxing, Taj gave in. Not because he wanted to, but because he was tired—tired in the kind of way that made your thoughts slow, your guard drop. He figured one night wouldn't kill him. He had no idea. The party was a sensory overload. The music pulsed like a heartbeat through the walls. Teenagers moved in messy rhythm, bodies tangled in sweat and desire. The air reeked of cheap alcohol and fog machine haze. Taj felt like an alien walking through it all, bumping into strangers, muttering half-apologies. This wasn't his world. And then he saw you.

You weren't part of the chaos—you were just watching it, calm, removed, like a silent observer in a storm. Something about that pulled him in. He didn't plan to talk to you. He wasn't even sure he had the nerve. But somehow, he did. And somehow... you stayed. Awkward jokes. Half-laughed confessions. Drinks ordered without hesitation. One round turned into three. Then five. Taj lost count. You laughed with him, leaned into him, challenged him to dance. And though he'd sworn he never would—there he was, on the dancefloor, your body pressed to his, your arms around his neck. He could barely remember how you ended up in his dorm.

All he remembered was the way the world spun when you kissed him. How his heart pounded when you pulled him closer. The heat. The haze. The fact that he didn't stop it. Didn't think. Didn't reach for a condom. Didn't hold onto the promise he'd made to himself to wait until it meant something. That night, Taj Reign—focused, brilliant, responsible Taj—made the one decision he never thought he would. And when he woke up, groggy and ashamed, you were gone. No number. No note. Nothing. Just a messy bed and a memory that felt half dream, half regret. He hated how much he cared that you'd left. Hated the ache that settled into his chest. He spent the next two weeks consumed by it—searching for your face in lecture halls, hacking into the student database just to look for a name, any name. But there was nothing. It was like you had vanished—a glitch in his life script he couldn't debug. Then one month later, you knocked on his door. Taj opened it casually, expecting a delivery or a floormate.

But it was you.

Alive. Real. Standing in his doorway like a ghost that had taken form. And before he could speak—before he could say anything at all—you said the words that shattered the foundation of everything he thought he had control over:

"I'm pregnant, Taj."

Just like that. No hello. No soft landing.

Taj's world stopped spinning. The air around him thinned. For a moment, it felt like his heart had flipped upside down and was now lodged in his throat.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice tight and quiet. "That's... that's impossible."

But it wasn't. He knew what had happened. And the worst part? He couldn't even pretend to be surprised. He had known—in that split second of weakness, when every wall he'd built crumbled—that this could happen.

Still, his mind refused to accept it. He asked you to wait. Then rushed down to the nearest pharmacy. Bought ten pregnancy kits. Ten. You took them. One by one. Each one lit up positive like a countdown he couldn't stop. He stood there, watching the evidence pile up in front of him. Panic roared in his chest. His future—his scholarship, his career, his vision—all of it suddenly felt paper-thin. He began pacing. Then rambling. Then falling silent. You sat still, watching him unravel, watching him try to hold together a world that was already spiraling. Finally, after the tenth test, after the final shred of denial was stripped from his mind, he turned to you. His voice was low. Raw.

"Do you... want to keep it? Because right now... I'm hella confused."

And he was. Confused. Scared. Angry—mostly at himself. Ashamed. Still not ready to look you fully in the eye. Still wondering how everything he built so carefully had collapsed in a single night.