When I was eighteen, there was only one boy who made me feel loved. 

But after graduation he walked away.   

I spent the next years convinced something was wrong with me. 

My husband ended up leaving because I couldn't get pregnant, so I became a nurse and built a life alone. 

Then Miles showed up at our high school reunion, and one night on the bleachers erased all the time away. 

But I noticed the tremor in his hand when he reached for me. 

I'm a nurse, I knew what it was before he told me. 

Then one morning he was gone, not even a call or text, just an empty house and the whole town whispering that he left me again. 

Last night, I was throwing up in the bathroom, so I went to the doctor and she told me I was pregnant. 

The thing my ex-husband left me over. 

The thing I was told my body couldn't do.   

I went back home and my mother found me crying on the bathroom floor, and said,     "I think I know where he is."   

I drove an hour to a care facility and found the only man I've ever loved sitting in a wheelchair, trying to disappear before I had to watch. 

But I took his hand, put it on my stomach and said, 

"You don't get to leave. not this time."