Zach began to wake as soon as the bed shifted. Although he couldn't quite place what he'd been dreaming about, he'd liked it and didn't want to let go of its warmth. The hand pressing down on his chest pulled him closer to the surface. He groaned unhappily in response to the gasp in his ear, his face scrunching up as he turned it away from Ronnie. The groan turned into a satisfied sigh as he remembered the baby, the likely reason why...
He opened his eyes just as he felt Ronnie move and the muffled sound of her face pressed into her pillow. Now it was his turn to shift, the memory of the dream returning to him in pieces - including the end, when they'd learned that it wasn't real. That it wasn't true. That what they were experiencing, the lives they were living, the love he felt for his unborn child, were false. Before he knew to expect it, the reality of it slammed into place as his hand brushed and then pressed against a flat stomach.
In one movement, Zach snatched his hand away and jumped out of bed, only to stand there, naked, staring at a room he needed a moment to recognize. And then, slowly, the rest slid into place; the life he'd had, the man he'd been - was - the things that had gone wrong along the way... the way Ronnie had tied him down Merlin only knew how, the fact that, for months, he'd willingly told someone he loved her, without prompting. That she hadn't left when he did so proved nothing; only that she hadn't left yet. His own mother had waited until he'd been half raised before fucking off to parts unknown without a backward glance. Zach knew how these things worked; just because Ronnie hadn't left yet didn't mean that she wouldn't.
He was nearly panting, his lip quivering slightly as fear and sorrow and anger combined into an impossible mash he couldn't begin to unravel.
"I gotta go," he murmured, reaching for his pants and shoving them on violently in his hurry to get away from her, the woman with whom he would eventually be so in love as to lose all sense of himself.