I avoided him for three days.

It didn’t matter.

The mansion was large, but not large enough to escape the man whose child was growing inside me. I felt him everywhere—his voice in the hallway, the low rumble of his car in the driveway, the faint trace of his cologne that clung to the air even after he left a room. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the way he had looked at me in the foyer, like he already owned the body that was carrying his baby.

On the fourth night I couldn’t sleep.

My room was on the second floor, at the far end of the...