She’d really thought she was straight. That it hadn’t meant anything. Cora could be really, really stupid sometimes.

The sound of clacking computer keys filled the house, echoing off the walls. She looked things up on the internet for an hour. Sexuality. Pansexuality. Bisexuality. It was endless and fascinating, and there was a whole world that Cora now felt personally involved in.

Cora, who had always known where she fit: daughter, student, girlfriend, wife, straight. Always assumed, and not thought about too deeply.

She liked the term queer. That it was all encompassing. But still, it didn’t sit right with her.

Cora liked specifics. She liked to know where she was, who she was. As she fell down a rabbit hole of terms and identities, her eyes grew wider and wider.

It was slowly dawning on Cora that, at thirty-four, she had actually never known who she was but had just slipped onto others’ ideas of who she was supposed to be like an old hand-me-down coat. Comfortable, soft, expected.

But not original. Not what she would have picked out for herself.

Twelve tabs sat open on her browser. It was all a little overwhelming. Should she say she was bisexual? Of all the things she had read, this one felt most comfortable.

Bisexual. She said the word out loud, to see how it fit. “Bisexual.”

It rolled off her tongue.

Another laugh dribbled past her lips. She’d barely drunk any of her wine, so enthralled with what she read. With what she had discovered.

She’d fallen for Frazer without even realising it. And Cora was supposed to be smart.

She jumped when her phone vibrated on the wood tabletop. It was just after nine, and she hoped it wasn’t her parents. They still didn’t know about the divorce, and with the good mood she was in, she didn’t particularly want to talk to them about it right then.

Three seconds after opening the message, Cora was pulling on her jacket, keys jangling in her hand, and running out the door.

It was Jack.

* * *

It seemed like hours, but was really only twenty minutes later that involved some broken speed limits Cora wasn’t very proud of, until she was walking onto the maternity ward. A quick sweep of her gaze across the patient board behind the nurses’ station located Jack’s name—something Cora and Frazer had discussed but that Cora had been worried about—and room number.

The fact that the correct name was being used made Cora nervous. So Frazer had been here, making sure it all went smoothly. Had she been on call?