💔 The Beach House Lie 💔

A short story based on your prompt

The salty air of the Pacific Coast, usually a tonic to John “Finn” Finnegan’s soul, now felt heavy, suffocating. It clung to the silence between him and Luna, a silence more deafening than the waves crashing just beyond their rented beach house balcony.

.

.

.

The house itself was a sanctuary of soft whites and ocean blues, everything they had carefully chosen to be theirs. It was here, just three weeks ago, standing on this very weathered deck, that Luna had nestled against his chest and whispered, her voice thick with happy tears, “This house, Finn. This is where we’ll raise our baby. Can you imagine them running on that sand?”

He had kissed her hair, his world coalescing into that single, perfect image: the three of them, a family, against the endless horizon.

Now, she stood five feet away, the pale sunlight catching the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes. She wore the blue silk dress he loved, but it hung on her frame like a shroud. The gentle curve that had blossomed so beautifully over the last six months was gone, replaced by a devastating, flat emptiness.

Finn didn’t need the words. The truth was screaming at him from the very air, twisting his stomach into a cold, paralyzing knot.

“Where is it, Luna?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft. The question wasn’t about the baby’s location, but its existence.

She looked down at her hands, twisting a gold ring on her finger. “I couldn’t tell you, Finn. I couldn’t.”

He took a step toward her, closing the distance, his voice rising, raw with disbelief and mounting fury. “Tell me what? That you decided against the beach house? Against us? Luna, we picked out a crib! We argued over names, damn it! You had morning sickness! You had the scans pinned to the refrigerator! What in God’s name couldn’t you tell me?”

She flinched, not from his anger, but from the pain in his voice. “The morning sickness was real, Finn. The exhaustion was real. But… the baby…” Her voice broke on the final word, a small, ragged sound.

He grabbed her arms gently, his strong fingers holding her captive, forcing her to meet his gaze. His medical training screamed at the possibilities: miscarriage, stillbirth, a hidden delivery. But the calculated removal of all evidence, the sudden, jarring disappearance of her maternity clothes, the forced lightness in her voice over the last few days—it didn’t fit a tragedy. It fit a lie.

“I need you to say it,” he demanded, his eyes searching hers for any sign of the light he loved, but finding only shadowed regret. “Look at me, Luna. Was there an accident? Was there a medical problem? Tell me where our baby is, or tell me the truth.”

She swallowed, the muscles in her neck taut. The ocean breeze picked up, rattling the glass of the sliding door.

“The baby is dead, Finn,” she whispered, her voice like grinding sand.

His hands instantly released her, as if she had suddenly turned to fire. The world tilted. The sound of the waves seemed to recede, leaving a high-pitched, desolate hum in his ears.

“Dead?” he repeated, the word tasting metallic and foreign. “When? How? Why did you wait until now? We were celebrating. You let me plan, Luna! You let me paint the nursery!”

Luna finally looked up, and the despair in her eyes was vast and terrifying. “It wasn’t a stillbirth, Finn. It wasn’t a miscarriage.”

She took a shaky breath, the confession physically tearing itself from her. “There was a baby, Finn. I was pregnant. But I had a… a procedure.”

The air turned instantly toxic. The word, clipped and cold, hung between them, a fatal blow.

Finn stared at the empty space where his child should have been, the child whose room was just down the hall, smelling faintly of new paint and forgotten hope.

“You… you terminated the pregnancy?” he asked, the phrase heavy with a professional detachment that hid the volcano roaring inside him. “You went through all of that—the excitement, the beach house, the lies—only to… to do that?”

“It wasn’t about you, Finn! It was about me!” she cried, finally allowing her own grief to spill out. “It happened right before the Forrester Creations scandal broke. When I realized the mess I was in—the stolen designs, the threat of jail, the way my life was about to explode—I panicked. I was terrified of bringing a child into that chaos. Of them being the child of a criminal. Of having to face a judge while pregnant.”

She walked toward him, pleading with her hands. “I had to protect the baby, even from myself. I chose what I thought was the best, the only way, to keep them safe from the fallout.”

He recoiled from her touch. “Protect them? Luna, you didn’t protect them. You decided their life wasn’t worth the inconvenience of your mistakes! You took away our child’s future, and you took away mine! And the house? All those beautiful words about raising them here? That was just a cover story? A way to keep me quiet while you dealt with this privately?”

“No!” she screamed. “That was my last piece of hope! The beach house, the nursery—that was me clinging to the life I wanted to have, the life I wish I hadn’t destroyed! I wanted to raise our baby here, Finn! I did! But the scandal… the lies… they became bigger than the love.”

He looked at her, and the raw, protective love he had felt moments ago was replaced by a sterile, freezing devastation. The beautiful, trusting relationship they had built was not merely damaged; it was built on a foundation of sand that had just been washed away.

“Get out,” he said, his voice flat and absolute. He didn’t need to raise it; the finality was chilling.

Luna shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “Finn, please—”

“No,” he cut in, pointing toward the sliding glass door and the vast, indifferent ocean beyond. “Go. The beach house, the nursery, the baby—it was all a lie. I need you to leave this place, and I need you to never look back. Because every single part of this life we built together is now dead to me.”

He turned his back on her, walking toward the empty nursery. He stood in the silent, sun-drenched room, surrounded by untouched furniture and the lingering scent of fresh paint. The pain was too immense to feel, too cold to cry over. It was a vacuum where a family should have been.

Behind him, he heard the soft, agonizing sound of the sliding door closing, followed by the quiet, defeated retreat of her footsteps.

The lie of the beach house dream had finally washed ashore, leaving Finn utterly alone on the devastated coast of his future.