Free Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret by Melanie Milburne

been a girl or a boy? If things had been different, their baby would be in preschool now. He or she would be learning to recognise letters, making friends, finger painting, making things with Play-Doh: all the innocent things of childhood.
    Lexi had made her decision based on what she had known at the time and it had been the hardest thing she had ever done. She had been so frightened of her father’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy. She had felt so unprepared for the responsibilities of motherhood. She hadn’t been able to talk to anyone about it. She hadhidden it from everybody. She hadn’t even told her sisters. Not even Evie, who would have surely helped her and guided her. Instead, she had booked herself into a clinic, miles away in the outer suburbs where her name wouldn’t be connected with the powerful and influential Lockheart name. She had stoically faced the impersonal removal of Sam’s baby, but on the inside she was devastated that she’d had to make such a harrowing decision. The bottomless well of sadness over that time never seemed to ease, no matter how hard she tried to put it behind her.
    Lexi was aware that they were still in the bar surrounded by people but she had never felt so utterly alone. It was like a glass wall was around her, a thick impenetrable wall that had locked her inside with her sorrow.
    ‘Why do you keep calling me Alexis?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t call me Lexi like you used to do.’
    An irritated frown carved deep into his forehead. ‘You know why,’ he said. ‘We need some distance.’
    ‘How much distance do you want?’ she asked. ‘I’m based at the hospital and I’m not leaving just because you’ve flown back into town. You can’t pretend it never happened, Sam. It did and nothing you do or say will ever change that.’
    The strong column of his throat moved up and down as if he was trying to swallow a boulder. ‘Don’t do this, Alexis,’ he said. ‘Don’t try and pretend our fling was something it wasn’t. You only got involved with me to get back at your father. An act of rebellion, he called it.’
    Lexi looked at him with tears burning like acid at the back of her eyes but only sheer willpower preventedthem from appearing, let alone falling. Could this possibly get any worse? As if her father’s threats against Sam hadn’t been enough. Had her father really said that, lied like that? How could the parent she had adored for as long as she could remember deliberately sabotage her relationship with the man she had thought might be the only one for her? It was a devastating blow to see her father in such a light. He had put his own interests ahead of her happiness. What sort of parent did that to their child? ‘Is that what he told you?’ she asked.
    He closed his eyes briefly as if this was all a horrible dream and she would disappear when he opened them again. ‘I don’t want to cause trouble between you and your father,’ he said. ‘Our relationship wouldn’t have lasted either way. We had nothing in common. We were on completely different pathways.’
    ‘You being Mr Ambitious and me being an empty-headed social butterfly with no aspirations beyond shopping and partying?’ she asked, emotion bubbling up inside her like scalding lava.
    He raked a hand through his hair in a distracted manner. ‘Alexis …’ He caught her glacial look and amended on an out breath, ‘Lexi …’
    ‘You think I didn’t have aspirations?’ Lexi said bitterly. ‘You have no idea. Do you think I didn’t want to do well at school and go to university? I could have achieved way more than I did but how could I do that to Bella? Tell me that, country boy. I had a sister two years older than me who ended up in the same class as me at school. She had to stay back because of her illness. How could I outshine her? How do you think that would have made her feel? I had to play down my talents so she could feel good about herself for just a