Chapter 17
Russell
With Jules’ head on my chest, her body disappearing under the luxurious hotel sheets, I draft an email to the family lawyer to let him know about my recent engagement.
SUBJECT: Reply: Estate Inheritance Clause
From: rburch@
To: haroldgrande@
Mr. Grande,
I am pleased to inform you that I took your advice, opening myself up to the possibility of settling down.
Who better to do this with than the woman I’ve been seeing since returning to Chicago?
I’ve loved her since the first moment I saw her, and after our conversation, I realized I was only holding myself back by not allowing myself to conceive a future with her.
Truly, my dad continues to affect me even beyond the grave. I’m sure he would be thrilled with the announcement.
My fiancée is Juliette Harper. Though I don’t have children of my own, she does have a son, and I’m sure my father would also be happy to see me stepping into a paternal role.
Please let me know what you need from me to move forward with releasing the funds in my trust. I anticipate we will want it for our honeymoon, and as we build out our lives together.
Regards,
Russell F. Burch, M.D.
I read it over again, making sure I’m not laying it on too thick. Part of me thinks Mr. Grande can’t really expect true love from me—can he? As though men my age don’t marry twenty-something girls for nothing more than a piece of eye candy on their arms all the time.
It only strengthens my previous feelings about the whole thing. Being married doesn’t mean being responsible or even staying in Chicago. It just means a piece of paper, a contract. And one that can easily be broken.
“Good morning,” Jules says, rousing and turning, sleepily pressing her open mouth to my neck. I close my eyes. My cock was already half-hard when I woke up this morning, her naked body beside me enough to send me into a spiral of remembering last night, playing it through my mind like a movie.
She’s warm and seeking, her hand splaying out over my chest, tweaking a nipple playfully. I raise my eyebrows at her, projecting playfulness but really wanting nothing more than to flip her over and fuck her until she’s screaming my name again.
For such a head-strong woman, she really did melt under my touch. And I want to see her do it again and again. I want to be the only man to arch over her, hold her, carry her to the bathroom when she’s so spent from pleasure that she can hardly stand on her own.
Her gaze flits to my phone screen, and from the two seconds she reads, she must gather enough to realize what the email is. It seems to sober her up, the reminder of what this arrangement is for.
I want the soft, nuzzling Jules back, so I send the email and lock my phone, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her onto her back.
“Was last night a one-time thing?” I ask, sliding between her legs, loving the way she relents, easing her knees open for me, like I’m coming home.
She presses back, her head dimpling the pillow so she can catch my eyes, “I don’t know, was it?”
“Do you want it to be?” I ask, even though my cock is hard against her, and I can feel how wet she is. How much she wants me.
“…do you want it to be?” she asks, and I thrust, sliding between her folds, catching her clit with the tip of my cock.
She gasps, her eyes shutting, pupils moving behind them.
I lean down and press my lips to each of her eyes, then to her hairline, moving with more fervor as I get harder and harder.
I don’t want to talk about what we’re going to do. I just want to do it.
“This is what I think,” I say, my voice nothing more than a rumbling growl, “I think you like this, and I like this, and we’re both consenting adults. Why not get a little something extra out of this arrangement?”
Something moves over her face so quickly I don’t have time to pick it apart, then she’s saying, “Okay,” and rising up to capture my mouth with hers.
Remembering how much she liked it last night, I wrap my hand around her throat, pressing her gently down into the bed, “I’ll kiss you when I’m ready,” I tease, notching in her entrance.
And the sound she makes when I slide inside her is enough to make me ready for the kiss, ready to swallow the sound just the way I want to swallow her—whole, every part of her, mine, mine, mine.
“Russell, I have never heard a more fucked up plan in my life.”
Alena stares at me, a French fry doused in ketchup dangling from her fingers like a cigarette. With how strictly healthy she eats at home, it might as well be.
We’re sitting in the busy hospital cafeteria, right against soaring windows that face the courtyard, the fountain sparkling in the bright sun.
It’s not snowing yet, so the area around the fountain is all dead grass and nearly leafless-trees, aside from the row of evergreens along the path over to the main hospital.
I wonder if they still decorate them like they did when we were kids. If they bring the long-termers here at the children’s hospital outside—the ones who can leave their rooms, anyway—to help with the lights and the tinsel.
“Earth to Russell,” Alena says, waving her soggy fry in my face before biting off most of it, and turning, giving the nub to Rory, who is still awake.
Ray, her twin brother, is asleep in their dual-stroller.
Poor guy doesn’t even know what he’s missing.
My sympathy for my nephew wanes when his mother turns back to me, glowering.
“Stop spacing off. We were talking about the fact that this is a stupid idea.”
“It’s not,” I say, mostly because I know that no amount of arguing with her is going to change her mind. I scoop some of my quinoa stir-fry up onto my spoon and add a dab of hot sauce before taking the bite.
“What if Grande finds out?” Alena presses, trying to tuck her hair behind her ear. Last week, she chopped most of it off.
Her problems with Matt started with late nights at the office. For the first couple of months, she’d mentioned a joking worry that the cliche might come true for her. That staying late at the office might turn out to be the lie it sounded like.
Growing up, Alena and I only had one another.
With a single-parent household, and a doctor for a father, we were more often than not alone.
Our mother died giving birth to Alena. I was seven, and in the decades since, I’ve tried to figure out which is worse—my experience, or hers.
To have loved and lost a mother, or to never have known her at all, and to live with the sense that you’re the one who killed her.
I know Alena thinks it, no matter how many times I assure her it’s not true.
Maybe if our mother was still alive, she would know what to say to Alena about her situation with Matt. Despite being seven years younger than me, Alena was always headstrong, confident. She stood up to our father, more than happy to discard the notion that she would ever become a doctor.
So, my sister is not the kind of woman who suspects a man will ever cheat on her. I know this recent haircut was an attempt to gain back some control, and now it doesn’t stay tucked. I can see how much it’s frustrating her. Even more than her idiot brother.
“You should get one of those—what are they? Bar-ettes?” I suggest, pointing my drink at the strands in her face.
Alena glares, “We’re not talking about my hair right now, Russell.” Which means we’re also not talking about Matt. “I’m serious. Grande could find out about this, and then what? You’re like…arrested for fraud?”
“I don’t think I would be arrested for fraud.” Actually, I hadn’t thought about that. I’m a doctor, not a lawyer.
Alena goes on as though I didn’t respond, “And I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of you…using this woman.”
I think of the way Jules straddled me, riding me in the hotel room desperately, as though trying to get her fill before she needed to get back, and I want to say, trust me, she’s using me, too. But obviously, I don’t. If I tell Alena I’m sleeping with her, it’s only going to further make her point.
“I told you, we’re both getting something out of the arrangement.”
Her eyes narrow, but she clearly doesn’t want to bring it up, “Right. Well—”
But Alena is cut off by some supernatural sense that Ray is waking up, her attention on him before he can start wailing. Last time she came to see me at work, we were both holding a twin, trying to soothe them so they wouldn’t disrupt all the doctors trying to eat with their cries.
“Here,” I say, reaching past her and pulling Ray from his spot in the stroller. He’s heavy and warm, sweating from his nap, and I push some of his hair from his face. The twins both get their hair from their father, but I see mine and Alena’s noses on their faces. The one we got from our father.
I settle Ray on my lap and give him a little bite of the quinoa, shooting Alena a look as if to say, see? Babies can eat healthy food, too.
But her eyes are a little unfocused, just pointed generally in the direction of Ray and me. I resist the urge to sigh—I’ve seen this look on her face before. Sometimes when I’m playing with the twins, or when I helped to put them to bed at a party once.
Alena had a geriatric pregnancy after many years of trying with Matt, and several rounds of IVF. Her success made her think my situation could turn around, too.
“You know, my friend Ingrid and her wife just adopted a beautiful baby boy,” Alena says, her eyes slowly drifting up to mine, her tone getting more urgent. “She said the process really wasn’t that bad, and she loved the consultant who helped them—”
“That’s great,” I say, hoping my voice is a hard line that my sister won’t cross.
She doesn’t get the memo, “Russ, I just wish you would—”
“You know how I feel about it,” I say, because she does. After so many times of her trying to convince me to settle down and have kids—you’re so great with Ray and Rory!—I finally told her the truth.
That as much as I enjoy being around children, I’ll never have one of my own. Never look into a child’s eyes and wonder which parts are me, which are their mother.
I reviewed the results myself, poured over the tests to see if there was any way.
But there’s not. My sperm simply can’t reproduce, and they never could.
At the time, I was flooded with guilt, with shame.
Then I thought about what I would tell my own patient receiving that news and decided to take it simply as a sign of what my life should be.
It’s fine. I’ve made my peace with it. Maybe I won’t have kids of my own, but I can work with patients. See the smiles on their faces.
For a second, Gus’s face pops into my mind, the lopsided smile he gave me the morning I made him pancakes, the grateful way he stabbed each bite onto his fork.
But—no. Gus is not one of the kids that I’ll have in my life. This arrangement with Jules is temporary. And some day, he might ask about that guy who came around. If he even remembers.
“You’re right,” Alena says, running her hand through her hair and trying to tuck it behind her ears again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say, and for the rest of our lunch, I have to fight to avoid the disappointment I feel at the idea of Gus someday having no idea that for one morning, I got to make him pancakes and participate in the domestic routine of his life.