15. Dean
DEAN
Creature comfort has never felt quite this irrelevant.
Across the aisle, Tic reviews a hardbound obstetrics textbook he apparently ordered at three this morning. Pages turn quietly, but every so often he stops, presses two fingers to his temple, then continues—his version of pacing while seated.
Colin lounges farther aft where he can plug into the fuselage server, hoodie hood up like a monk’s cowl.
On his screen—a pregnancy tracker program he coded in his downtime between finding out about the pregnancy and arriving at the airport.
According to him, the ones on the market are sneaky tools to sell user data—can’t trust them.
Now, tiny gray blobs swim across a black background.
He clicks measurements, frowns, and adjusts algorithm constants.
The elephant invisible yet everywhere makes the pressurized air feel ten percent denser. Impending fatherhood. To avoid being crushed, we pretend to care about mundane tasks.
Tic quietly asks, “Is it just me, or are the letters on the page dancing?”
“It’s not just you.”
He looks up from his book. “The office. How goes it?”
It’s been a while since he’s asked about the job I took over. “Good. Harold is still bugging Jennifer about a company retreat this spring, Marcus is…Marcus. Dave?—”
“I mean you, Dean. It’s a lot to wrangle a board and a corporation as large as ours. How are you holding up?”
Somehow, I don’t think we’re talking about the business anymore. “As good as I can be. How’s retirement?”
His shoulders pop. A silent laugh. “About as good as it can be, I suppose.” He drifts back to his book, which is fine by me.
My jealousy over his retirement tastes like bitter herbs.
I open a binder and force attention onto the first chart. Ingredient-cost inflation across protein categories. My brain reads numbers but files nothing. Instead, it assembles images at random speed. Thalassa’s freckles. Tiny pajamas hung to dry. Me handing a plushie dinosaur to little hands…
Focus, Dean .
I clear my throat. “Protein costs up three point six percent. Weather events are hammering the feed supply. Might be time to hedge futures.” My voice sounds steady.
My pulse says different. “There was that one investor who brought up an experimental vegan restaurant. Might not be a bad time for that.”
Tic looks up, glasses caught half-down his nose. “Make the call Monday,” he says absentmindedly. His thumb taps the page margin where he’s scribbled a question mark next to “gestational hypertension.”
Colin swivels. “Vegans are picky, but there’s less volatility in the market. Makes sense to me.”
I arch a brow. “Since when do you care about the food end of the business?”
He shrugs. “Since we’re about to be dads. Gotta keep the business running long-term now.”
Atticus huffs at that, but says nothing.
We lapse quiet again. Hank’s voice crackles over the intercom. “Cabin safe. You’re free to move.” Good. I stand to pour espresso from the galley and discover my knees are weak—nerves, not altitude.
I’ve spent most of my adult life assuming fatherhood was optional.
Like owning a sailboat—pleasant in theory, impractical in practice.
Restaurants birthed enough offspring equivalents.
New concepts, market expansions, every kind of growth.
Each store opening arrived swaddled in risk, consumed nights and weekends, and demanded tuition in sweat.
The children of my choosing, all without diapers.
Except some nights—especially the ones ending in my silent penthouse—my mind drifted to domestic hush. Saturday mornings with a toddler perched on my shoulders, batter splattering on marble countertops. The stay-at-home-dad life. The thought glows in the back of my mind nightly.
I never told Tic or Colin. In boardroom culture, fatherhood dreams read as vulnerabilities. So I locked them away, safe under layers of quarterly goals. Now a live possibility stirs somewhere in Colorado, and I’m flooded with a frightening but alluring hope.
I set the espresso on the mahogany credenza, gripping the edge until the wood creaks. Not the time for hope—we owe open support, not pressure. She might choose termination, adoption, or she could lose the pregnancy, anything. We back her, no matter what.
I inhale that truth, let it settle like a clause in a contract. It doesn’t smother the embryo of yearning, but it reminds me that professional distance can coexist with personal devotion.
Returning to my seat, I ask Colin for a brief on the concussion report he hijacked.
“The CT scan is clear. Mild contusion. They gave her acetaminophen, recommended forty-eight hours of cognitive rest.” He bites his nail. “Altitude’s mild. We’ll bring a portable oximeter, but the risk to her is negligible.”
Tic nods approval, then levels a gaze at me. “If anyone outside of us finds out before we know anything for real, we’re fucked.”
“Marcus,” Colin growls under his breath.
“He wouldn’t do anything to hurt us, Colin,” I say firmly. But a lingering question nags in the back of my mind. Marcus was clearly disappointed when Atticus chose me as his successor. Will he flip out if the media discovers a baby scandal? Will the board panic about succession optics?
Irrelevant. The baby outranks optics.
Besides, Marcus is a thousand years old. He’s experienced bigger disappointments than not being named CEO. He’s practically our grandfather. He won’t stir the pot.
Tic senses the rift, chooses not to pry. Instead, he closes the textbook and folds his hands. “Gentlemen,” he says, formal, a leader again. “Scenario A—she welcomes us. Scenario B—she politely declines. Either way, we provide health resources and disappear if requested.”
Colin and I nod. Tic’s tone fortifies my own unvoiced vow. No coercion, only support.
Yet a selfish part of me whispers, please choose us . I imagine reading a bedtime story—maybe Island of the Blue Dolphins —beside an infant who chews the pages. I clamp down on the fantasy, redirect to logistics.
“Her privacy must be bulletproof,” I add. “Hence the NDAs for every chalet staffer and whoever is staying with Thalassa.”
“Agreed.”
Colin toggles the screen. “Also setting a geofence around the chalet for paparazzi drones. Counter-UAV firmware locked.”
Leave it to my brother to treat fatherhood like cybersecurity. My chest warms. “That might be overkill.”
He grins. “There’s no kill like overkill.”
The jet pierces cirrus clouds, and sunrise detonates tangerine along the horizon. Flying west means chasing the morning. Light spills through oval windows, slicing cabin gold.
Tic stands, paces aisle once, stops beside me. “You’re quiet.”
“Cognition overload,” I reply. He waits. Fine. He wants more. “She may not want a baby. We respect that. But if she does want…” My throat closes. Admission hovers. I swallow. “If she does, I intend to allocate resources.”
A half smile ghosts his mouth. “As do I.”
“Same,” Colin adds.
Hank announces descent into the local airport. Mountains jag upward, snow cresting the peaks. I register them like problem graphs—steep, majestic, solvable. Elements that stand between me and my goal.
On the tarmac, we transfer to a black Tahoe rental.
Cold air claws my lungs—dry, high-altitude.
As I clip my seat belt, I clear my throat.
The time for nervousness has passed. The SUV slips onto the highway.
Pines blur. Snowbanks stack roadside like frosted ramparts.
My nerves buzz beneath cashmere, but excitement swells too—an energy that feels eerily like pre-grand-opening adrenaline multiplied by forever.
If she cannot or will not raise this child, I will.
I would trade boardrooms for playgrounds, turn meeting decks into bedtime forts, and memorize dinosaur taxonomy instead of P&L variances. The longing sits ready, willing, and able. All she has to do is say the word.
For now, that variable remains unknown. The only certainty is support. Still, hope flickers, persistent as a lighthouse in a storm.
I rest my gloved hand on the window, watching peaks approach. Somewhere ahead, a woman who reprogrammed my future with a single smile nurses a headache and a secret. We are minutes from rewriting the story she thought was hers alone.
“Drive faster,” Tic instructs the chauffeur.
I echo silently, yes, faster . Because my heart is already there, pacing a chalet hallway, rehearsing words of reassurance. If she wants lightened burdens, I will carry them, cradle and all.