4. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
I was rubbing cocoa butter into my belly when Orion destroyed everything.
The stretch marks had gotten worse in the last few weeks, silver lightning bolts spreading across my skin like my body was literally cracking under the pressure of growing a human.
The cocoa butter didn’t do much, according to every medical study I’d read, but the ritual soothed me.
Something that made me feel like I was taking care of myself, even when no one else seemed interested in the job.
The nursery was finally finished. Soft sage green walls, a mural of horses running free across one side, a crib made of reclaimed Texas oak that Orion had commissioned from a craftsman in Fredericksburg.
Three thousand dollars for a bed our baby would outgrow in six months.
A rocking chair by the window where I imagined myself nursing at 3 a.m., exhausted and happy, my husband bringing me water and telling me I was doing great.
Imagined being the key word.
Orion walked into the bedroom while I was still working the lotion into my skin, his phone pressed to his ear, already mid-conversation with someone who wasn’t me.
“…no, tell them the terms are non-negotiable. If they want renegotiation, they can wait until Q2.” He glanced at me, held up one finger, one minute, and kept pacing. “I don’t care what their lawyers said. Our lawyers are better. That’s why we pay them.”
I capped the cocoa butter and watched him move around our bedroom.
Even at home, even at 10 p.m., he was still in motion.
He’d changed out of his ranch clothes into something more casual, a worn henley that stretched across his shoulders, jeans slung low on his hips, but his boots were still on.
Always ready to move. Always halfway out the door.
“Fine. Fine. Set up a call for tomorrow morning, Singapore time. I’ll handle it personally.” He ended the call and tossed his phone on the bed, running a hand through his dark hair. “Sorry. The Nexus deal is falling apart.”
“It’s always something.”
He didn’t register the edge in my voice. Or maybe he did and chose to ignore it.
“So,” Orion said, unbuttoning his shirt cuffs and rolling them up, forearms browned and roped with muscle, the forearms of a man who still worked his own land even when he didn’t have to. “I need to tell you something.”
The way he said it, casual, offhand, like he was mentioning he’d checked on the cattle, made my skin prickle with warning.
“What?”
“Singapore. I have to go. The deal is too important to handle remotely, and if I don’t show up in person, the whole thing collapses.
” He was moving toward the closet now, pulling out his leather weekender bag, the one he’d picked up in Dallas last year.
“My whole team is flying out tomorrow morning.”
“Your whole team,” I repeated slowly.
“Legal, finance, ops. And the assistants, obviously. Someone has to coordinate everything on the ground.”
The assistants.
“Demi,” I said, and it wasn’t a question.
“She’s part of the team now.” He said it matter-of-factly, like he couldn’t understand why I kept fixating on this particular detail. “She’s been invaluable on this deal, actually. Really sharp instincts for…”
“Orion.” My voice came out steady, but my hands had started to shake. I pressed them flat against my belly, feeling the baby shift beneath my palms. “You know I’m due any day.”
He stopped moving. Finally, finally, he looked at me. Really looked at me, not through me, not past me to the next task on his list.
“I know.”
“And you’re still going.”
“I’ll be back in two days. Three, tops.” He crossed to where I sat on the edge of the bed and crouched in front of me, putting his hands over mine on my stomach.
His palms were warm and rough with calluses.
“The baby isn’t coming this weekend. First babies are always late, right? That’s what Dr. Reinhard said.”
“She said usually late. Not always late.”
“Gianna.” His thumb traced circles on my skin, soothing, gentle, the way he used to touch me when we first got together. When I was still the most interesting thing in his world. “I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. You know that.”
Did I? I wasn’t sure anymore what I knew about my husband.
“What if something happens?” I asked. “What if I go into labor and you’re on the other side of the planet?”
“You won’t.”
“But what if I do?”
He was quiet for a moment. I could practically see the gears turning, looking for the path of least resistance.
“What if we fly Daisy out?” he said finally. “She can keep you company while I’m gone. I’ll send the jet for her. She can be here by tomorrow afternoon.”
Daisy. My best friend from high school, still living in the same Georgia town where we’d grown up, still working the same odd jobs she’d been piecing together for years.
The only person from my old life who’d never treated me differently after I married money.
Who still called me “Gi” and made fun of my fancy house and reminded me that I used to eat ramen for dinner three nights a week.
I loved Daisy. But she wasn’t who I wanted.
“I want you here. You’re the father of this child,” I said.
Something shifted in Orion’s expression. For a moment, I thought he might actually change his mind. Might actually choose me over the deal, the empire, the endless hungry machine of his ambition.
His phone buzzed on the bed behind us.
His eyes flicked toward the sound. Just for a second.
But I saw it. And the moment broke.
“I’ll be back before anything happens,” he said, his voice smooth again. “I promise.”
I’d stopped counting how many times he’d said those words. They used to feel like something solid. Now they felt like smoke.
“Okay,” I whispered, because what else was there to say?
He kissed me, a real kiss this time, his mouth warm against mine, but it felt like goodbye. Like an ending.
“I’ll call you every night,” he said. “And I’ll be back before you know it.”
I nodded and watched him finish packing, watched him check his phone between every item, watched him move through our shared space like he was already gone.
He left the next morning before I woke up.
His side of the bed was cold when I reached for him. The pillow still held the impression of his head, but he was gone, vanished like he’d never been there at all.
On the nightstand, a single bluebonnet from the vase in the hallway. No note this time.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the flower, feeling the baby roll and stretch inside me. My due date was six days away. Six days, and my husband was on a plane to Singapore with my sister, and I was alone in a manor big enough to swallow me whole.
***
The jet arrived at the private airstrip outside Austin that afternoon with Daisy on board, and suddenly the silence didn’t feel quite so heavy.
“Holy shit,” she said when she walked through the front door, her beat-up duffel bag slung over one shoulder, her hair still wild from the flight. “Gi. This house. It’s like a ranch had a baby with a castle.”
“That’s… one way to describe it.”
“How many bathrooms?”
“Seven.”
“Seven. I have one bathroom, and I share it with a raccoon that keeps getting in through the window.” She dropped her bag in the middle of the foyer and pulled me into a hug, her arms tight around my shoulders, her chin hooking over my neck. “How are you doing? Really?”
“I’m…”
“And don’t say fine. You always say fine when you’re drowning.”
I laughed, surprising myself. “I’m scared,” I admitted. “And lonely. And really, really pregnant.”
“Well, I can’t do anything about the pregnant part, but the rest we can work with.” She pulled back and grinned at me, that familiar chaotic energy already brightening the room. “Where’s the kitchen? I brought tequila.”
“Daisy, I can’t drink.”
“The tequila’s not for you. The tequila is for whoever else lives in this palace and might need some loosening up.” She started walking, forcing me to follow. “Who else is here? Staff? Ranch hands? A butler named Reginald who disapproves of my jeans?”
“We have a housekeeper. Maya.”
“Perfect. Maya’s doing shots with me.”
That night, I laughed more than I had in months.
Maya, tiny, fierce, sixty-three years old and absolutely not someone I would have predicted had a wild side, turned out to be a tequila champion and a card shark. Daisy discovered this when she challenged her to poker and lost forty dollars in the first hour.
“How?” Daisy demanded, staring at her depleted chip stack. “How are you so good at this?”
“My husband taught me.” Maya’s face was serene as she shuffled the deck with practiced hands. “He was a gambler. A bad one. I learned to beat him so I could take back the grocery money.”
“That’s… kind of amazing and kind of heartbreaking.”
“He was an asshole. Don’t feel sorry for him.” Maya dealt another hand. “When he died, I didn’t cry. I went to Vegas and won three thousand dollars in his memory.”
Daisy let out a delighted laugh. “Maya. I think you might be my hero.”
“You’re still down forty dollars. Less talking, more playing.”
I sat at the kitchen island with my sparkling cider and watched them go at it, Maya’s quiet competence versus Daisy’s chaotic enthusiasm. Through the windows, I could see the ranch stretching out into the darkness, the distant lights of the horse barn, the stars bright and endless overhead.
The baby kicked, and I pressed my hand to the spot.
See? I thought at him. This is what we were missing. People who actually like each other.
Daisy lost another twenty dollars, accused Maya of witchcraft, and demanded a rematch. Maya poured another round of tequila and reminded her that witchcraft wasn’t against the rules.
I went to bed that night feeling lighter than I had in weeks.
***
Two days passed in a blur of laughter and bad movies and Daisy teaching Maya to make her grandmother’s cornbread while Maya retaliated with her mother’s recipe for lumpia.
I didn’t think about Orion much. I tried not to, anyway.
But on the third morning, when I checked my phone and found no missed calls, no texts, no evidence that my husband remembered I existed, the lightness started to fade.
I was in the kitchen, picking at the breakfast Maya and Corey had made, when my phone finally rang.
“Hey, babe.” Orion’s voice was tinny through the international connection, layered with static and distance. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. When are you coming home?”
A pause. The kind of pause that said everything before he opened his mouth.
“That’s actually why I’m calling. The deal is taking longer than we expected. The other side is playing hardball, and if I leave now, the whole thing falls apart.” Another pause. “Five days, Gianna. Maybe six. I’ll be back before you know it.”
The kitchen tilted.
“My due date is in a few days.”
“I know. But first babies are always late, and…”
“You already said that.”
“…and I’ll have the jet on standby. The second you go into labor, I’m in the air. I can be there in fourteen hours.”
Fourteen hours.
An entire day of labor. An entire day of pain and fear and the most important moment of my life, and he might be fourteen hours away.
“It’s just business, babe. I always think about you,” he said, and his voice was gentle, apologetic, like he actually believed that made it better. “You understand, right?”
I understood that his company would always be more important than me. That his deals would always come first. That I was married to a man who loved his work more than he loved his wife, and no amount of private jets or sprawling ranches was ever going to change that.
“Sure,” I said. “I understand.”
“I love you. I’ll call you tonight, okay? We can FaceTime, and you can…”
I hung up.
I set the phone down on the counter and stared at it, watching the screen go dark.
“Gi?” Daisy appeared in the doorway, her face creased with concern. “Everything okay?”
“Five days,” I said. “Maybe six.”
“Oh.” Her expression shifted. “Oh, honey.”
She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around me, and I let myself lean into her, let myself feel the weight of everything I’d been carrying alone.