Chapter 16 Olivia
OLIVIA
Back in my car, my fingers tremble against the steering wheel. It takes me a long time to work up the courage to start up the engine and pull out.
I focus on slow, deep breaths as I drive back across town. If I think about expanding my lungs and exhaling the stress away, then I can’t freak out about the soap opera my life has become. I’m too busy turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. It’s a full-time job, really.
The space between my shoulder blades aches with tension as I finally, blessedly pull into my clinic parking lot. The morning sun casts long shadows across the concrete… and picks out the silhouette of a figure perched on the front steps.
At first, my heart soars into my throat.
Then I squint and see that the silhouette doesn’t have the shape I was expecting. It’s not him. Not nearly tall enough, big enough, broad enough, brutish enough.
Also, this is a girl. A young girl—barely drinking age, by the looks of it—with a denim jacket hanging off of her slim shoulders and a dog-eared textbook spread across her lap. Her towering messy bun threatens to collapse as she looks up. Dark tendrils frame a face still soft with youth.
The girl closes her book as I climb out of my car and shoves it into a ratty bookbag.
“Dr. Aster?” She springs up and offers her hand before thinking better of it and tucking it behind her back instead. “I’m Katelyn. I submitted an application last week? For the, uh… surrogate program?”
My stomach drops, acid churning. This must be what drug dealers who sell to high schoolers feel like. The guilt is horrible.
“The clinic doesn’t open for another hour.” I fumble with my keys. I’m suddenly desperate to put a door between myself and this girl’s hopeful eyes.
“Yeah, well…” Katelyn shrugs, following uninvited. “Figured early is on time, right? That’s what my mom always says.”
The clinic key sticks in the lock. Another problem I can’t afford to fix. I kick the bottom of the door to loosen whatever is going on inside. “Why don’t you come back when—”
“My cousin became a surrogate for some tech bro and his supermodel wife last year.” Katelyn’s voice carries a calculated nonchalance that doesn’t match her tight grip on her backpack. “The woman didn’t want to lose work because of stretch marks and, y’know, whatever all comes with pregnancy.”
This girl doesn’t even know her bladder may never be the same. That she could die in delivery from complications. It’s not common, but it happens.
And for what? So Stefan Safonov can carry on his family lineage without any kinks in his dating life? Does Stefan even have a dating life? I decide I don’t want to know.
Katelyn carries on babbling, scuffing her shoe into a crack in the concrete. “She paid off her student loans. It’s pretty drastic, but seems smarter than stripping. One big deal and you’re set for life. Sort of.”
The door finally opens. I barge inside and flick on the lights. The fluorescents fill the silence with an audible hum, bathing everything in harsh, unforgiving light. “Katelyn, surrogacy isn’t a quick fix for debt. It’s a commitment. It’s—”
“You approved my intake forms.” Katelyn pulls up an email on her phone and thrusts it forward so I can see. “See? Your office manager signed off yesterday.”
Camille. Of course. Rushing through applications to meet Stefan’s timeline, desperate to save our sinking clinic. The betrayal stings, even though I know I’m equally to blame.
“I’m not trying to beg here, but, well… okay, fine, I’m kind of begging.” Katelyn lets out a hollow laugh as she trails me into my office. “My mom doesn’t think I’ll ever finish nursing school. This would prove her wrong.”
I freeze in my tracks. I know plenty about the burning desire to prove mothers wrong.
“We require psychological evaluations,” I tell her. “Support systems. This isn’t a decision to make lightly.”
Katelyn’s laugh holds the cynicism of someone decades older. “No offense, Dr. Aster, but do you think I’d be here if I had better options?”
Her words mirror the ones I’ve swallowed all week. The ones I choked back this morning as I tucked that sterile cup in my purse, pretending this was just another savvy move to get me to the promised land. Just another compromise in a lifetime of them.
I have no other options. This is my only choice.
But when I look at Katelyn… I do see options. I see hope. A whole future ahead she doesn’t even know exists yet.
“How far along are you in nursing school?” I ask, my voice softer now.
“Halfway through.” Pride flickers across her face before dimming. “I work nights at the hospital cafeteria. It’s not enough for tuition, but…”
“It’s better than stripping,” I mumble, repeating what she said before.
It’s honest work. Not selling her body to a tech bro and his supermodel wife. Not renting her womb to a man like Stefan Safonov.
A phone chimes, slicing through the tension. Katelyn glances at the screen, and for a moment, her composed facade cracks. “Fuck. Guess my little brother told Mom where I was headed. She doesn’t think I’ll follow through with this, either.”
My chest constricts. I thought I was looking at a mirror earlier, in the lobby at Safonov Holdings. But looking at Katelyn here is like gazing into a mirror of a whole different variety. This one doesn’t reflect my face—it reflects my soul, my sins, all the wrong turns that brought me here.
Even the turns I thought were right have done me nothing but harm. Mom smiled when I became valedictorian, yeah, but was that worth the disappointed downward slant of her lips when Walsh stole everything and left me to die?
And now that she’s back to I love yous, does it actually feel good? Or is it tinged with bitterness because I know that it’s only the bits of aura I’ve stolen from Stefan that are making her happy?
She’s not proud of me—she’s proud because a powerful man noticed me.
It sure as hell doesn’t feel like love.
In fact, I know it’s not. I’ve spent my entire life contorting myself to earn love that should have been unconditional. I know better than anyone how worthless of a prize that love is.
And yet here I am, ready to do it again—placing my future, my body, my clinic in Stefan Safonov’s hands. Trading everything I’ve worked for to please a mother who will never be satisfied.
Worse—I considered, for a single fucking second, offering the bright-eyed young girl in front of me up to the same twisted cycle.
I’m suddenly itchy all over. My skin feels too tight, too hot. I’m not saving my clinic by accepting Stefan’s offer—I’m betraying everything it represents. Every woman who’s trusted me to help her create life on her own terms.
I reach for Katelyn’s application on my desk. The paper makes a satisfying sound as I tear it in half, then quarters.
“Wait!” Her eyes go huge. “But I need—”
“Don’t. Just don’t, okay?” The pieces flutter into the trash like the world’s saddest confetti. “Keep working at the hospital. Find another job. Do what you have to do, but go finish nursing school. Don’t do this.”
Katelyn stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. Maybe I have. “But the money—”
“There are scholarships. Grants. I can help you apply. But this? This isn’t the answer.”
“My mom—”
“—will never be satisfied.” I finish for her. “Trust me.”
Except she shouldn’t trust me. Not after what I almost did—what I did. I laid out women in front of Stefan Safonov like it was an all-you-could-eat buffet. And then I offered him myself.
Well, I haven’t actually gone through with that last part just yet. He never answered my text. I didn’t see him this morning.
The only proof is that stupid cup I gave to his receptionist. I glance down at my phone. That was only ten minutes ago, but God, so much has already changed.
So what if I…?
I stand up, my chair rolling back against the wall. “I have to go. You have to— We both need to leave.”
Katelyn slinks out in stunned silence. I make a note to send her a link to some nursing scholarships later.
But right now, I have somewhere to be.
The drive back to Stefan’s office takes forever. Every other driver on the road seems determined to slow me down. I find myself stuck in a jam right at the foot of Dr. Walsh’s new billboard, as fate would have it.
Her face looms over the interstate, beaming, so trustworthy, so wise, so easy to put your faith in. Every family begins with a choice, Billboard Walsh is saying. The slogan glows against the morning sky, as pristine and hollow as a cleaned-out bank account.
Choice. As if Katelyn had a choice. As if any of us did, really. Choosing between death and the last lifeboat is not a choice.
The specimen cup will still be on his desk. Waiting. Like a loaded gun aimed at my life’s work—and at desperate girls like Katelyn.
I won’t be the one to pull the trigger. Not for my mother’s approval. Not for Stefan’s millions. Not even to save my clinic.
This time, when I march through the Safonov Holdings lobby, I don’t spare a second glance to the suited men I pass. I no longer care what they think of me.
The elevator doors open. I plan to breeze past Stefan’s receptionist, take what is mine, and get the hell out of here. But it must be my lucky day, because Mikayla’s desk is empty.
Even better.
I cross to the wooden doors and push. They open easily, unlocked, and I take a couple steps in before I register that the office is no longer empty.
I hear my name, spoken in a breathless rasp.
“Olivia…”
And I freeze, eyes glued to those broad shoulders, locked on the mesmerizing rhythm of his thick bicep. Of his hand, working up and down and up and down on his thick—
Ohmygod.
This.
Cannot.
Be.
Happening.