Chapter 20 Erik
“That was terrible,” Anna announces as we push through the cinema doors into the evening air. “Like, genuinely terrible. I’m embarrassed I made you sit through it.”
“You didn’t make me do anything.” The street is busy with the after-work crowd, people rushing toward dinner reservations and evening plans. I fall into step beside her, hands in my coat pockets. “And it wasn’t that bad.”
These movie nights have become a regular thing now. Every Thursday, without fail, Anna drags me to whatever’s showing at the independent cinema three blocks from her apartment. She says it’s good for me. Says I need to do something that isn’t work or brooding. Her words.
I haven’t told her that I look forward to these evenings more than I want to admit and that for two hours in a dark theater, I can almost forget the disaster my personal life has become.
“Erik, the main character just walked away from a mushroom cloud like it was a mild inconvenience.”
“The cinematography was decent.”
“Oh my god, you’re such a liar.” She elbows me, grinning. “You hated every minute.”
I didn’t hate it. I barely registered it. For two hours I sat in the dark while images flickered across the screen and my mind kept circling back to the same place it’s been circling for days.
Nolan’s face at the Bureau meeting. The hollowed-out cheeks. The way his clothes hung off him like he’d lost fifteen pounds in three weeks. The grey cast to his skin that made him look like he was fighting something his body couldn’t beat.
Not your problem, I tell myself for the thousandth time. You ended it. He’s not your concern.
Except I’m still paying for Ellie’s medical treatment. That’s the one string I haven’t cut, and I won’t. Whatever Nolan did or didn’t do, his sister is innocent and shouldn’t suffer for his choices.
Or maybe I’m not as detached as I’d like to believe.
“You’re doing it again,” Anna says.
“Doing what?”
“That thing where you’re physically here but your brain is somewhere else entirely.” She steers us toward a quieter side street, away from the crowds. “You’ve been weird all evening. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Erik.”
I should have known better than to think I could hide anything from her. Anna has been reading me since we were children.
“I saw him,” I say. “At the Bureau meeting last week. The follow-up appointment.”
“The omega. Nolan.” Her voice is careful, neutral.
“Yes.”
“And?”
The words stick in my throat. Admitting this feels like weakness.
“He looked terrible,” I finally say. “Thin. Pale. Like he hasn’t been sleeping or eating properly.” I stop walking, staring at the pavement. “He looked sick, Anna. Really sick.”
She’s quiet for a moment. When I glance at her, she’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Could be withdrawal,” she offers. “Prime matches—the chemistry is intense, right? Breaking that bond isn’t easy on the body.”
“I know.” I’ve felt it too, though I’d never admit it. The restlessness that won’t settle. The way my body keeps reaching for something that isn’t there anymore. “But this seemed different. Worse.”
“What kind of worse?”
I think about the way he’d looked at me across the lobby, the brief flicker of something before his expression went flat. I think about the sheen of sweat on his forehead during the meeting, the way he kept swallowing like he was fighting down nausea.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. We’re done. Whatever’s going on with him isn’t my problem anymore.”
“Uh huh.” Anna tilts her head. “Is that why you can’t stop talking about it?”
“I’m not—”
“Erik.” She stops walking and turns to face me fully. “You’ve brought him up in every conversation we’ve had this week. You’re clearly still thinking about him constantly. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be like this.”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. She’s right, and we both know it.
We start walking again, slower now. The evening has turned cool, the air carrying the first hint of autumn. Leaves are beginning to turn on the trees lining the street, orange and gold against the darkening sky.
“Erik,” Anna says quietly, “have you considered that he might be pregnant?”
The question hits me like ice water.
I stop. My feet just stop moving, rooted to the pavement while my mind races through the implications.
Pregnant. Pregnant.
The heat. The days we spent tangled together, biology overriding everything else. I know he was on contraception, the same contraception that becomes dramatically less effective when prime matches are involved.
“That’s—” My voice comes out strangled. “No. That can’t be—”
“Can it, though?” Anna’s watching me carefully. “The timing works. You went through a heat together. The statistics for prime match conception are what, forty percent even with protection?”
“If he’s pregnant,” I hear myself saying, “he would have told me.”
“Would he?” Anna’s voice is gentle but pointed. “You evicted him, Erik. You threw him out without warning. Why would he tell you anything?”
Because it’s my child. Because I have a right to know. Because—
Because none of those arguments would matter to someone who believed I’d betrayed him. I also know the clause I put in the contract about custody of offspring.
My hand is already moving toward my pocket, reaching for my phone.
“What are you doing?” Anna asks.
“Calling Sara. She can find out—”
“No.” Anna grabs my arm, stopping me. “Erik, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Nolan is pregnant, sending your lawyer to snoop around isn’t going to help anything. It’s going to make you look like you’re gathering ammunition for a custody battle.”
“I’m not—”
“I know you’re not, but that’s what it will look like.” She holds my gaze. “If you want to know, grow a pair and call him yourself.”
Call him. The thought makes my chest tight with something I don’t want to name. Three weeks ago I was ready to build a future with him. Now I can’t even imagine forming the words, hearing his voice on the other end of the line.
But she’s right. She’s usually right.
I pull out my phone and scroll to Nolan’s contact. My thumb hovers over the call button for a long moment. Then I press it.
It doesn’t even ring. Just a single beep and then silence, followed by an automated message.
The number you have dialed is not in service or has been disconnected.
I try again. Same result.
“I think he blocked me,” I say, and I’m surprised by the way my voice sounds. Hollow. Distant. “Or changed his number. I can’t reach him.”
Anna exhales. “Okay. Now you can call Sara.”
I send a text instead, because I don’t trust my voice right now. Need to know if Nolan West is pregnant. Discreet. Urgent.
Her response comes within thirty seconds. On it. May take a day or two. Everything okay?
Fine. Just need to know.
We keep walking. The city moves around us, oblivious, and I feel like I’m underwater—everything muted and distant, sounds coming from far away.
A bench appears ahead, weathered wood overlooking the river. Anna steers us toward it without asking, and I sink down gratefully. My legs don’t feel entirely steady.
“The recording,” she says after a while.
“What about it?”
“Have you listened to it again? Since Wallace gave it to you?”
My stomach turns. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” I stop, trying to find the words. “Because it made me sick the first time. Hearing his voice admitting everything, saying it was all a lie. I couldn’t—I can’t listen to that again.”
Anna is quiet for a moment. “Play it for me.”
“What?”
“The recording. I want to hear it.”
“Anna—”
“Erik.” Her voice is firm. “You made a major decision based on that recording. I want to hear what you heard.”
I don’t want to. Every instinct tells me to refuse, to leave the recording buried in my phone where it can’t hurt me anymore. But there’s something in Anna’s expression that makes me pull out the phone anyway, scrolling until I find the audio file Alistair sent me.
I press play.
Nolan’s voice fills the space between us, slurred and thick. “I shouldn’t have said those things. About the research.”
“I understand.” Alistair’s voice, smooth and sympathetic. “It was a difficult time for everyone involved.”
“I’m so sorry. I was just so angry. I shouldn’t have claimed it was mine. I guess I just wanted it to be.”
I stop the recording. My hands are trembling.
“Play it again,” Anna says.
“Anna—”
“Play it again. The whole thing.”
I do. This time she listens with her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly to one side. When it ends, she opens her eyes.
“Where did you say this was recorded?”
“A bar. After some industry conference.” I pull up the notes I’d taken when Alistair first played it for me. “The Brass Anchor. He said it was about six months after the lawsuit settlement.”
Anna’s frown deepens. “Play the beginning again. Just the first thirty seconds.”
I do. Nolan’s voice, the ambient sound behind it—clinking glasses, muffled conversation, the general noise of a busy establishment.
“Now play the part where he makes the admission.”
I skip ahead. “I shouldn’t have claimed it was mine. I guess I just wanted it to be.”
Anna holds up her hand. “Stop. Listen to the background.”
I replay it, focusing this time on the sounds beneath the words. The ambient noise is different. Quieter. The quality has shifted somehow, more muffled, less echoey.
“The acoustics don’t match,” Anna says slowly. “The first part sounds like a bar. The second part sounds like... I don’t know. Somewhere smaller. More enclosed.”
My mouth has gone dry. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying something’s not right.” She’s frowning now, working through it. “Also—the Brass Anchor. That name sounds familiar.”
“It’s a bar downtown.”