Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
COOPER
Why is her door still closed?
It’s the only thought on my mind as I sit at my desk, staring across the hall at Evan’s office, at the door that has remained stubbornly closed all day.
She’s in there. I know she is. When I walked into the office at six this morning, she was sitting at her desk in front of her laptop, pink spiral notebook at her side, dressed in a pair of pajama pants with purple hearts on them and an electric blue sweatshirt that said Choice, fuzzy pink slippers on her feet.
She glared at me like I had somehow wronged her by once again seeing her in her pajamas at work, and then she got up, messy blonde ponytail flying, and slammed the door shut so hard it rattled the walls.
That was the last time today I laid eyes on her.
Not only that, but she also hasn’t sent a single email, given me her narrow-eyed glare when I don’t work fast enough for her liking, or called me from her office to ream me out for something instead of walking across the hall to tell me in person—something that drives me fucking insane on a daily basis but I find myself wishing for today for reasons I don’t want to admit to myself.
I glance at the clock on my desk, watching it flip from six fifty-nine to seven o’clock.
I’m supposed to be on the rooftop patio of the Back Bay brownstone I share with my brothers and their girls in an hour for a surprise book party Noah is throwing for Hannah, who is releasing her first traditionally published novel tomorrow, but I can’t make myself get up from my desk.
I cast another look across the hall. I assume Evan has to have left her office at some point today to go to the bathroom or get coffee or talk about a pending case with one of the partners or any one of the other millions of little reasons we all have to be walking the halls of this firm at all hours of the day.
But either I’m wrong and she has been sitting behind a closed door for thirteen straight hours, or she somehow managed to avoid me all day for the first time in two years.
I’ve been telling myself that I’m just wondering how she is because I saw her throw up at the baseball game and then again yesterday morning, and then she left the office in a rush after our little interlude with Austin and didn’t come back.
The thing is, I’m self-aware enough to know it’s more than that, and it’s driving me insane.
I wish I still hated her all the way. I wish I didn’t know how warm and smooth her skin was under my hands or the way her hair felt when I pulled it back from her face or what she looked like with that shadow of vulnerability in her eyes while I wiped the tears from her face in the crowded stadium concourse.
I wish I didn’t get the sense that there’s a softer side of her—one that wears pajamas at work for some reason and carries a pink notebook everywhere and pretends to like black coffee and loves her brother enough to go to his baseball game when she’s feeling terrible.
One that a part of me deep down kind of wants to get to know.
For the first time in my life, I wish I wasn’t so damn intuitive all the time.
I wish a lot of things.
But mostly, I wish Evan would open her fucking door.
I glance at my computer—at my overflowing inbox, the half-finished memo I’m drafting on the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, and a web browser with at least forty tabs open to various state statutes dealing with trade secrets.
“Shit,” I mutter, shoving up from my desk, knowing that there is no focusing on any of it until I figure out what’s going on behind Evan’s closed door. I pick up my phone and hammer out a message to Noah.
Me
Something came up at work and I’m stuck here for a little while longer. I’ll get there as soon as I can.
Noah
No problem. I figured there was only a fifty percent chance you would be on time. We’ll see you when you get here.
I wince at the message. I hate being this person. One who cancels on the people I love most in the world because of work shit. At some point, I have to get around to figuring out my life. But with another glance at Evan’s closed door, I know today is not that day.
The hallway is quiet as I stride across to Evan’s office, the assistants having long-since gone home for the night, and any lawyers still around likely ensconced in their own offices, settling in for a long night doing work that probably feels like the most important thing in the entire world but in the grand scheme of things could not possibly matter less.
I lift my hand and knock on Evan’s door, prepared for her to tell me to go the fuck away, but I’m met with silence.
“Hey, Rhodes,” I call. “Avoidance time is over. I know you’re probably embarrassed that I saw you throw up two separate times in two separate trash cans on two different days, but at some point, you have to come out of there.
” There. I smirk at the closed door, knowing that’s going to piss her off enough that she’ll have to come out and spar with me.
But still nothing.
Before I can question what I’m about to do, I reach down and twist the handle, pushing open the door, mildly concerned that she’s in there passed out or something because she came to work still sick.
When I see her leaning over in her chair, head pillowed on her forearm and blonde hair spilling all over her desk, suddenly I’m really worried.
But it takes me approximately ten seconds to realize that she’s not passed out. She’s fast asleep.
Her breathing is slow and even, her lips just slightly parted, long eyelashes fanning out across her cheeks.
Her face is soft in sleep, as relaxed as I’ve ever seen it.
I don’t know if I make some kind of noise or she just senses that she’s no longer alone, but as I stand there watching, her eyelashes flutter, her eyes opening slowly and then all at once as she inhales sharply, shooting to a sitting position.
She sucks in another breath and presses one hand to her stomach, her other reaching out to the pile of red Jolly Ranchers on her desk, unwrapping one and slipping it between her lips before her eyes meet mine.
“What are you doing in here?”
I can tell she’s going for accusatory, but the fact that her hair is a mess, her eyes deeply shadowed, her black silk tank wrinkled, and her face pale means she doesn’t quite get there.
Seeing her so unraveled stokes something deep inside me…
something I don’t understand and know instinctively I don’t want to parse right now.
I shrug, going for casual. “Your door has been closed all day. I was worried. Thought maybe you were in here brewing some sort of potion that would instantly make you queen of intellectual property litigation. Or, like, turn me into a frog or something.”
Evan lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Not today.” She reaches over for the can of seltzer on her desk, taking a small sip and making a face. “Ugh, flat,” she mutters, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, pressing her hand to her stomach again like she’s trying to settle it.
I drop down into one of the chairs opposite her, leaning my elbows on her desk.
“Okay seriously, Rhodes. Go home. You’ve been shut in here all day.
I just walked in on you sleeping on your desk, and you look like hell.
I know you’re the most dedicated BigLaw associate ever to grace these halls, but you’re sick.
Like, really, really sick. Go home and get well so you can kick my ass all over the conference room again. ”
“I’m not sick,” she mumbles, crossing her arms over her desk and leaning her forehead down.
“Excuse me?” I say, not sure I heard her right.
She raises her head, her shadowed, exhausted eyes looking directly into mine, something deeply serious in them sending my instincts humming. “I’m not sick,” she repeats, unwrapping another Jolly Rancher and shoving it into her mouth. “I’m pregnant.”
Pregnant.
The word reverberates around my head as I stare at Evan and she stares right back, the entire world shrinking down to the space between us that now houses that word and the look in Evan’s eyes that I suddenly understand right down to the marrow of my bones.
The middle of the night.
A dimly lit conference room.
A wall of windows.
Fuck me already.
Pregnant.
I stare at her, somehow asking without words the only question I can think of.
She stares back at me, somehow understanding. And she nods.
Maybe one day I’ll question this wordless communication between us.
How, for this one moment in time, we are so in sync, reading each other’s thoughts like we’ve spoken them out loud, like maybe when you find out the person sitting across from you is pregnant with your child you suddenly mind-meld and words become unnecessary.
But not today.
Today my hand moves of its own accord, laying over Evan’s, a little zap of electricity where we touch, our eyes still locked together. “How do you feel?”
She doesn’t move her hand from under mine, the only evidence she registers the connection at all the slight twitch of her fingers. “I’m surprised that’s your first question.”
I tilt my head and study her. The slight challenge in her gaze. That same vulnerability I saw the other night that I can tell she’s desperate to hide from me. “What did you think my first question would be?”
She huffs out a laugh, sliding her hand out from under mine and sitting back in her chair, reaching into a drawer for an unopened seltzer can, popping the top and taking a sip.
She makes that face again and presses her hand back to her stomach, sighing when she registers my eyebrow raised in question.
“It’s not cold enough. Apparently, the only drink that doesn’t make me want to puke my guts up is cherry seltzer so cold it’s practically frozen. ”
Most of my brain is still racing with the implications of Evan’s quiet bombshell, but a smaller, more instinctive part somehow knows exactly what to do.