16. Dominic #2
“You said no.”
“I know what I said.”
I could list a dozen other reasons, but I won’t. Her answer cannot cost her anything. “Then I’m not going to argue with you.”
Some of the tension leaves her shoulders, although she keeps studying me, expecting the negotiation to resume.
It won’t. I can want more without turning that desire into pressure. Being her employer already requires more care than any relationship I’ve ever had. The rest of this makes respecting her answer nonnegotiable.
Elena folds her arms. “You had more points prepared.”
“I did.”
“And you’re abandoning them?”
“I’m respecting your answer.”
Her gaze drops to the counter between us. “Living together would change things.”
“They’ve already changed.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to complicate it.”
“Is that what this has become?”
Her eyes lift sharply.
I hold her gaze. If this has become a burden to her, then everything I’ve done has been a failure. “Worse?”
“No.” The answer comes too quickly for her to take it back. She exhales and looks away. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“Because living together implies this is something it isn’t.”
I hear the fear beneath her answer, and my irritation disappears.
Elena isn’t worried about what cohabitation would look like from the outside. Cliff doesn’t know. Our employees wouldn’t suspect. No one would see her waking up in my home or leaving her shampoo in my shower.
She would.
She would have to admit we are building something beyond a conception schedule.
I walk around the island, stopping before I get close enough to touch her. “Then forget living together.”
Her arms loosen, but her expression remains guarded.
I round the island but stop short of her. “Can I ask you for something smaller?”
“Define ‘smaller’ in a way that doesn’t involve a moving truck.”
“Can I see you outside the scheduled windows?”
She looks at me without speaking.
“We already do,” I continue. “You call me. I come over. You stay at my house even when the timing is wrong. I want us to stop pretending those nights need a clinical explanation.”
“It’s not pretending. It’s logistics.”
“You attach dates to them.”
“The dates matter.”
“They matter when we’re trying to make a baby. But was last Saturday about the calendar?”
Her attention drops to the counter. “I wanted you there.”
The admission disarms me completely. All my arguments, all my logic, fall away.
The quiet admission lands harder than the no she gave me a few minutes ago.
“Then tell me that. Text me when you want me, and I’ll do the same. No false dates, and no pretending we misread the calendar.”
“And if the timing actually matters?”
“We say so.”
She studies me long enough that I have to resist filling the silence for her.
“All right,” she says. “We stop falsifying the dates.”
“And we see each other when we want to.”
Elena exhales. “Yes.”
I hold out my hand. She looks at it, rolls her eyes, and places her palm against mine.
“We’re shaking on this?”
“You like clear terms.”
“I also like lawyers.”
“You don’t need independent counsel to text me.”
“That remains to be seen.”
I close my fingers around hers instead of shaking, the warmth of her palm a sudden anchor. “I want to see you tonight. The timing doesn’t matter.”
Her hand tightens in mine. “I want you to stay.”
She doesn’t add a reason.
Cliff and Rachel planned this Chicago weekend a month ago so they could take Sophie and Theo to the Field Museum and have lunch with Elena and me.
Halfway through that lunch, Theo rejects his chair, his mother, his father, and every reasonable interpretation of restaurant seating before climbing into my lap.
“Traitor,” Cliff tells him.
Theo settles against my chest with the satisfaction of a man who has successfully completed a hostile takeover.
“He has excellent judgment,” I say.
“He knows you’ll let him steal your food.”
“I don’t steal,” Theo says firmly.
Rachel looks over the top of her menu. “What do you call taking fries off someone else’s plate without asking?”
“Sharing.”
Elena laughs beside her, and my attention shifts before I can stop it.
We’re seated around a wide table on the restaurant patio, shielded from the afternoon sun by a large umbrella.
Cliff and Rachel are across from me. Elena sits at the other end beside Rachel—close enough for me to hear their conversation, but far enough away that I have no acceptable reason to keep looking at her.
I do it anyway.
This is the first time we’ve been around her family since we stopped attaching fertility dates to every invitation. Elena has been in my home twice this week simply because she wanted to be there.
Once, we had sex against the wall inside my front door.
The other time, we ate dinner and argued about whether her projections accounted for a regulatory delay. She fell asleep on my couch with her feet in my lap. I carried her upstairs, and when she woke as I put her in my bed, she pulled me down beside her.
I’m still deciding which night affected me more.
“Uncle Dominic.”
Sophie’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
I turn toward her. “Yes?”
“You’re on my team.”
“I didn’t know you had established teams.”
“They have.”
“What are we playing?”
“I Spy.”
Cliff picks up his water. “That isn’t usually a team sport.”
“It is now.” Sophie crosses her arms. “Daddy cheats.”
“I guessed the napkin.”
“You guessed white. Everything is white.”