18. Dominic #2
“You may not have planned this,” I say. “I did. Maybe I didn’t admit the full extent of it when we signed those papers, but I knew I wanted you. Every time you called me outside the schedule, canceled the clinic, or let me stay, I thought you were moving toward admitting the same.”
“I do want you.”
The answer hits hard enough that I have to take a breath before I speak.
“For how long?”
Her face changes.
“The contract doesn’t define our personal relationship,” she says.
“I’m not asking the contract.”
“It does define the purpose of the arrangement.”
“After everything between us, am I still only a donor and co-parent to you?”
Her mouth opens, and I can hear the clock on the wall ticking in the silence. I give her the time. More than enough for her to find an honest word.
She could tell me she’s afraid. She could tell me she doesn’t know how to imagine a shared home yet. She could give me the same uncertain answer she gave me a month ago, and I would at least know she sees something worth being afraid of losing.
Instead, she looks toward the table and the closed laptop.
“The agreement establishes you as the child’s legal father with equal parental rights and responsibilities,” she says quietly. “The method of conception doesn’t alter the enforceability of those terms.”
Her silence answers me before the legal language does.
My patience finally runs out.
“I wanted you,” I say. “I never wanted an arrangement.”
Elena turns from the counter. “You proposed the arrangement.”
“Because it was the only way you would let me get close.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You agreed to every term.”
“I would’ve agreed to twice as many if that was what it took for you to choose me.” The admission hangs in the air between us, stark and a little reckless. I see her process it as her face tightens.
“You can’t sign a contract while secretly expecting me to want something else.”
“I didn’t expect you to feel anything you didn’t feel. I hoped you would eventually stop hiding what you do feel.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“So you’re telling me seven months of this means less than eleven pages we signed before I ever touched you.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Then correct me.”
She wraps her arms around herself, a gesture of self-protection I know too well. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
All I feel is tired. “The truth would be a start.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“You’re giving me the safest answer.”
Her gaze flashes. “Safety matters to me.”
“I know it does.”
“Then why are you acting like I’m wrong for needing it?”
“Your job is safe. Your financial independence is safe. If you’re pregnant now, your rights as this child’s mother are safe. I would never threaten any of those things to get what I want from you.”
“I know.”
The quiet answer makes this worse.
She knows I’m nothing like the man who taught her to expect those things. He broke something in her I don’t know how to fix.
She still can’t imagine a future where I stay.
My hand scrubs at my jaw. I look toward the table. The laptop sits between our chairs with an entire life mapped out inside it. Leave schedules. Custody plans. Two addresses.
She has accounted for every practical variable while leaving our relationship out of the future.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I say.
Her arms fall to her sides. “Doing what?”
“Being useful enough to fill every place in a relationship while you refuse to admit you want the man who fills them.”
Her lips part.
“I come when you call. I stay when you ask. I sit beside you at appointments and ask questions about a child we’re trying to create together.
I have dinner here without a reason. I wake up with you in my arms and spend the next day pretending it doesn’t change anything because you’re scared of naming it. ”
“You said you understood.”
“I do understand.”
“Then you know I need time.”
The old answer is on my tongue. Okay. I swallow it down. “Take as much time as you need. I’m done giving you pieces of myself to fill it.”
She flinches, and I hate that I put that look on her face. It doesn’t change what I have to do.
“I accepted that you weren’t ready last month,” I continue. “I never agreed to become temporary while you worked out how to remove me from the rest of your life.”
“I’m not removing you. We would be raising a child together.”
“In separate homes.”
“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t matter.”
“I don’t want to matter as the man who arrives with an overnight bag and leaves according to your schedule.”
“I never said that’s all you would be.”
“You won’t tell me what else I am.”
Her eyes shine, but she blinks before the tears can fall.
I’ve seen Elena angry. I’ve seen her defensive, embarrassed, aroused, terrified, and so open beneath me that she had nowhere left to hide.
I watch her understand that she might lose me. The realization dawns in her eyes, and the sight of it nearly breaks me.
Every instinct I have tells me to cross the room and erase that look from her face. I want to postpone this, give her another month, another excuse to choose silence while I keep hoping.
That is how I ended up here.
By wanting enough for both of us, I’ve let her call me useful and pretend she wants nothing at all.
“So what happens now?” she asks.
Her voice is quiet enough to strip the anger from mine.
“If you’re pregnant from this cycle, you tell me. I’ll be at every appointment. We’ll make every decision together, and I will be the father I promised to be.”
“And if I’m not?”
The words feel like stones in my mouth. “We stop trying.”
She stares at me.
“No more scheduled nights,” I say. “No more false windows. No more telling ourselves sex is part of a conception plan when we both know it stopped being that months ago.”
“You’re ending the agreement.”
“The sexual and conception arrangement ends tonight. I can’t keep sleeping with you while you plan a life that has no real place for me.”
Her chin lifts as if she can hold herself together through posture alone. “What about work?”
“Nothing changes at work. Your position is yours. You earned it. This conversation will never affect your career, your compensation, or your authority at Rowe Holdings.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you would retaliate.”
“I need you to hear me say it anyway. This stays between us. I won’t tell Cliff, and I won’t make you defend your choices to anyone. If there’s a child, I’ll honor every parental commitment I made. I’m not taking anything from you.”
“Except yourself.”
The words are so soft I almost miss them, but they find their mark. A clean, quiet cut.
I look at her. “You already built a future without me.”
“That isn’t what I want.”
Hope rises before I can stop it. “Then tell me what you do want.”
Her eyes meet mine.
For one second, I see it. The answer she knew last month. The one she nearly gave me in her bedroom when she said my name and looked at me like the truth had finally become impossible to deny.
“Dominic, I…”
I wait.
Her fear wins again.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispers.
I nod once, the movement stiff. I know she can’t. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. “I know.”
I retrieve my jacket from the back of the chair and walk toward the door. Each step feels wrong. I have spent years finding reasons to move closer to her; now leaving is the only honest choice left.
My hand closes around the knob.
“Dominic.”
I stop and turn.
She stands near the kitchen with her arms wrapped around herself again. Her eyes are wet now, and the sight cuts straight through me.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she says.
“I know.”
“Are you angry?”
Anger would give her something to defend herself against. It would let her use my anger as proof that wanting a man always ends with him demanding a price.
I won’t give her that lie.
“No,” I say. “I’m not angry.”
The answer devastates her. I see it in the way her shoulders drop and her careful control finally breaks across her face.
I open the door.
“The deal is done.”