Chapter 27
Fight for More
Riley
By the time we make it up the stairs, adrenaline has curdled into something thin and sour in my veins.
The apartment is dim—only the streetlight leaking around the edges of the curtains, rain pattering a steady metronome on the sill.
The city sounds far away, like someone turned the volume down on the world and left us in the quiet between stations.
I close the door and my hands won’t cooperate. The deadbolt misses once, twice, my fingers slipping like I’ve forgotten fine motor skills are part of my job description. The third try it catches with a blunt metal thunk I feel in my teeth.
Jason doesn’t talk. He just steps in behind me and covers my hands with his.
Warm. Steady. His palms dwarf mine in a way that should make me feel smaller, but tonight it makes me feel anchored.
He slides the chain into place, tests it gently, then doesn’t move away.
His breath is warm on the side of my neck.
I realize I’m shaking only because the key ring trembles against the door.
“It’s over for tonight,” he says, voice low, threaded with that calm he uses right before a faceoff. “They don’t get in here.”
The room smells like rain and lemon dish soap and, stupidly, a ghost of clinic gel I can still feel in my wrist bones.
This afternoon’s ultrasound was supposed to be ordinary—check the rhythm, measure the curve, print a grainy keepsake the size of a postcard.
Leah, the tech with soft shoes, angled the wand and said, There, and Dr. Hassan nodded like a lighthouse.
I signed the HIPAA form with my neat trainer signature and watched the watermark bloom at the bottom of the print like a stamp that meant safe.
I tucked the photo face-down in my bag and walked out the back because PR had texted use the east stairwell. Ordinary. That was the plan.
I nod because my throat is playing goalie with my words.
The kitchen hums—fridge, vent fan, pipes clicking like old knees.
He turns me by degrees until my back meets the door and my front meets his chest. Streetlight paints his cheekbone and the bridge of his nose, the rest of him in soft shadow.
His eyes are searching without interrogating.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I can’t seem to stop.” I try to laugh and it catches on the way out. “I keep thinking if I list everything I can control, the list will become a ladder out of my head.”
He nods. “Then list it. I’ll spot you.”
I breathe. In for four, hold for two, out for six.
When I can trust my voice not to splinter, I start where it hurts.
“I’m scared of my body changing faster than my brain can keep up,” I say.
“I’m scared of losing my job and all the years I built to get it.
I’m scared of walking into rooms and being a scandal instead of a professional.
I’m scared of being a headline you have to apologize for. ” The last one scrapes.
He doesn’t flinch. He slots his fingers between mine like he’s stitching skin.
“Okay,” he says, like a plan. “Body changes: we make them ours. You tell me what feels good, what doesn’t, and we map the new terrain together.
I learn your cues like I learned the rink.
We ask the doctor every question. We hire a doula if you want one.
” His mouth twitches when he sees my eyebrows go up. “Yes, I know what that is.”
I almost smile. He keeps going.
“Job: we fight with counsel, in writing. Not vibes, not optics. Contracts, clauses, precedent. I’ll sit if I have to.
I meant it.” His thumb strokes the back of my hand once, steady as breath.
“Public vs. professional: we build a wall. PR speaks to PR, not to us. We answer to our people and each other. Anyone else gets the boundary.”
The list doesn’t fix the ache. But it gives it corners. “And the apology?” I ask, quieter.
His jaw softens. “I’m not sorry for loving you,” he says. “I’ll never be sorry for that. I am sorry for every hallway you had to walk alone. That part changes.”
The shake in me shifts—not gone, but different. Contained. I curl my fingers in the fabric of his shirt and let my forehead rest against his sternum. His heartbeat is a promise made in biology.
“I need to believe you,” I whisper.
“Then start small,” he says into my hair. “Believe this: you’re not alone in this room. Or the next. Or the one after that.”
The rain keeps time. My pulse slows until it matches his. The apartment smells like wet wool and dish soap and something new I don’t have a name for yet. I lift my head. “Okay,” I say, and mean it enough for tonight.
He walks me to the kitchen like the distance between door and counter is a rickety bridge we can cross if we don’t look down.
The under-cabinet light pools warm across the island.
He slides a legal pad toward me—when did he even put that there?
—and clicks a pen he stole from some sponsor event.
The click should annoy me. Tonight it steadies me.
“Okay,” he says. “More specifics.”
“Specifics,” I echo, rolling the word between my teeth like it might splinter if I bite too hard. “Childcare.”
“We start a list of names,” he says immediately. “People we trust. We ask Sophie for recs, background checks, trial days later. I shift travel when I can, you set clinic hours that respect your body, not the calendar. We build a budget that assumes help, not heroics.”
“Money,” I say, because saying it out loud makes my tongue want to curl. I’m good at budgeting. I’m worse at accepting help.
“Handled,” he says, simple. “I’ve already talked to my accountant about a trust. Your name on everything that touches this house and this kid. No ‘his money/her money.’ Our family’s money.”
The way he says our should be illegal. It slides under my skin and warms the places adrenaline iced. “Legal,” I push, because romance doesn’t hold up in a deposition. “HR. Retaliation. Device scope.”
“Julia loops counsel at eight with drafts we mark up together,” he says, tapping the pad.
“We request written limits on device review and anti-harassment enforcement with teeth. We decline to sign anything that implies wrongdoing. We ask for a clear reassignment that preserves your seniority until the review is over. If they balk, I go public with exactly that ask.”
“You’ll be benched.”
“I already offered to sit,” he reminds me, not grandstanding, just…steady. “If that’s what it takes to keep your career intact, we pay that cost.”
I swallow. The ache doesn’t vanish, but the edges get names. “Boundaries,” I say. “With everyone.”
“PR goes through Julia,” he says. “Family goes through you. Fans go through nothing at all. My socials go dark at night; yours too if you want. Anyone who tries you in a grocery store aisle learns I’m bilingual in polite and lethal.”
It shouldn’t make me laugh. It does, a small broken sound that turns whole on the exhale. “You can’t fight every aisle.”
“I can try.” He grins, quick and crooked, then sobers. “But we write scripts for the moments we can’t avoid. Three sentences each. No more performing than necessary.”
My shoulders drop an inch. Scripts I can do. I flip the pad and start a column with my neat, trainer handwriting—Doctors, Counsel, Boundaries, Scripts—and my hands stop shaking long enough to underline each heading.
The phone on the counter hums against the stone. Unknown number. The preview pulses once, twice: We have a right to know—
I don’t read the rest. My body moves before my brain can dress it in rational clothes. I flip the phone face-down like I’m laying a card I refuse to play.
Jason tracks the motion, eyes going storm-dark for a second. He doesn’t reach for the phone; he reaches for me. His palm lands warm on the small of my back. “We pick us,” he says softly. “Every time the world asks for a piece.”
I look at the black rectangle, at my name in neat columns on yellow paper, at the man who thinks our is a word you build a life with. The anxiety still hums, but it’s a frequency I can breathe inside.
“I’m choosing this room,” I say. Saying it makes it real. “I’m choosing you.”
“Good,” he says, relief ghosting his mouth. “Me too.” He slides the pad aside like we’ve earned a pause. “Five minutes off the clock,” he adds, quietly smug. “No lists. Just…us.”
I nod. I can give us five. Maybe more. The phone hums again and I don’t move. The world can knock. Tonight, it waits outside.
Five minutes off the clock stretches into a quiet I didn’t know my apartment could hold. The list lies between us like proof we can build something. Jason watches my face like the next step is mine to call, and the permission in that unhooks something low in my spine.
“Come here,” I say, and my voice doesn’t wobble. He comes like gravity works differently for me.
I set my hands on his shoulders and feel the hum of muscle under cotton, familiar and new at once.
New because I’m not cataloging injuries or planning rehab; familiar because this is the body I’ve known in a thousand almosts, the one my hands remembered even when my pride pretended not to.
He waits, still as a held breath, until I tilt up and find his mouth.
The kiss is the opposite of a press conference.
No stage, no script, no room to fill—just the small miracle of yes.
He answers but he doesn’t take. When I press closer, he meets me.
When I ease back, he follows the pace I set.
His palms bracket my hips, wide and careful.
The careful is what undoes me. He’s learned me like ice—edges, angles, places to push and places to glide.
“Tell me if anything feels off,” he murmurs against my lower lip. “I can read tape, but I’m not reading your body without the notes.”