27. Elena
Elena
Two weeks is apparently the amount of time it takes for something that felt inevitable to start feeling like a decision. Not a mistake. Not a lapse. Not something you can tuck neatly into a category and move on from, pretending it didn’t fundamentally shift everything.
A true decision.
Two weeks of silence where there shouldn’t be silence, of appointments that aren’t his, voices that don’t quite land the same way, hands that do everything correctly and still feel wrong somehow.
Not wrong in a concrete way, certainly not wrong enough to complain about, just different in a way that makes the absence obvious whether I want it to be or not.
Dr. Walsh is excellent. Calm, thorough, reassuring in that practiced, clinical way that’s meant to make patients feel taken care of without getting too close. She explains things clearly, answers questions without hesitation, never makes me feel rushed or overlooked.
It should be enough. It isn’t. Because competence was never the thing that made this whole thing feel steady.
Cormac did.
And Cormac is very, very good at not being somewhere when he decides he shouldn’t be.
Which would be fine if he were actually gone.
But he’s not. He’s just... removed himself.
I notice it in ways I can’t prove. Messages from the clinic that read like him even when they aren’t signed by him.
Adjustments to my monitoring schedule that are too precise to be coincidence.
Groceries that arrive stocked with things I mentioned once in passing.
He isn’t here, but he is. And that only means what happened between us didn’t end when he walked out. It just changed form.
I remind myself, repeatedly, that I should be relieved.
That this is the correct outcome. Distance restored, boundaries reestablished, everything neatly placed back into the system it was always supposed to fit inside.
That’s the version of this that makes sense.
The one I could explain out loud without sounding like I’ve completely lost perspective.
But I don’t want him to stay away.
That’s the part I can’t soften or reframe or pretend is anything else. Because wanting him isn’t new. It’s just that before, I could ignore it. Dismiss it as something abstract and untested. Something that didn’t have consequences because it didn’t have proof it existed.
Now it does. Now I know exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of his attention when he stops holding it back, and there’s no version of me that can unknow that.
Which is inconvenient, to say the least.
I shift on the couch, adjusting myself carefully, one hand settling over my stomach, fingers splayed across the curve that’s no longer something I can ignore even if I try.
Six months. Far enough along that everything feels real in a way it didn’t before, less hypothetical and more fixed.
This isn’t something I can put off thinking about anymore.
This is happening, whether I make good decisions or terrible ones.
This is his child.
And that should simplify things, shouldn’t it? Give me a clean, rational framework to operate within. But it complicates everything, because it ties me to him in a way that existed before—technically, contractually, structurally—but now feels personal in a way I didn’t account for.
I think about leaving. Not seriously. Certainly not in the way where I start packing or looking up flights. Just in that quiet, hypothetical way where you test an option you already know you’re not going to take.
I could walk away. There’s nothing physically stopping me. No locked doors, no restrictions I can’t override if I really want to.
I could call Hennessy, tell them I’m out, and step away from the program entirely.
Or I could go home. Boston. Aoife. The version of my life that existed before all of this started layering itself on top of everything else.
I let myself picture it for a second. The call.
Her voice on the other end. The pause when I explain.
The way she wouldn’t say I told you so , but I’d hear it, anyway.
The quiet rearranging of her life to make space for mine again like she always does, whether I deserve it or not.
And then what? I show up six months pregnant, no income, no plan beyond “this didn’t work,” and start over again, except this time I’m not just starting over for myself?
There’s a baby now. There’s reality. There’s everything I’ve been carefully not thinking too far ahead about, because thinking too far ahead feels fragile. Leaving doesn’t fix that. It just removes the one thing currently holding it together.
Here, I have certainty. Housing I don’t have to fight for. Medical care that doesn’t leave anything to chance. A system designed, meticulously, to prevent things from going wrong.
And him.
That’s the part I keep trying to separate out, like it exists independently of everything else. Because I could stay for the stability. That’s easy to justify. Clean, practical, defensible. But it wouldn’t be honest. And at this point, honesty feels like the only thing I have any control over.
I want him.
There’s no point pretending otherwise. No qualifiers, no softening, no “it’s complicated” buffer to make it more palatable.
I want Cormac. Despite the power imbalance.
Despite the fact that he controls almost every aspect of this situation in ways that should make me run in the opposite direction.
Despite Liam. Despite the fact that this is exactly the kind of situation I should be smart enough to avoid.
I want him, anyway.
And I trust him. In every way that matters. I know if something goes wrong, he will handle it. If something threatens me, or the baby, or the carefully constructed system holding everything in place, he won’t hesitate to react.
That kind of certainty is difficult to walk away from, even when you know you probably should.
My phone buzzes against the table, pulling me out of the thought spiral before it can settle too comfortably.
Grace.
I answer on the second ring. “Hi.”
“Elena.” Her voice is warm in that practical way of hers, like she’s checking in without making a production out of it. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” I say automatically, because apparently I’m committed to lying in the most boring possible way.
There’s a pause. Then Grace says, dryly, “Would you like to try that again, or are we doing the polite version first?”
I let out a breath and sink further into the couch. “I’m managing.”
“Yeah,” she says gently. “That’s not the same as being fine.”
“No,” I admit. “It’s not.”
She doesn’t push straight away. That’s one of the things I like about Grace. She knows how to give space without letting you hide in your feelings forever.
“So,” she says after a moment, lighter now, “how bad is it? Actual bad—not Elena bad where you say you’re managing and then quietly unravel for three days.”
I laugh despite myself. “That’s unfair.”
“It’s the truth.”
“God, you sound like him.”
“Terrible. I’ll have to work on that.”
That almost gets me smiling properly. Grace shifts on the other end, and when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “Do you still want out?”
“No,” I say.
Grace is quiet for a beat. “Okay,” she says, and there’s no judgment in it. Just calm acceptance. “Then that’s useful.”
I turn my head slightly. “Useful?”
“Very. It means you can stop spending all your energy arguing with yourself about an answer you already have.”
I blink. “That’s… not what I expected you to say.”
“You expected me to tell you to run.”
“Kinda.”
Grace makes a thoughtful sound. “I expected you might want to. That’s different.”
I let that sit. Because she’s right, and I’m getting a little tired of how often other people are right about me.
“I probably should,” I finally say.
“Yes,” she says, easy as anything. “Maybe. Under other circumstances. In a cleaner world with better men and less mess, you probably would.”
“But—”
“But this isn’t that world,” she cuts me off. “And you’re not making the decision in theory. You’re making it six months pregnant, financially tied in, medically tied in, emotionally…” She lets that word hang just long enough to annoy me. “…complicated,” she finishes.
“That’s one word for it.”
“It’s the polite one. And for what it’s worth, staying now doesn’t mean being locked in a tower forever. The program changes after the birth. You know that, right?”
I open my eyes. “Grace.”
“No, I’m serious,” she says. “It’s not like delivery happens, and then suddenly you’re dropped in the street, but it’s not like that, either.
There’s still follow-up, there’s still monitoring, because Brennan doesn’t believe in letting anyone drift too far out of reach.
But it loosens. More appointments at intervals instead of all the time.
More room to breathe. More movement. More of your own life again. ”
That lands differently than I expect. Because I knew that, technically. But hearing it said aloud—life after, not just constant survival—does something to my head.
“He still keeps tabs,” I say.
Grace laughs softly. “Oh, absolutely. Don’t mistake me. He still monitors post-birth recovery, and if he thinks something needs handling, he’ll handle it whether you ask him to or not. But it’s not the same level of containment. There’s more freedom in it. Not full freedom, just more.”
I turn that over quietly. More .
“Call me if you start spiraling again,” she says. “Or if you need someone to remind you that just because you’ve chosen the jail doesn’t mean you have to romanticize the bars.”
That makes me laugh again. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. And Elena?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’ve decided what to do, then do it. Don’t keep chewing your own leg off over it.”
The line clicks off. I sit there for a while with the phone still in my hand, the apartment quiet around me, everything somehow the same and not the same at all.
Nothing has changed physically. Cormac is still not here. The program is still running exactly as it did this morning. The city outside continues to exist without any awareness of what just shifted inside this room.
But internally, something has locked into place.
I’m not pretending anymore. Not telling myself this is temporary. Not framing it as something I’ll walk away from when it gets inconvenient.
I know what this is. I know what he is. I know exactly what I’m stepping into.
And I’m doing it, anyway.
I rest my hand on my stomach again, grounding myself in something real, something steady. This is the part that matters. This is the reason everything else exists.
And here, in this arrangement, in this carefully controlled environment, this is safe. Safer than anything I could realistically build on my own right now.
That’s the truth. The rest—Cormac, the tension, the way everything between us feels like it’s balanced on something sharp—that’s the complication I’m choosing to accept.
“I’m in too deep,” I murmur. But I don’t sound panicked. I don’t sound regretful.
I sound like I’m finally acknowledging something.
I could leave. That option still exists.
But I don’t want to.
And that matters more than anything else.
I close my eyes, letting the decision settle fully into something solid. Something I can stand on without wavering.
I’m staying.
And this time, I’m not pretending it’s for any reason other than the truth.
I want him.
And I’m choosing him.