Chapter 9
Lucas
For two weeks I didn’t step foot in the office, rerouting every task and meeting through the phone, then through Victoria’s inbox, then finally delegating everything that didn’t require my signature to the handful of partners I could trust to keep quiet.
If anyone asked, I blamed the pregnancy complications and the doctor’s dire warnings—Grace could arrive at any moment, and every day mattered.
I didn’t talk to Victoria, not even when she sent the final docs for e-signature or forwarded me a rumor from the competition.
I kept it cold, professional, as if deleting our thread could erase what happened in the foyer.
She didn’t push. She didn’t even acknowledge the silence, which made me feel both relieved and untethered.
The first few days, I rehearsed how to confess to Bella.
I pictured the kitchen table, the shape of the words.
I’d tell her the truth: that it was only a kiss, that it would never happen again, that I loved her and only her.
But every time I worked up the nerve, something in her face—the hope, the gratitude, the way she squeezed my hand during the nurse’s checks—made me falter.
She’d been betrayed before, by her own body and by a thousand tiny failures of luck.
I couldn’t become the next in line to disappoint her. Not now.
One afternoon, while I sorted through insurance forms and hospital bills, she caught me in a rare moment of stillness.
“You’ve been so good,” she said, tracing my knuckles. “I don’t know how I’d survive this without you.”
I almost told her then. I wanted to. But the fear in her eyes told me what I needed to know: she needed the myth of my reliability more than she needed the truth.
So I lied. “I’ll always be here,” I said. “No matter what.”
She smiled, radiant and naive.
Christian called later that night, his voice an echo from the old world.
“You skipping the partner’s dinner?” he asked.
“I can’t leave Bella alone,” I replied.
He hesitated. “Everything okay?”
I almost laughed. “Define okay.”
“Lucas,” he said, dropping the pretense. “Are you fucking up?”
I closed my eyes. “There was a kiss. That’s all.”
“Jesus.” He sounded more tired than angry. “You have to tell her.”
“I will. I just—” I stopped, searching for the right excuse. “She’s barely hanging on.”
Christian didn’t yell. He just said, “Secrets are poison, Lucas. Even the ones you think are for her sake.”
“I know.”
He sighed. “You’re not Dad. But don’t turn into him.”
I hung up and watched the city lights through the window, counting the seconds between the streetlamp flickers, the silence of the house alive with the weight of what I hadn’t said.
The next day, Bella had a checkup. The prognosis was grimmer than before: risk of preeclampsia, strict monitoring, the real possibility that Grace would come early and small.
Bella didn’t cry, but I could see the calculation happening behind her eyes—the shifting of dreams to contingency plans, the careful way she prepared herself for loss.
When we got home, she lay on the bed, hands folded over her stomach. “If anything happens to me,” she said, “promise you’ll fight for her. That you’ll love her, even if she’s just here for a minute.”
My throat closed. “Don’t talk like that.”
She reached for my hand, her grip iron. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, but the words scraped my mouth raw.
That night, I found an email from Victoria. Subject: Transition Plan. Body: “If you’re free after hours, let’s do the handoff in person.”
I almost ignored it. Then I thought about Christian’s words—secrets are poison—and decided to end this clean.
The office was empty, the lights in Victoria’s suite the only beacon. She greeted me in a black turtleneck and slacks, her hair loose for once. There was nothing performative about it; she just looked tired, like everyone else in the world.
We sat at the conference table, reviewed the transition documents, double-checked the NDA language. It took less than thirty minutes.
“I’m leaving Ashford,” she said, after we initialed the last page.
“Where will you go?”
“Does it matter?” She tried to smile. “I don’t want to be the story people tell when things go wrong. Better to disappear.”
I felt an ache, stupid and primal.
“Victoria,” I said, meaning it as a goodbye, but she reached across the table and took my hand.
“I never wanted this,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want to feel alone.”
Neither did I. That was the problem.
The next part happened fast: the press
The next part happened fast: the pressure dropped, the world went flat, and I was alone in a hotel bed with Victoria Sinclair sleeping on my chest. I stared at the ceiling, counting every plaster bump, the shape of the overhead lights, the low drone of city traffic.
Her hair fanned across my arm, dark and sharp as spilled ink.
She slept like she was dead, absolutely still, mouth slightly open, fingers curled into the sheets.
I envied her for that—her absolute conviction, her ability to operate in the world as if regret were a lever she could turn off at will.
I extracted my arm, wincing when she murmured, but she didn’t wake.
The clock on the nightstand said 4:08 a.m., my phone said seventeen unread messages from Bella, all marked with time stamps between midnight and now.
I didn’t look at them. I stood, naked, and found my clothes in a heap by the window.
It was only then that I realized I didn’t know what side of the city I was on, what the name of the hotel even was, only that I’d followed Victoria in a fugue and
I didn’t remember getting home. I only remembered the feel of the elevator’s velvet walls against my forehead, the pop and smear of city lights, the brittle sunrise reflected in a thousand anonymous windows.
I sat in the car for an hour, engine off, unable to move or breathe, the chemical aftertaste of her still lingering in my mouth.
I wore the same suit to bed, curling around myself on top of the covers, fully clothed, fully ruined.
I showered for forty minutes. I scoured my skin, my teeth, the hollows behind my ears. I wanted to believe in the transformative power of soap, but my body knew the difference. My body kept the score.
The next day, I dropped my phone into a drawer.
I left the house before Bella woke, left a note on the counter about an early call with London, and spent the morning at a coffee shop half a mile from the office, hunched behind a tablet, ignoring every alert and email and calendar ping.
I drank black coffee until my hands shook.
I watched other men in suits, their faces untroubled, their mornings intact.
I wanted to ask them if they’d ever made a single decision that couldn’t be walked back.
I wanted them to recognize me as one of their own, but none of them looked up.
By the time I showed up to work, Victoria was already in a glass-walled conference room, hair tied back, fingers moving at ballistic speed across a keyboard. She did not look at me, not even once, and that was more damaging than the alternative.
It went on like that for weeks. We conducted the launch in parallel, never alone together, never exchanging a single word that wasn’t strictly necessary.
The more she ignored me, the more I ignored myself.
I became a model of rectitude: every task on time, every meeting aced, every email sparkling with clarity and good cheer.
At home, I transformed into the husband I thought Bella deserved—the husband I thought I’d always been.
I baked sourdough from scratch, built a bassinet with my own hands, painted the nursery walls a soft gray that the internet assured me was “the ideal neutral for early development.” I let Bella choose the furniture, the stroller, the car seat, every useless item that made her believe in the future.
I said yes to everything, always, and she looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time.
The only thing I could not do was sleep.
The nursery was the last thing on my checklist. I’d spent three days assembling shelves and cubbies, aligning every book and toy by height and color, so that when Bella opened the door, she gasped like she’d won a prize.
She drifted around the room, touching every surface, eyes wide. “Lucas, this is—” She stopped, hands pressed to her mouth. She was more round than I remembered, her belly stretching her T-shirt, the faint blue veins just visible beneath the skin.
I wrapped my arms around her from behind, careful of the bump. “Say it. Just once.”
She grinned. “It’s perfect. She’s going to love it.”
I pressed my lips to her neck, wishing I could absorb the moment into my bones. “You’re going to be a great mom.”
She turned to face me, her smile wobbling. “Only because I have you. I mean that.”
She believed it. I wanted to, too.
At the next OB appointment, they gave us a tour of the maternity ward. Bella clung to my hand the entire time, her questions sharp and unfiltered—what if the baby came early, what if she needed a C-section, what if something went wrong and I wasn’t there?
I answered every question like a thesis defense.
I learned the names of the nurses, memorized the floor plan, plotted out three different routes to the hospital in case of traffic or accident.
I signed up for every class they offered: infant CPR, safe sleep, car seat safety.
I was the only man who attended all of them, and every time I took notes, I saw Bella glance at me, so proud, so certain, as if nothing could ever shake us.
Sometimes, when I looked at her, I hated myself so much I had to look away.