Chapter 7
* * *
The months that followed Marcus’s confrontation passed easier than Sloane expected, the ordinary rhythm of pregnancy slowly filling in around the edges of everything that had come before.
By the time she stood in the middle of what used to be her home office, now half-transformed into a nursery, surrounded by paint swatches and an assembly manual for a crib Draven had insisted on putting together himself despite three different offers from the manufacturer’s white-glove delivery service, seven months had come and gone.
Her belly had rounded out fully now, and she’d taken to resting one hand against it without thinking, an unconscious habit that had crept in somewhere around the start of the third trimester.
The walls had gone from a blank, builder’s white to a soft, warm gray over the weekend, the two of them arguing pleasantly over paint chips until Draven finally admitted he had no actual opinion and simply wanted whatever made her happy.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said, watching him frown at a diagram that looked, from where she stood, completely backward.
“I’m doing it exactly right.” Draven didn’t look up from the half-assembled crib frame, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a faint sheen of effort on his brow that she still found entirely too attractive for a man simply turning an Allen wrench. “This piece goes here.”
“That piece goes nowhere near there, unless you want our daughter sleeping at a forty-five degree angle.” She crossed the room and crouched beside him, tracing her finger along the actual diagram, the one he’d apparently decided was more of a suggestion than an instruction.
“Here. This bracket. You skipped it three steps ago.”
He sat back on his heels, studying the crib with the same focused intensity he probably gave million-dollar acquisitions, and exhaled. “I built half of Mercer Tower from blueprints more complicated than this.”
“Mercer Tower didn’t come with cartoon elephants printed on the instruction booklet.” She grinned, nudging the manual back into his hands. “Start over from step nine.”
He grumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a complaint about furniture manufacturers, but he started over anyway, methodical and patient once he found the right thread of it.
While he worked she wandered to the window seat they’d had built into the corner, lowering herself carefully onto the cushion, watching him with quiet amusement.
“We still haven’t agreed on a name,” she said, resting her hands on her stomach.
“I like Aaliyah.” He didn’t look up, focused on a stubborn screw. “You vetoed it twice already.”
“I didn’t veto it. I said I needed to sit with it.” She tilted her head, considering. “What about something with your mother’s name worked into it somehow? A middle name, maybe.”
His hands stilled briefly on the crib frame, something flickering across his face before he resumed working, his voice carefully even. “Her name was Elise.”
“Aaliyah Elise.” Sloane tried the shape of it out loud, watching him carefully. “I like that. If you do.”
“I do.” He didn’t elaborate further, but something in his shoulders had eased slightly, like the offer of it had settled something he hadn’t expected to need settled.
Within another twenty minutes the crib stood fully assembled in the corner near the window, exactly where she’d wanted it so the morning light would fall soft across it.
He stood back, surveying his work with quiet satisfaction, then turned and pulled her up off the window seat and against his side, his hand settling warm over the curve of her stomach.
“There,” he said. “Done properly.”
“Only because I corrected you twice.” She leaned into him, watching the late afternoon sun catch the pale wood of the crib, something settled and grateful moving through her chest at the sight of it.
Months ago she’d pictured nesting completely differently, alone in some apartment with a registry full of things she’d bought herself, bracing for a kind of motherhood that didn’t include anyone showing up at all.
She hadn’t expected this, a man on his knees with an Allen wrench, getting it wrong twice just so he could get it right the third time for her, offering up his mother’s name like a small, careful gift in between.
The doorbell rang before either of them moved, and Sloane knew without checking who it would be.
Diane had taken to visiting nearly every week now, sometimes twice, claiming she simply liked the drive but never quite hiding how much she liked checking on her daughter and the baby growing inside her.
Draven answered the door himself, and Diane swept past him with an enormous tote bag over one shoulder, already mid-sentence about traffic on the highway before she’d even gotten her coat off.
“I brought the quilt,” she announced, setting the bag down and pulling out a soft, hand-stitched blanket in pale yellow, the kind of project Sloane recognized immediately from the careful, uneven stitching along the border. “Took me three weeks, but I finished it last night.”
“Mom, it’s beautiful.” Sloane took it from her, running her thumb over the careful seams, throat tightening unexpectedly.
Diane had made her exactly one quilt before, for her sixteenth birthday, and Sloane had kept it folded at the foot of her bed for years afterward even after the stitching started to fray.
“Well, somebody’s got to make sure that baby’s wrapped in love and not just whatever overpriced cashmere this one’s been ordering.
” Diane shot Draven a pointed look, though there was no real bite behind it, just the easy teasing she’d settled into with him over the past few months.
Draven, for his part, simply smiled and went to put the kettle on, entirely unbothered, clearly long past needing Diane’s approval and simply enjoying having it anyway.
They sat together in the half-finished nursery for the better part of an hour, Diane fussing over the crib, insisting on testing the mattress firmness herself, asking pointed questions about Sloane’s latest checkup that Draven answered just as readily as Sloane did, the two of them having apparently reached some unspoken agreement to keep nothing from her anymore.
At one point Diane settled into the rocking chair in the corner, testing its motion with the air of a woman conducting a serious inspection, and looked up at the two of them with an expression that had gone suddenly soft.
“You know, I rocked you in a chair just like this,” she said to Sloane, “in an apartment about a third the size of this nursery. Your father worked nights back then, and I used to sit up rocking you until two in the morning just so he could sleep before his shift.” She smiled, a little wistful.
“We didn’t have much. But I never once doubted he wanted to be there.
That’s the part that matters, baby girl. Not the chair. Who’s sitting in it.”
Sloane felt her throat tighten again, glancing at Draven, who had gone quiet, watching Diane with an expression she couldn’t quite name. “I know who’s sitting in it,” she said softly.
Diane looked between them, satisfied, and said nothing more, just kept rocking gently, humming some half-remembered tune under her breath while the afternoon light slanted gold across the gray walls.
* * *
That Thursday Hugh manned the grill on the balcony while Sloane sat at the kitchen island, her feet propped on the rung of Draven’s chair, narrating a story Renee had told her over the phone that morning about a disastrous blind date.
“And then he asked her to split the bill,” Sloane said, laughing despite herself. “On a first date. At a restaurant he picked. She said she’s never moved faster to get an Uber in her life.”
“In fairness,” Hugh called through the open balcony door, flipping something on the grill with theatrical confidence, “splitting the bill is fiscally responsible.”
“That’s exactly what Renee said you’d say.” Sloane shook her head, grinning. “She wants you to know she has standards.”
“Tell her I have standards too.” Hugh leaned against the doorframe, tongs still in hand, something almost careful in the way he said it, like he’d been waiting for an opening to bring her name up himself. “Tell her I said that.”
“I’ll tell her.” Sloane watched him a beat longer than she meant to, something tugging at the corner of her mouth, then let it go. She glanced over to find Draven already watching her instead, an easy, unguarded smile tugging at his mouth.
“You’re staring,” she said, nudging his knee with her foot.
“I’m allowed.” He echoed her own old line back at her, the familiar shape of it warm between them. “You’re mine to stare at.”
“Disgustingly sweet, the both of you,” Hugh called from the balcony, though there was no real bite in it.
Dinner ran long that night, the conversation drifting easily between Hugh and Draven trading old childhood stories that made Sloane laugh until her sides ached, Diane’s name coming up more than once now that she’d become a fixture of sorts in all their lives even on the nights she wasn’t physically present.
* * *
It was a quiet night, later that same week, after Hugh had gone home and the apartment had settled into its familiar evening hush, that Draven brought up his father for the first time without her having to ask.
They lay tangled together in bed, her back against his chest, his hand resting protective over the curve of her stomach, the lamp on the nightstand throwing soft gold light across the room.
“My father wasn’t like Hugh,” he said quietly, apropos of nothing, his voice carrying a weight she hadn’t heard from him before. “He built the first version of this company from almost nothing, and he never let either of us forget what it cost him to do it.”
Sloane went still, careful not to push, letting the silence hold space for whatever he needed to say next.