1. Alison #3
“Please don’t bully the fetus.”
“I’m establishing expectations.”
“At ten weeks.”
“Best time.”
“You’re insane.”
“Runs in the family.”
I stare at him. He looks up. “What?”
“Your family isn’t insane.”
“My mother once spent three months pretending to befriend a state senator’s wife because she was certain the woman was laundering campaign donations through a charity gala.”
I blink. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s a different flavor of insane.”
“Still counts.” He stands again, his hand staying where it is, and I cover it with mine.
For a moment neither of us jokes. Ryan’s eyes drop to our hands, and his whole expression changes — every time — because he can crack all the jokes he wants about berries and hostile yogurt, but underneath it he’s still Ryan on Valentine’s night, staring at two pink lines like the entire planet just changed shape. Which, I suppose, it has.
“Skirt?” he asks.
I sigh. “Doesn’t fit anymore.”
His gaze snaps to mine. “The normal one?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“And you’re telling me now? What are you wearing?”
“Backup.”
“You had a backup?”
“I bought one.”
“When?”
“Last weekend. Online. I sent it to Becca’s.”
His eyebrows rise. “Does Becca know?”
“No. I told her it was a uniform replacement.”
His hand slips away from my stomach, and I miss it immediately. He picks his coffee back up off the piano. “How long do you think the bigger skirt buys us?”
There it is. The reason I came up here, besides needing to see him after the hallway. I sit down on the bench. “I don’t know.”
Ryan leans against the piano. “Week?”
“Maybe.”
“Two?”
“If nobody looks.” He doesn’t like that answer. Neither do I. The room goes quiet, and somewhere far below us a door slams. I wrap both hands around the tea. “We have to tell them.”
Ryan doesn’t pretend not to know who I mean. The boys. The girls. Eventually the parents — the whole terrifying network of people who have already dragged three of their own out of impossible situations. His eyes stay on mine. “Yeah.”
My stomach tightens. “Not everybody at once.”
“No.”
“I don’t want to sit in some room while twenty people stare at my stomach.”
“You’re not going to.”
“And I don’t want—“
“Ally.” His voice is gentle, and I stop.
He crosses the room and crouches in front of me — not because I’m fragile, but because Ryan learned months ago that I hate having hard conversations with someone towering over me — and rests his forearms across my knees. “We do this however you need to do it.”
“What if they think we’re stupid?”
“We are stupid.”
“That wasn’t helpful,” I tell him.
“No, but it’s true. We’re eighteen. We got pregnant. Objectively, not our strongest tactical decision.”
I kick his shoe. He catches my ankle. “But that’s not what they’re going to care about.”
“You don’t know that. Kaiden’s first response is going to be figuring out who needs to die.” Despite myself, I laugh. “Xander’s second,” he adds.
“Xander will already be halfway to the car.”
“Danny?”
“Will ask twelve practical questions nobody else thought of.”
“Iz?”
Ryan considers this. “Something deeply inappropriate. Then he’ll call Arthur.” That settles somewhere inside me. Not comfortably. But not like terror, either.
“And the girls?” I ask.
“Cat makes a spreadsheet. Penny cries.”
“Obviously.”
“Becca—“ He stops. The room changes. Neither of us says it, because we don’t have to. Becca and Danny, the baby they lost. My happiness suddenly feels sharp around the edges.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
Ryan’s hands tighten around my knees. “Hey.”
“I didn’t even think—“
“Don’t.”
“Ryan, she’s going to—“
“Feel whatever she feels.” I look at him. He holds my gaze. “And we’re going to let her.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. “What if it hurts her?”
“It probably will.” The honesty makes me flinch, and he doesn’t soften it. “That doesn’t mean she won’t love you. Or the baby. Both things can exist.”
I stare at him. “When did you get emotionally intelligent?”
“Tuesday.” I smile weakly, and he rubs his thumb against my knee. “We don’t hide this from Becca to protect her. That’s deciding for her what she can handle.”
He presses a kiss to my knee through the uniform skirt, and then his expression goes serious again. “I’ll tell the boys.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. We need them.” I hate that he’s right, and he keeps going before I can spiral. “Not because we’re helpless. Because five sets of eyes are better than one, and Kaiden, X, Danny, and Iz have connections I don’t. Then we decide together who brings in the parents, and when.”
“We don’t have enough to get Tobias.” I say quietly.
His face hardens. That’s the part. Always.
I can leave — I’m eighteen, if this were only about me I could walk out of Roman’s house tonight and never go back.
Tobias can’t. And there is no version of freedom where I leave my six-year-old brother behind with the man who has spent his whole life using him as a leash around my throat.
Ryan knows that. It’s why he never once says just leave.
“We need more,” he says.
“How much more?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer would have terrified me once. Ryan not knowing. Now, somehow, it helps — because when Ryan says he doesn’t know, I trust everything else he says more. “What if I start showing before we have it?” I ask.
His eyes drop to my stomach. “Then we adapt.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“No.”
“You’re supposed to have plans.”
“I’m building one.” He stands and pulls me up with him, and takes my face in both hands.
“I’m not sure of the timeline. I’m not sure what Arthur can do about Tobias yet.
I’m not sure what evidence is enough to keep your father from using the courts to drag him straight back.
” My throat tightens. “But I’m sure we’re not leaving him.
” I close my eyes. “And I’m sure we’re not leaving you.
” His forehead touches mine. “And I’m sure nobody gets anywhere near our baby. ”
There it is. Our. Not the problem. Not the pregnancy. Our baby. I breathe.
Ryan kisses the end of my nose. “And I’m also sure you need to eat actual food.”
My eyes open. “God, you’re annoying.”
“Correct.”
“I can’t eat.”
“You can eat pretzels.”
“Maybe.”
“Crackers?”
“Probably.”
“Apple?”
The thought makes my stomach roll. “No.”
“Apple is dead to us. Understood.” I laugh, and he kisses my forehead, then steps back before the room can get too easy — because we still have classes, we still have Edgewood. He checks his phone. “You’ve got nine minutes.”
“I hate leaving.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
Ryan looks at me, and the joke drains off his face. “I know.”
I stare at his tie instead of his eyes. “Sometimes I think that’s the worst part.”
“What?”
“That I get you for forty minutes.” My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to. “And then I have to go downstairs and act like you don’t even know what tea I can drink without throwing up.”
His jaw tightens. “Ally.”
“I know why.”
“I agreed to it.”
“It still sucks.”
“Yeah.” That one word nearly breaks me more than any reassurance would have.
Ryan doesn’t tell me it won’t be forever.
Doesn’t tell me to hold on. Doesn’t make some promise he can’t guarantee.
He just reaches into his pocket and pulls out the penny, the little copper disk hanging from the keychain loop between two fingers.
I smile. “I thought it was your turn.”
“It was.”
“So?”
He presses it into my palm. “Changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“You need more luck today.”
I close my hand around it. “That’s Tobias logic.”
“Tobias is wise.”
“Tobias tried to keep a frog in his backpack.”
“Wisdom has many forms.” I laugh, and he smiles, and then he reaches past me and unlocks the door.
And I watch him disappear. Not physically. The warmth just drains out of his expression, his shoulders settle, his mouth goes flat. Harrington. Just like that. It shouldn’t still amaze me. It does.
I tuck the penny into my blazer pocket and pick up my bag. Ryan opens the door and glances down the empty hall. “Clear.”
I step past him, and for half a second, when nobody in the world can see us, his fingers brush the inside of my wrist. Then they’re gone.
I walk toward the stairs, and behind me Ryan waits exactly thirty seconds before he leaves, so that by the time we reach the first floor from different directions, we’re strangers again.
He passes me outside the history wing with Iz beside him.
Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t slow. Nothing.
And this time — with ginger tea still warm in my stomach, the penny in my pocket, and tomorrow sitting like a live wire under my ribs — it hurts a little less.
Not because Harrington is any kinder. Because upstairs, behind a locked door, Ryan is already working out how to tell four boys he’s going to be a father.
And tomorrow, for the first time since Valentine’s Day, our secret will belong to someone besides us.