HARPER
Sophia’s waiting on the front steps when we get back to the estate.
Not inside, not in her suite, not anywhere that would suggest she happened to be passing by. On the steps, in a linen set and sunglasses, arms folded, radiating the particular energy she gets when she’s been patient for exactly as long as she intends to be patient and not one second longer.
I haven’t said anything to the guys about Sophia.
When to tell her, how to tell her, whether I wanted to be the one to tell her, none of it.
We’ve had three days of the four of us existing inside this secret together, and somewhere in the middle of doctor’s appointments and breakfast conversations and Killian finally being present enough to make coffee in the suite the way he used to, I just. Didn’t get to it.
She’s going to know the second she sees my face.
She knows the second she sees my face.
I watch it happen in real time, her eyes moving from me to Killian to Asher to Maddox and back to me, something assembling behind her expression like a question she already knows the answer to.
“Harper,” she says.
“Sophia.”
“Why were you in town?”
“Doctors appointment.”
“For what?”
My brain, which has been reasonably functional for twenty-four years, chooses this precise moment to produce exactly one available sentence.
“I’m not feeling well,” I say. “I need to lie down.”
And then I walk inside.
I hear Sophia say “what” behind me, and Maddox say something I can’t make out, and I keep walking until I reach the elevator and the doors close and I lean against the back wall and look at the ceiling and have a very quiet, very dignified internal crisis for eleven floors.
I text Raph from my bed, still in my jacket, shoes still on.
Harper: Are you free?
The reply comes in under two minutes.
Raph: Always. Give me ten.
He shows up in nine, which is either because he ran or because he’d already been heading toward this wing, and either way I don’t ask.
I just open the door and he takes one look at me and comes in and sits on the floor next to the bed because there’s a pile of Asher’s sweaters on the only chair and neither of us moves them.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say.
“You want to tell me what’s happening, or do you want me to guess and be wrong for twenty minutes first?”
I laugh, which surprises both of us, and then I tell him everything.
All of it. The test, the bathroom floor, the pharmacy run in sunglasses like I was avoiding paparazzi, the group text that turned into a pregnancy announcement that turned into Maddox pulling me into his lap and Killian saying I love you in a voice I keep replaying, and Asher crying, and then the doctor this morning and the little dot on the screen that I already love more than is rational for a shape I can barely see.
Raph sits on the floor and listens to all of it without interrupting once, which is one of the things I love about him, that he will genuinely wait until you’re finished before he opens his mouth.
When I stop talking he’s quiet for a second.
“So you told three silver fox billionaires you’re pregnant and they all immediately said they love you and want to be involved,” he says. “In the same conversation.”
“In the same conversation.”
“Harper.”
“I know.”
“Harper, that’s—”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have the most unhinged and somehow completely healthy family unit I’ve ever seen in my life.”
I laugh again, and this time it doesn’t surprise either of us.
He’s quiet for a moment, doing the thing where he’s clearly about to say something he’s already mentally hedging on.
“What,” I say.
“I’m just thinking.”
“Raph.”
“What if—” He holds up both hands preemptively. “Just hear me out.”
“Raphael.”
“What if you told Sophia the baby is mine.”
The pillow hits him in the face before I’ve consciously decided to throw it.
He grabs it, laughing, and holds it up like a shield. “I said hear me out!”
“That is genuinely the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of ideas.”
“It buys you time!”
“I can think of three men on this property who would murder you without blinking for even suggesting it, and I would let them, because you deserve it.”
“I’m kidding!”
“You’d better be. And beyond that, how could you even suggest that? Think about how that would make Odette feel, Raph.”
The laughter drops off his face fast. “Damn.” He sets the pillow down. “Way to make me feel like an asshole, Harp.”
“You should feel like an asshole. That was an asshole idea.”
“You’re right. I retract it.”
“Consider it retracted.”
He pulls a face of appropriate contrition, and I let it go because his face is doing the thing it does when he’s actually thinking about her, the particular shift that’s only started happening in the last few weeks, something softer and more awake than his usual expression.
“Speaking of Odette,” I say.
He tries to suppress the smile and fails immediately.
“How are things?”
“She’s great.” He says it like it still surprises him slightly, like he keeps expecting the answer to be different and it just keeps being the same.
“She’s so— she’s cute, you know? And she doesn’t know she’s cute, which makes it worse.
Or better. I don’t know. When I tell her she’s beautiful she goes this specific shade of pink like nobody’s ever said it to her before and meant it. ”
“Maybe nobody has,” I say, which lands between us the way true things tend to.
“Exactly.” His jaw tightens for a second.
“All the guys who had her and let her go, or made her feel like she was too much, or not enough, or whatever bullshit they sold her on. She’s smart, Harper.
Like actually smart, the kind that catches you off guard when you’re not expecting it.
And gorgeous. And funny in this quiet way she doesn’t even realize is funny.
And I just.” He shakes his head. “She’s way out of my league.
I don’t know what I did to deserve her in my corner, but I’m not questioning it. ”
I look at him for a second.
“You know I’m very glad you two found each other,” I say.
“I owe you for that push.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I just pointed. You did the rest.”
He nods, quiet, doing the face again, and I let him have a second with it.
“What about Sophia?” he asks.
I groan and drop back against my pillow. “Sophia is currently downstairs having whatever conversation the three of them are having without me, which means I have approximately a forty-five minute window before she comes up here and I have to be a functional human being.”
“She’s going to be okay with it,” Raph says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Sophia.” He tilts his head. “She’s going to scream first. And then she’s going to cry. And then she’s going to ask if she gets to be the godmother.”
I stare at the ceiling.
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then she doesn’t. And you’ll still have a family that showed up for you before you even asked them to.
” He taps the floor beside him twice, which is his version of a punctuation mark.
“You’ve got three men who love you and a baby and Odette and me and your entire chosen family going full send on this with you. Sophia’s allowed to take a minute.”
I turn my head and look at him.
“You’re annoyingly good at this.”
“I know.” He grins. “Now move over, you’re not lying down alone while you wait for your life to explode.”
He climbs up onto the bed beside me, on top of the covers, and we both stare at the ceiling, and I let myself just breathe for a minute without performing anything for anyone.
It’s the first time all day I’ve been still enough to actually feel it, the happiness sitting underneath everything else, quiet and enormous and not going anywhere.