Chapter 27 Two Lines
Delilah
He waits.
That's the thing about Bishop when someone tells him not to freak out, he goes completely still. Not the managed stillness, the controlled posture he wears everywhere. The other kind. The kind that means he's already bracing for impact and has decided to take it standing.
"I'm pregnant," I say.
The office is very quiet.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
"Three tests," I say. "Because I did the first one and didn't believe it and did two more. The doctor appointment is Thursday at two. The timing is" I stop. "It's July. The timing is July."
He doesn't move.
I watch him absorb it. Watch the information travel the flat certain eyes, the slight adjustment in his breathing, the way his hands at his sides do something they don't usually do. Not quite a fist. Something between holding on and letting go.
"Bishop."
"I heard you." His voice comes out even. Lower than usual. "I heard you."
He stands up from the edge of the desk.
Takes two steps toward the window.
Stands with his back to me and I watch the muscles across his shoulders do something complicated and I let him have the ten seconds because I've been sitting with this for three weeks and he's had thirty seconds and that's not the same thing.
Three weeks ago, I bought the first test at a pharmacy two towns over because I didn't want anyone, I knew seeing me at the register. I took it in the bathroom of my apartment, standing up because sitting felt too deliberate, and looked at the two lines for a long time without moving.
Then I sat down.
Then I bought two more.
I sat on the bathroom floor with all three tests lined up on the tile and felt not terror, which surprised me. Something more complicated than terror. Grief and fear and a stubborn inconvenient warmth all in the same breath. The warmth surprised me most. I wasn't expecting the warmth.
I spent a week deciding what I wanted before I let myself think about anyone else's reaction. That was deliberate. I've spent too much of my life letting other people's reactions shape my decisions before I even knew what mine were.
I knew what mine were by the end of that first week.
Then I spent two more weeks figuring out how to tell him.
He turns around.
"The appointment," he says. "Thursday. I'm coming."
"Bishop"
"I'm coming." Not a request. The flat decided voice of a man who has already processed the first layer and moved to the next one. "The clinic on the east side of the lake road?"
"How do you know which"
"I looked into it. Three months ago. After you came back." He's already moving, from the window to the desk, desk to the chair, the purposeful movement of a man taking inventory and deciding what changes. "You're not staying at the apartment tonight. The note, the SUV it's not secure. Margo has a back room"
"Bishop." I step forward.
He keeps moving.
"I'll call her now, she won't mind, and in the morning, we can talk about longer term"
"Bishop." Louder.
He stops.
He looks at me.
"Put the phone down," I say.
He looks at his hand. The phone is already in it. He puts it down on the desk slowly, like it costs him something, like the doing is the only thing keeping the planning from spilling out everywhere.
"I need you to hear me," I say. "Before you call Margo and rearrange my life and start making plans I haven't agreed to." I hold his gaze. "I'm telling you because you deserve to know. Because this is yours as much as mine." I pause. "But I'm not a hostage. I'm not a bargaining chip. And I am not under any circumstances a reason for you to go back to the club or do anything that puts you in more danger than you're already in."
He looks at me.
"Whatever you're calculating right now," I say. "Security, money, arrangements, how to use this as leverage against Club Eidolon or protection from them stop. We're going to talk about all of it. Together." I cross my arms. "But first I need you to breathe."
He breathes.
One slow intake. One slow exhale. The feral energy in the room comes down a fraction.
"Are you okay?" Quieter. The other voice the one underneath the controlled one, the one I've been hearing more of since the dock in July.
"I'm okay." I mean it. "I've been okay for three weeks. Scared. Surprised. But okay."
"Three weeks," he says.
"I needed to know what I wanted first. Before anyone else's reaction could shape it." I look at him steadily. "That's not something I've been good at. Knowing what I want before someone else tells me."
He's quiet for a moment.
"What do you want?" he asks.
The question lands clean. No weight behind it. No version of what he hopes the answer is on his face. Just the question, asked the way you ask something when you actually want to know the answer and not the answer that makes things easier.
I look at him.
"I want to have this baby," I say. "I want to do it on my terms my doctor, my plan, my choices about how and when and what. I want a support system I've chosen, not one assembled around me because someone decided I needed managing." I hold his gaze. "And I want you to be part of it because I want you to be. Not because you feel obligated. Not because the timing makes it seem like the responsible thing."
He crosses the room.
Not fast. Deliberate. The way he moves when he's already decided and the deciding is done.
He stops in front of me.
Takes my right hand in both of his, the way I took his split knuckles twenty minutes ago. The same careful grip. The same certainty underneath it.
"I'm not obligated," he says. "That's not what this is."
"I know." I look at our hands. "But I needed to say it."
"I know you did."
He looks at me. Not the inventory something past the inventory. The version of his face that only appears when he's decided not to manage what's on it.
"I'm not going to disappear," he says. "I'm not going to panic and call it a mistake and put you out a door before sunrise."
The words land exactly where he means them to.
In exactly the place that's been waiting for them since a July morning when I folded his shirt and left without saying goodbye.
I don't say anything for a moment. Just let it sit. Let the weight of being promised the thing you needed most, said simply and without negotiation, settle into the space between your ribs where the fear has been living for three weeks.
"Okay," I say.
"I'm going to be here." Flat. Certain. No performance. "Whatever that looks like. Whatever you need it to look like."
"Okay," I say again.
He nods.
Looks down at our hands.
His thumb moves once across my knuckles. Light. Brief. The specific kind of touch that isn't asking for anything.
"The club," I say. "Whatever they sent tonight whatever's coming you can't go back. Not for the baby. Not for me. Not for any version of protecting us that involves walking back into that."
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it." He looks up. "I'm not going back. That's done. I just have to make them believe it." A pause. "Margo's working on something. A way to burn the leverage they're holding." He squeezes my hand once. "It's not nothing."
I nod.
We stand in the office with the lake dark outside and the marina quiet and the weight of something that has changed the shape of everything sitting between us. Neither of us trying to make it smaller than it is. Neither of us pretending it isn't large.
"I'd like you not to be at the apartment tonight," he says finally. "That's a request. Not an order. Not a plan I made without asking." He holds my gaze. "Margo's back room. Just tonight."
"Okay," I say. "That I'll accept."
The corner of his mouth does the thing.
"Consider telling me faster next time," he says. "It's almost midnight."
"Next time I'm pregnant I'll text you immediately," I say.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
Then we're both almost laughing and neither of us quite gets there and that's fine that's exactly right because this is not the moment for easy laughter. It's the moment for the almost of it. The warmth underneath the complicated. He picks up his phone to call Margo.
Then he puts it back down.
Turns to me.
"I'm going to tell Cole,” he says. Quiet. Certain. Already decided. "Not tonight. But soon." He holds my gaze. "He needs to hear it from me."
"From us," I say.
He looks at me.
"Together," he says. "We tell him together."