18. Edda
Chapter eighteen
Edda
The text comes through at six in the morning while I am kneeling on the bathroom floor, one hand braced against the tile, the other pressed flat to my stomach.
Three words. No preamble. Can we talk?
I stare at the screen until it dims and goes dark.
My reflection surfaces in the glass, pale and slightly wrong at the edges, and I look away before I can study it too closely.
The nausea rolls through in familiar intervals now, as my body has settled into a rhythm I did not agree to.
I wait it out instead of fighting it. Fighting costs more than I have to give.
The phone buzzes again.
Neutral ground. Wherever you want.
I set it face down on the sink and press my forehead to the cool porcelain. Outside, the city is still quiet in that brief pocket before it remembers itself. Inside me, nothing feels quiet at all.
The shop has been open for three days straight.
Regular hours. Regular customers. Mrs. Petrova has stopped asking questions she already knows the answers to.
Lina brings lunch every afternoon and pretends she is not watching too closely, tracking my color, my appetite, the steadiness in my hands.
I let her pretend because refusing would mean admitting I need it.
Bennett Thornhill wants to talk.
I rinse my mouth, brush my teeth, and pull on jeans that still fit if I leave the top button undone. The flannel I chose is soft from too many washes, the green one my father wore in every photograph from before I was born. I button it over a tank top and skip the mirror again.
The shop needs me. The Schwinn from Mrs. Petrova’s grandson is still on the stand, waiting for the chain I ordered days ago and have not installed.
In the corner, the Peugeot frame leans where a grad student left it, rust working its way through the downtube.
I promised her I would tell her the truth about it, whether it is worth saving or not.
The someday jar sits on the counter where it has always been. The coin Bennett dropped into it weeks ago is still there, buried among quarters and dimes I have been adding since I was twenty-two.
I pick up the phone.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. Ignoring him would be easy.
So would shutting this down completely. Blocking the number.
Pretending the last three months never happened.
Pretending the test I still have not thrown away does not exist. Pretending my body is not already shifting in ways I did not plan for and cannot reverse.
But I am not my father.
I do not avoid hard conversations. I walk straight into them, usually too fast, usually before I have figured out what I am actually up against.
The diner. Nine o’clock.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it. After that, I go downstairs, open the shop, and lose myself in a Schwinn until my hands stop shaking.
The chain slides into place cleanly. I tune the derailleur, check the brake pads, spin the wheel, and listen for anything off in the rhythm.
Rubber and metal fill the air, familiar in a way that settles something in my chest. It has always been like this here.
Fix something, and the rest of the world quiets down enough to manage.
At eight forty-five, I flip the CLOSED sign and walk the two blocks to the diner.
He is already there.
I see him through the window before I step inside, and something in my chest reacts before I can stop it.
He is in the same booth we used weeks ago, the one near the back with cracked red vinyl and a clear view of the pass-through.
No suit. Dark trousers, a gray sweater with the sleeves pushed up, no tie.
His hair is slightly undone, like he has been running his hands through it more than once, and there is a tiredness around his eyes I have not seen before.
He looks up when the bell above the door rings. Something flickers across his face, quick and unguarded, before it disappears into something more controlled. I catch it anyway. I have started catching everything about him without meaning to.
I slide into the booth across from him.
Neither of us speaks right away. The waitress appears, sets down two coffees without asking, and moves on.
The diner is quiet this early, a couple of regulars at the counter, a man in a trucker cap hidden behind a folded newspaper.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Bacon grease and burnt coffee hang in the air.
I wrap my hands around the mug even though I am not going to drink it. The heat gives me something steady to hold onto.
“You came,” he says finally.
“You asked.”
His jaw tightens, then eases again. I notice it before I can stop myself.
I notice everything about him now, which feels like a problem I have not figured out how to solve.
For a second, I am not in the diner at all.
I am back in the hallway of my shop, his breath too close, the rough scrape of his stubble under my fingers, the moment I should not replay but do anyway.
I push it down before it can surface fully.
“I did not think you would,” he says.
“Neither did I.”
He reaches for his coffee, takes a sip, then sets it back down like he has all the time in the world. His movements are steady. Always steady. Controlled in a way that used to feel impressive and now just feels like another wall between us.
I used to find that control intimidating. Now it just feels exhausting.
I want to see it crack. I want him to fumble, spill something on that expensive sweater, and not immediately run the cost analysis in his head.
“The defamation filing,” he starts.
“I saw it.”
“The full disclosure. Everything about the arrangement, the consulting contract, the heritage designation timeline.” He pauses briefly. “I know you didn’t ask me to do that.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.” His thumb traces the edge of the cup.
A small, repetitive motion that gives nothing away.
“I did it because it was the truth. Because Cassel’s article made you look like something you were never, and I couldn’t let that stand.
But I also know I made a decision that affects you without asking first. Again. ”
The word lands with more weight than it should.
Again.
All the times he has decided what I need. What is best? What the terms should be. All the times, his protection has felt like something very close to control.
“You’re getting better at recognizing the pattern,” I say.
Something shifts in his expression. Not quite a smile, but not nothing either. “George came to see me.”
“George?”
“My mother’s attorney. Seventy-three. He drove two hours just to tell me I was behaving like an idiot.”
That gets a blink out of me. “Did it work?”
“He said I can’t manage a person. That I can’t protect someone by turning them into a variable in my risk assessment.” His voice lowers slightly. “He said I certainly can’t love someone while I’m calculating the terms of engagement.”
Love sits between us after that. Heavy. Uninvited. Neither of us reaches for it.
I don’t touch it. Not yet.
“What do you want, Bennett?”
He holds my gaze for a long moment. The flat, guarded edge I saw in his office is gone. What replaces it is harder to name. Uncertainty, maybe. Or fear wearing a very controlled face.
“I want to listen,” he says. “I want you to tell me what you need, and I want to not fix it. I want to sit here and hear you without reaching for my phone or my calendar or anything else I use to make things disappear.”
A pause.
“I want to stop treating you like something I need to solve.”
My throat tightens. I take a breath and let it out slowly.
“That’s what you want,” I say. “So what are you offering?”
“Nothing.” He flattens his hands on the table, palms down, fingers still. “I am not offering anything. No terms. No contracts. No solutions. I am just here, asking if you will let me be here.”
The waitress refills his coffee without prompting. He thanks her, the word familiar, automatic in anyone else’s mouth. In his, it lands differently now. Less performative. More grounded.
I study his face. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes. The restrained set of his mouth. The careful way he holds himself, like someone standing too close to an edge he does not trust.
“You hurt me,” I say.
He reacts before he can stop it. A quick, involuntary flinch. Small, but real. I catch it anyway.
“I know.”
The repetition lands sharper this time, stripped of distance.
“You asked me if I had considered my options,” I continue. My voice stays steady, though I did not expect it to. “Like I was a problem you needed to evaluate. Like I came to you with a contract dispute.”
I swallow once, holding eye contact. “I told you I was pregnant. And you asked about options.”
“I know.” His voice roughens, like it has been dragged over something jagged. “I knew it the moment I said it. I knew it was wrong. I said it anyway because I did not know what else to do.”
His gaze drops to his hands.
“Because I could not control what I was hearing,” he continues. “And when I cannot control something, I pull back. I default to distance, to language, to terms and assessments that keep things contained.”
A pause. His fingers flex once against the table, then still again.
“It is the only way I know how to survive when something matters too much.”
The words settle between us.
Around us, the diner keeps moving. Silverware clinks. The grill hisses. Conversations rise and fall in easy, unbothered waves. A world that does not pause for the things breaking quietly inside it.
"This matters to you," I say. Not a question.
"You matter to me." He looks up, holds my gaze without flinching. "The baby matters to me. Not as a variable. Not as a clause in an agreement. As something real I want to be part of, if you'll let me."
"And if I say no?"