41. Addy
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Addy
I’m crying myself to sleep like a woman in a tragic historical drama, except instead of a windswept moor, I have Egyptian cotton sheets, a billionaire’s guest room, and my sister sitting beside me eating pretzels.
So, you know.
Very dignified.
“I’m not crying,” I say into the pillow.
Luci pats my back. “Of course not.”
“I’m just leaking stress.”
“Very normal.”
“And hormones.”
“Probably three times the normal amount, technically.”
I lift my head enough to glare at her.
She holds up both hands. “Too soon?”
“Yes.”
“Noted.”
Then I drop my face back into the pillow and start crying harder.
Because it is too soon.
It’s all too soon.
Too fast. Too much. Too impossible to hold in one body.
Yesterday morning, I was just Addy Clarke, emotionally messy nanny with a dangerous boss situation, an ex-boyfriend problem, and a gala dress.
Now I’m Addy Clarke, pregnant with triplets, living in a penthouse with the father of my babies, who’s also my boss, who’s also grieving his dead wife, and also dealing with possible corporate sabotage by my ex-boyfriend.
That sentence alone should qualify me for a vacation.
Or a small medically supervised breakdown.
Luci stretches out beside me, still in her leggings and oversized sweatshirt, because after dinner and Oliver’s bedtime and the world’s most awkwardly tender conversation with Ethan, she refused to leave me alone.
I pretended to argue.
Not very convincingly.
Now she’s here, leaning against the headboard, one hand resting on my shoulder while I try not to dissolve into the mattress.
“You don’t have to decide anything tonight.”
“I know.”
“You can just sleep.”
“I know.”
She pauses. “You keep saying that like you don’t know.”
I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling. The ceiling is flawless. Of course it is. Even the ceilings in Ethan’s penthouse have their lives together.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I whisper.
Luci goes quiet.
“I can’t keep blowing up my life and running somewhere else with a suitcase and a panic plan.
I did it with Bryce. I came here with nothing because I thought I was choosing a future, and then I stayed because I was too embarrassed to go back.
” My voice cracks. “And now I might leave again. Just like that. Pregnant, scared, dragging my life behind me like a broken wheelie bag.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
I look at her. “How do you know?”
“Because leaving Bryce’s mess was survival. Leaving Ethan, if you choose to, would be a decision.”
“It doesn’t feel like one.”
“What does it feel like?”
I press a hand to my stomach. “It feels like I’m standing in someone else’s house holding a bomb.”
Luci’s expression softens.
“I don’t know where I fit,” I say. “I’m not his wife.
I’m not even his girlfriend, technically.
I’m his nanny. Or I was. I don’t even know if I can be that anymore.
I’m pregnant with his children. Plural. Three plural.
And Oliver loves me, which is wonderful and horrible because what if I stay and it gets messy?
What if I leave and break his heart? What if Ethan only wants me here because of the babies? What if he doesn’t want me enough?”
Luci reaches over and takes my hand. “What if he does?”
That's worse.
Somehow, that's worse.
Because if Ethan does want me, then I have to decide whether I’m brave enough to believe him.
“I don’t know if I trust it,” I whisper.
“Him?”
“Me.” I swallow hard. “My judgment. I thought Bryce loved me. I thought moving here with him made sense. I thought I knew what I was doing.”
“Bryce lied.”
“I still believed him.”
“That doesn’t make you stupid.”
“It makes me tired.”
Luci squeezes my hand. “Yeah. I know.”
I close my eyes.
The room is quiet except for the distant hum of the city and the occasional soft thump from somewhere outside the door, which is probably Captain dramatically collapsing in a hallway because no one's giving him cheese.
“I think I should go back with you.”
Saying it out loud makes something inside me ache immediately.
Luci doesn’t answer right away, which scares me more than if she had argued. That’s how I know she’s taking it seriously. “Okay.”
My eyes fly open. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
I’m shook. “You’re not going to yell?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s ominous.”
“I’m being supportive.”
I laugh weakly, then wipe my face.
Luci shifts closer. “If you want to come back with me, you can. No question. We’ll figure out space. I’ll help you find doctors. We’ll make it work.”
My throat closes.
“But,” she says.
“There it is.”
“But don’t run because you’re scared he might hurt you.”
“I’m already scared.”
“I know. But scared isn’t the same as unsafe.”
I hate that she’s right.
I also hate that everyone around me seems to have become emotionally wise while I was busy getting knocked up by a silver fox aviation billionaire.
Eventually, the tears slow.
Luci keeps talking in a low voice about absolutely nothing important until my breathing evens and my body finally, mercifully, gives up.
I fall asleep with my hand on my stomach and my sister beside me like a guard dog in leggings.
Morning arrives too early and very rudely. I wake to the soft click of a door down the hall. My eyes open. I sit up too fast and immediately regret it.
The room does a slow tilt, my stomach rolling in protest.
“Absolutely not,” I whisper, pressing a hand to my mouth.
Luci is sprawled diagonally across the other half of the bed, dead to the world, one arm over her face.
“Luce,” I whisper.
Nothing.
Of course.
The woman can wake up for emotional terrorism but not household movement.
I slide out of bed carefully, pull on a cardigan over my tank top, and step into the hall.
The penthouse is quiet in that expensive morning way, all soft light and polished surfaces. But near the entry, Ethan is standing in a dark suit, fastening his watch.
He looks up the second I appear.
For one moment, neither of us speaks.
He looks tired.
“You’re leaving,” I say.
Brilliant opener, Addy. Very emotionally nuanced.
His hand stills on the clasp. “I have to go in.”
“Oh.”
That little word again.
My least favorite word.
“There’s food in the kitchen,” he says. “I had groceries delivered early. Crackers, ginger tea, fruit, toast, protein options—”
“Ethan.”
He stops.
I hate the silence that follows.
Because I know he’s trying.
I do.
He’s trying to care in the language he speaks best: logistics, provisions, systems, contingencies.
But he’s also leaving.
Again.
And that shouldn’t feel like abandonment. It isn’t abandonment. It’s work. It’s a crisis. It’s the company and Bryce and whatever terrifying plane computer backdoor thing he told me about yesterday.
Still, my heart doesn’t care about context.
My heart's a melodramatic idiot, apparently.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I know.”
Luci suggests the café the moment her and Oliver wake up. It’s like she can tell I need air. Oliver cheers like we’ve announced a theme park.
So we go to Brewed Awakening again. Because apparently Sophie’s café is now my emotional emergency bunker.
Chicago is bright and cold, the wind slipping between buildings and cutting straight through my cardigan. Oliver walks between us, holding both our hands and swinging slightly.
The walk helps.
A little.
The city doesn’t care that I’m pregnant. It doesn’t care that Ethan left for work or that Bryce might be some kind of aviation tech goblin villain. It just moves around us, loud and alive and indifferent.
There’s comfort in that.
At Brewed Awakening, Sophie takes one look at us and points to our usual table.
“No one's allowed to have a crisis today,” she says. “I’m emotionally booked.”
“Too late,” Luci says. “We brought one with legs.”
“I'm not a crisis,” I say.
Sophie and Luci look at me.
Oliver raises his hand. “I want cocoa.”
“Thank you for changing the subject,” I tell him.
Sophie brings cocoa for Oliver, tea for me, coffee for Luci, and a muffin “for the table,” which Luci immediately claims half of because apparently pregnancy support burns calories.
For a while, it’s easy.
Oliver plays in the corner.
Sophie tells us about a customer who tried to pay with a gift card from a completely different coffee chain and then argued that “coffee is coffee.”
Luci declares she hates Chicago wind but respects its commitment.
I laugh.
Then I press my lips to Oliver’s hair and stare out the window at the city Bryce dragged me to, Ethan made complicated, and three tiny heartbeats may tie me to forever.
I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I only know I’m tired of running.
And terrified that staying might hurt even worse.