Chapter Thirteen—Riley
I've gotten very good at explaining myself to myself. Six weeks of practice.
The nausea is stress. The exhaustion is overwork; I've picked up three new clients since I got here and I've been working instead of sleeping, answering emails at midnight, anything to stay busy enough not to think.
The Harrington dinners ran on schedule—three of them, every two weeks, exactly as Connor promised—and I smiled at the right people and said the right things and was very professional about all of it.
The crying is a blip. A mood. Hormones, maybe, or the lingering side effects of a night I spent six weeks trying not to think about and thinking about constantly.
I have an answer for everything. I've been very thorough.
Then it's a Tuesday morning, and Andrew's coffee reaches me from across the kitchen before I've made it out of the hallway, and I get to the bathroom in about four seconds.
That's the end of the explaining.
* * *
The CVS is two miles from the penthouse and I take an Uber wearing sunglasses, which accomplishes nothing except making me feel like someone with a plan.
The pregnancy test aisle is short. I don't browse.
I pick up the first box that looks authoritative—digital, not the line kind, because if this is happening I need a word, not an interpretive ink blot.
I take it to the self-checkout, confirm my purchase three times because the machine has opinions about this too apparently, and walk out.
The Uber driver asks if I'm having a good day.
“Great,” I say. He doesn't ask again.
Back at the penthouse, the main room is empty.
Liam is at a site visit. Andrew left at seven for the Harrington site.
I know this because I've learned their schedules how you learn a weather system: not out of interest, just to know when it's safe to move through the house without consequence.
Two of the three variables are accounted for.
Ethan's door was open when I passed this morning. He was on a call, back to the hallway, jacket off, one hand braced against the desk. He didn't see me.
I told myself that was lucky.
I go to the hallway bathroom. It's the closest. I can't wait any longer. I lock the door. Turn on the fan. Take the box out of the CVS bag with the same energy I'd give something with unstable components.
The instructions are, mercifully, brief.
I set the test face-down on the edge of the sink and look at the ceiling and listen to the fan run.
I turn it over.
Pregnant.
One word. The fan rattles overhead. My mouth tastes like metal.
The digital display is perfectly clear, no ambiguity, no interpretation required. Exactly what I asked for when I picked it up. Apparently the universe has decided to give me what I asked for today of all days.
I let it sit. Time does something unusual.
I sit down on the floor. Not a decision exactly. Just my body moving before my brain catches up. I pull my knees up and put my hands in my lap and look at the wall.
Okay.
Okay.
I do the math I haven't let myself do. The only math available. Six weeks ago was day eleven—eleven days into a stay that was supposed to be ten weeks of free rent and the occasional investor dinner. The rooftop. The hot tub. The bedroom. All three of them.
It could be Ethan.
It could be Liam.
It could be Andrew—Andrew, who has seven years of wreckage between us and who I've been cautiously, methodically, catastrophically falling back toward ever since he walked through that door.
It could be any of them.
I don't know.
Air in. Out. The wall offers nothing.
Connor is still in the Maldives but comes home soon.
He gave up his twenties raising me after the accident.
Sixteen years old and suddenly the only family I had left, and he never once made it feel like a burden.
He sold his motorcycle, took the night shift so he could be home during the day, learned how to make grocery lists and parent-teacher conferences and how to talk a panicked kid through nightmares that weren’t nightmares at all.
He asked me for one simple thing—smile at some dinners, don’t make it complicated. I have made it spectacularly complicated.
I’ve been trying my whole adult life to not be a burden anymore.
Now I’m standing in his penthouse with three of his business partners’ baby growing inside me and no idea how to tell the one person who’s never let me down that I’ve managed to complicate everything.
The investor meeting is in four days. I have a client deadline on Thursday and a phone call with my Portland landlord I've been putting off for two weeks because I don't know what to tell him. My apartment has art on the walls—actual frames, not tape, hung the year I finally stopped pretending it was temporary. My clients know my name. I have a coffee shop where they start my order when they see me come through the door even though they get it slightly wrong. Five years of calling something mine without being entirely sure I meant to stay. I don’t know what to do with that now.
My phone is still in my hand. I open the thread to Jules before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: You up? Jules: Always. What’s wrong?
I stare at the screen. My thumbs hover.
Me: I’m pregnant.
The three dots appear, disappear, appear again.
Jules: Holy shit. Whose?
Me: …all three of them. Long story.
Jules: Riley.
Me: I know.
Jules: You okay?
Me: No. Connor gets back in two weeks.
I don’t add the rest. I don’t have to. Jules was the one who helped me pack the two suitcases I took to Portland. She knows exactly what it would mean if I blew up the one stable thing left in my life.
Her reply comes fast.
Jules: Breathe. Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back. But you have to tell him. You can’t carry this alone.
I close the thread without answering.
She’s right.
I just don’t know how.
I pick the test up and put it in my pocket.
I stand up. Check my face in the mirror—same face, inexplicably. I splash water on it, cold, and watch it run off.
Then I unlock the door.
Ethan is right there.
He's leaning against the wall opposite, arms crossed loosely. The posture of someone who's been there a while. Jacket on. He looks like someone who had somewhere to be and made a different decision.
“You okay?” he says.
He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Doesn’t say I was worried. The Ethan version, which lands harder than concern would. His eyes behind his glasses are doing the thing they do: not moving, not rushing, taking in information and declining to share what he's done with it.
“I’m fine,” I say.
I am acutely, physically aware of the test in my pocket.
“You've been in there a while.”
“I didn't realize I was being monitored.”
It comes out sharper than I mean it to. He doesn't react—no flinch, no shift in expression. Just absorbs it the way he absorbs most things: completely, without comment.
“You aren't,” he says. “I just noticed.” His eyes move over my face, unhurried. “You don't look fine.”
“I'm fine,” I say again. “I think I'm coming down with something. Bad night.”
Typical Ethan Cole.
He looks at me for a beat too long.
Not suspicious or warm. That stillness of his, controlled and flat, the face of someone who's already run the available data and arrived at a conclusion he isn't ready to share. His gaze drops for half a second, just once, like he's checking something. Then it comes back up.
“Okay,” he says.
Like he doesn't believe me.
Like he's choosing not to push.
He doesn't move.
He's between me and the main room. Close enough that I have to brush past him. The fan is still running in the bathroom behind me because I forgot to turn it off.
I hold his gaze for one more second.
Then I move past him and go back to my room and close the door and press my back against it exactly as I did on day one when Andrew said my name through the wood and I didn't know yet how much harder it was going to get.
I press my hand flat over my pocket.
And finally let it land.