Chapter Eighteen—Ethan
Idon't let go of her wrist.
She looks at me. Chin up, nothing-to-see-here composure that might work on anyone else.
I let the silence run.
She breaks after a long moment.
“I'm fine, Ethan.”
“I know you're not.”
“You don't—”
“You've declined alcohol at five dinners. You've been up early every morning for a month and a half. You lost weight you didn't need to lose.” I keep my voice level. “I ran every other variable first.”
She stares at me.
“Stop being a doctor.”
“I stopped being your doctor the night on the rooftop.” I pause. “I've just been watching.”
I let go of her wrist. Give her room.
Something in Riley lets go.
Her shoulders drop slightly. She walks to the lower cabinets, puts her back against them, and slides down until she's sitting on the kitchen floor, legs pulled in, arms loose over her knees.
I stand there a moment.
Then I walk over and sit down beside her.
The tile is cold. Neither of us says anything about it.
Less confrontation, more pressure releasing.
It's still early. Everyone else is asleep.
“I'm pregnant,” she says.
“I know.”
She turns her head, searching my face for the thing she was braced for: the retraction, the reasonable exit, the version where I find a clean reason not to stay.
“How far along?” I say.
“The doctor said eight weeks.”
The timeline runs through my mind quickly and it's obvious.
Eight weeks gestational. Six weeks from conception—pregnancy is dated from the last menstrual period, not from the night it actually happened.
I did three years of ER triage; the adjustment is automatic.
Six weeks back is day eleven of our stay.
The four of us. No way to assign probability without further information, and I'm not going to try.
There's a version of this where the paternity question matters and a version where it doesn't.
“I don't know whose it is,” she says. “It could be any of you. I have no way to know.”
She watches me when she says it, waiting for the conclusion.
I don't move.
“I understand,” I say.
“That's it?” Her voice goes up.
“Yeah.” I lean my head back against the cabinet.
“Ethan. I just told you I'm pregnant and you might be the father and—”
“I heard you.”
“Then say something.”
“Give me a moment.”
She gives it to me.
I understand exactly how easy it would be to lose her if I say the wrong thing.
“I was wrong,” I say.
“About what.”
“Calling it a mistake. That morning.” I keep looking at the cabinet above us. “I gave you a verdict instead of an honest answer. I knew it was wrong the next day. I just didn't have a way to say it.”
Silence.
“You were scared,” she says.
“Yes.” My eyes stay on the cabinet. “Not of you.
Of how right it felt—all four of us together.
I've never had that before. Something that landed that fast, that completely.
I've spent years keeping that kind of thing at a distance, and that night I didn't want the distance.
I didn't know what to do with that. So I called it a mistake.”
“Me too.” A pause. “I kept thinking you'd all be relieved.”
“Not relieved,” I say. “Just looking for the version that caused the least damage.”
“For you.”
“For me.” I pause. “I'm done looking for easier.”
The quiet holds.
We stay leaning against the cabinets until the light shifts from grey to pale gold.
“I think Liam suspects,” I say.
Her hand tightens around mine.
“What?”
“A few days, maybe more. He's been running quiet interference. Ordering food you'll actually eat. Moving the wine glass away at dinner before you have to ask.”
I pause.
“He's been watching you the way I watch a room. Like he's waiting for confirmation.”
She takes that in.
“He didn't tell me.”
“No.” I shake my head. “If he was certain, he would've said something. He's waiting for you to come to him.”
A long pause. The air between us goes quiet.
“I haven't let myself think past next week,” she says. “Connor. Portland. What I actually want to do. It just sits there waiting and I can't make myself think about it.”
“You're not avoiding it,” I say. “You're carrying what you can.”
A sideways glance.
“Still kind,” she says.
“Also true,” I say.
She tips her head back against the cabinet. “I don't know what I'm going to do with any of it.”
“You don't have to know today,” I say.
“I'm going to need to know eventually.”
“Not like this.”
Something in her face shifts—more like she stops bracing. Her shoulder finds mine and stays.
I don't know when the conversation becomes something else.
Her head on my shoulder. My thumb moving across her knuckles. The distance we've kept for weeks slowly disappearing without either of us deciding to end it.
Her face turns up toward mine.
I glance toward the hallway.
“Come on,” I murmur. “Let's go somewhere more comfortable before someone wakes up.”
She nods.
I help her to her feet, keeping my hand around hers as we move quietly down the hall. My room is closest. The door shuts softly behind us, sealing off the rest of the penthouse.
The bed dips beneath our weight when we sit, facing each other in the early morning light.
Her eyes lift to mine.
Close enough to feel her breath hitch against my lips.
Waiting—like she's giving me the choice.
I brush the hair back from her temple. She closes her eyes.
I stop half an inch away to feel her wait for it.
“Ethan.”
So I don't stop.
I kiss her before either of us can think better of it—slow at first. Then deeper, letting her mouth adjust to the fact that I'm not stopping.
Her hands push under my shirt, palms spreading against my chest and stomach. Whatever control we had starts giving way. She's still in last night's shirt and I slide my hand up under it, flat against her ribs, feeling each breath. She makes a small sound against my mouth.
She filed the 1987 story. Every other person at that Harrington dinner, including me, had it under ambient noise by round two.
She came prepared. Months of watching her, and it's still the thing I come back to—not her appearance but her precision.
The way she points her attention at exactly what matters.
I've been wanting her to point it at me.
She pulls back enough to look at me. The composed version of her—the one that keeps everything locked down—is gone. This version isn't managing anything.
She reaches for the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head.
I follow, and then there's nothing left between us.
I lower her back against the pillows and go slow—slow is the only way I know how to do anything—hands moving down her sides, cataloguing what makes her go still and what makes her pull at my shoulders.
I work down her body with the same attention I give everything—unhurried, exact.
My mouth finds the hollow of her throat, the racing pulse under her jaw, the soft skin at the inside of her arm where she never lets anyone linger.
She's the one who breaks first, her hands pushing at my shoulders, urging me lower—and for once I let her set the pace, settling between her thighs as she goes taut with anticipation.
I part her with my thumbs and look for a second longer than she expects—learning her, the way I learn everything—before I lower my mouth to her.
She's wet and warm, and the first slow drag of my tongue pulls a sound out of her I fully intend to hear again.
I work her with the same focus I give anything that matters, steady and unhurried, reading every shift of her hips and every catch in her breath, adjusting until I find the exact rhythm that makes her stop thinking.
Two fingers slide inside her, curling, and she comes apart against my mouth, thighs trembling around my head.
The composed version of her is gone completely.
She's still catching her breath when she pulls me up.
“Hi,” she says, like it surprised her.
That's the line that finishes it.
I shift and press forward, entering her slowly, watching her face the whole way until I'm fully inside. We stay still for a heartbeat, foreheads touching, breathing the same air. The feeling of her around me is almost too much—tight, hot, real in a way that makes my chest ache.
I begin to move, measured at first, deep and controlled, noting every sound she makes and every way her body answers mine.
Then her hands grip my back, one sliding down to pull me harder against her, and the last of my restraint goes.
I give up the control I've held for weeks and take her the way I've wanted to since that first night in the kitchen—harder, deeper, every measured thing about me finally coming apart, until she’s clutching at my shoulders with nothing held back.
She tightens around me, her climax breaking with a cry, and it drags me over with her.
I bury my face in her neck as release crashes through me, hips stuttering before I go still, buried as deep as I can get.
Neither of us moves. Just breath and heat, and the realization that we crossed a line neither of us can pretend didn't happen.
Afterward she stays tucked against my side, her breathing slow and even. I look at the ceiling in the full morning light. Too awake to pretend this didn't change anything.
Her head lifts.
“I have to tell Liam and Andrew,” she says quietly.
The words sit between us, necessary and unavoidable.
I meet her eyes.
“They deserve to know.” My thumb moves once across her knuckles. “After that, you're not alone in any of it.”
Her eyes close.
“Okay,” she says.
Not relieved. Resolved.
Like she knows nothing stays hidden after today.