Chapter Twenty-Seven—Riley
Two days until the Harrington dinner.
That's what Ethan said yesterday. Two days to keep pretending everything is normal.
I can't wait that long.
Waiting means pretending.
Pretending I don't already feel the shift happening beneath everything.
Pretending this baby doesn't belong to someone sitting at that table.
Pretending I haven't already started imagining what happens when the truth lands.
I sit at the kitchen island with my laptop open. The screen glows too bright in the quiet kitchen. I type the words I've been avoiding for days.
Non-invasive prenatal paternity test.
The results load fast. I scroll. My stomach tightens like something just locked into place.
It can be done after eight weeks. I'm past that now.
I close the tab. Open it again. Read the same lines three times.
A soft sound pulls my eyes up.
Ethan stands in the doorway, sleeves rolled, hair still messy from the roof. Liam leans against the counter behind him, arms crossed. Andrew walks in from the hall, fresh from a run, shirt damp at the collar and clinging just enough to make it hard to look anywhere else.
They don't ask what I'm doing. They just see the way my shoulders are tight and move closer anyway.
I spin the laptop so they can see the screen.
“It can be done now,” I say. “We're past eight weeks.”
Andrew stops mid-step. Like his body forgot what it was doing halfway through the move. “You want to do this before the dinner?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
Ethan moves to my left, shoulder brushing mine. “Then we do it together. All of us.”
Liam pushes off the counter, voice calm but certain. “Whatever the result, the baby is ours. End of discussion.”
I didn't realize how badly I needed to hear that until he said it. I exhale slowly.
“All of ours,” I say. “Whatever the test says.”
Andrew leans over the island, close enough that I catch the clean scent of soap and skin. “You're really okay with this?”
“I'm the one who brought it up, big guy. Try to keep up.”
He huffs a laugh. “There she is.”
Ethan's mouth twitches. “She's been saving the sarcasm for when we're all in one room. Noted.”
Liam shakes his head, but his eyes are soft when they land on me. “You two done flirting?”
I grin at him. “Jealous?”
“Always,” he says simply, and the honesty in it makes heat creep up my neck.
I order the kit while they hover. The confirmation email pings a few minutes later. Discreet packaging. Seven-day turnaround.
The box arrives the next afternoon.
We gather at the kitchen table after dinner. No one suggests moving. The table feels like ours now.
Andrew drops the plain white envelope in the center. “Let's get this over with before I chicken out.”
“You?” I tease. “Mr. I-stared-down-a-poker-table-full-of-sharks? Please.”
He shoots me a look that's half warning, half heat. “Keep talking, sweetheart. See what happens.”
Ethan opens the envelope and lays everything out. Four swabs, instructions, return mailer.
I pick up the first one. My fingers feel a little shaky.
Liam notices. “You don't have to go first.”
“I want to,” I say. Before I lose my nerve.
I swipe the inside of my cheek, drop it in the tube, and seal it with a dramatic click. “Your turn, boys.”
Andrew goes next, muttering that this feels weirder than getting a tattoo. Liam follows, quiet but sure. Ethan last, calm and precise as always.
We label them together.
“Of course yours looks typed,” Andrew mutters, watching Ethan print his name in clean block letters.
“It's legible,” Ethan says. “You should try it sometime.”
“It's a cheek swab, not a wedding invitation.”
Liam leans in with his own label and bears down so hard the pen nearly tears through it.
“Easy, caveman,” Andrew says.
“I like a firm grip.” Liam still doesn't look up. “Riley can confirm.”
I throw a balled-up instruction sheet at his head. He catches it without looking.
I sit back and watch them bicker like they've been doing this forever.
It feels nice. Stupidly nice.
Too nice.
As if I’m memorizing something I’ll want back later.
I fold the paperwork. Slide everything into the prepaid envelope.
Andrew seals it. Liam carries it to the counter by the door so we won't forget it in the morning.
I close my laptop.
The four of us sit there in the quiet.
The kitchen light catches on the edge of the table. Someone's half-empty water glass leaves a ring. Andrew's running shoes sit by the door, still dusty from the Strip.
“So we wait,” Liam says.
I look at each of them in turn.
“We wait,” I agree.
The envelope sits on the counter like a small white bomb.
I keep looking at it like it might move.
Like it could split open and spill answers across the counter before I'm ready.
Seven days.
I push my chair back. The scrape sounds too loud.
Andrew reaches over and catches my hand before I can stand. His thumb brushes my knuckles, slow and gentle.
The touch is light like he’s still not sure I’m going to let him keep me.
Heat spreads anyway before I can stop it.
“Hey,” he says.
I look up.
Ethan stands too. He moves behind me and rests a hand on my shoulder, thumb stroking once.
Liam steps forward. His fingers find my other wrist, light but sure.
For a moment none of us move.
The fan keeps humming overhead.
I don’t know if I’m ready for what comes after.
But we’re doing this together.
That has to matter.I think about Portland. The apartment I've been paying rent on for two months without sleeping in it. The ficus I forgot to ask my neighbor to water. Three client deadlines I used to track obsessively, now sitting in my inbox unanswered.
I think about what I was before I got on the plane. Careful. Small. A life I'd built so specifically that no one could walk into it and surprise me anymore. Jules said exactly that on the phone and she wasn't wrong.
And now I'm at a kitchen table with three men who know what I look like when I'm scared, waiting on an envelope that's going to change all of our lives.
The terrifying thing isn't the result.
It's that I want this. All of it. Even the parts that don't have a clean answer yet.
Because if I let myself have this and lose them anyway—the way Andrew left, the way my parents didn't get to stay—I don't know how to survive losing all of them at once.
My thumb hovers over Jules’s name in my contacts. She still doesn’t know the full extent of it. I can’t bring myself to type it out. That I’m about to tie myself to Andrew, and his two best friends for the rest of my life.