Chapter 7: Why Are You Avoiding Me?

BRABRA

I

"She handles a lot of the account now." The lie comes out too fast, too rehearsed.

"Does she." It isn't a question. "I specifically asked to speak with you."

I grip my cup a little tighter, the warmth barely registering against my palm. "I've been busy."

"Why are you avoiding me?"

The question lands harder than I expect, direct in a way that leaves no room for another careful deflection. I glance past him, toward the hallway, half hoping someone will interrupt us, half terrified that no one will.

"I'm not avoiding you," I say. "I'm doing my job."

"Your job didn't stop you from looking me in the eye across a conference table two weeks ago." He steps slightly closer, not enough to crowd me, but enough that I feel the space between us shrink in a way that makes my pulse climb. "It doesn't stop you now. So what changed?"

Nothing changed, I want to say. Everything changed. I found out I'm carrying your children and I don't know how to stand this close to you without that truth clawing its way up my throat.

"Nothing changed," I say instead, my voice quieter than I mean it to be.

"You're a bad liar, Brabra."

"I'm not lying."

"You are." His eyes narrow slightly, searching my face the way he did in that meeting room, like he's trying to read something written in a language he almost understands. "You go pale every time I get close to you. You've barely looked at me since I walked out of that room. And your hand."

He stops himself.

"My hand what?" I ask, too sharp, too fast.

"Nothing." He shakes his head slightly, like he's setting the thought aside for later rather than letting it go entirely. "Forget it."

I should let it go too. Instead, my traitorous mind replays every moment from the meeting room, every time my palm found my stomach without permission, every small, unconscious habit I've developed in the last few weeks that I never stopped to think anyone else might notice.

"I have to get back to my desk," I say, stepping around him before he can ask anything else.

"Brabra."

I stop, though every instinct tells me to keep walking.

"Whatever this is," he says, quieter now, "the avoiding, the distance I'd rather you just tell me. I don't do well with people hiding things from me."

Something in his voice catches, some thread of frustration underneath the control, and for one unguarded second I see something almost vulnerable pass behind his eyes before it disappears again, tucked neatly back behind the composed mask he wears like a second skin.

"There's nothing to tell," I say, and this time the lie costs me more than any of the ones before it.

He watches me walk away. I can feel it, the same way I felt it in that hallway after the first meeting, a weight settling between my shoulder blades that doesn't lift until I've turned the corner and put a wall between us.

Back at my desk, I set my tea down with a shaking hand and press my palm flat against my stomach, the exact gesture he almost called me out on thirty seconds ago.

"I have to be more careful," I whisper. "He's paying attention. He's paying too much attention."

My coworker glances over the partition, phone still cradled against her shoulder from her last call. "Everything okay? You look flushed."

"Fine," I say, the word wearing thinner every time I use it. "Just needed air."

She doesn't push, the way she never does, though I catch the small crease of worry between her eyebrows before she turns back to her screen.

I sit there for a long moment, staring at nothing, replaying his words. Your hand.

He almost saw it. He almost said it out loud, whatever thought had started forming behind those sharp, careful eyes, and something tells me it isn't going to stay unformed for much longer.

I press both hands flat against my stomach now, no longer caring who might notice, because the fear rising in my chest has nothing to do with anyone else in this office.

"I'm not ready," I whisper. "I need more time. Please, just a little more time."

Outside my window, the afternoon light shifts behind a passing cloud, and for a moment the whole office goes grey and quiet, matching exactly how I feel inside.

I don't get an answer. I never do. But somewhere across the city, in an office with floor-to-ceiling windows I've never seen, I have the growing, uneasy feeling that the man who fathered these children is already starting to ask himself questions I'm not ready for him to answer.

ANDRIY

I sit at my desk long after the call I claimed to be making to her office ends, staring at nothing, turning the same thought over and over until it starts to wear a groove into me.

Your hand.

I almost said it out loud in that hallway. I caught myself just in time, some instinct telling me it wasn't the moment, not yet, not until I understood what I was actually seeing.

It's a small thing. The kind of thing I wouldn't have noticed in anyone else. But I notice everything — it's the reason I've built what I've built, the reason boardrooms go quiet when I walk into them. I notice the way she presses her palm flat against her stomach in the middle of a sentence, like she's steadying herself against something only she can feel. I noticed it in the meeting room. I noticed it again just now, standing outside the break room, her knuckles pale against the fabric of her blouse before she caught herself and dropped her hand.

I noticed the way she paled during our first meeting, and how carefully she's avoided me since.

My assistant appears in the doorway, tablet in hand. "The Hensley contract needs your signature before end of day."

"Later." I don't look up from the window.

He hesitates, clearly unused to being dismissed so easily, then nods and retreats without another word.

I lean back in my chair and let myself think about the night we met, properly, for the first time in weeks instead of pushing the memory away the moment it surfaces. I remember how tired she looked even then, though I told myself it was simply a long day catching up to her. I remember leaving before sunrise, the way I always do, because staying has never been something I've allowed myself to be good at.

I do the math without meaning to. Weeks since that night. Weeks since I last saw her before the conference room. It adds up to something my mind keeps circling toward and refusing to land on, because landing on it would mean admitting a possibility I'm not entirely sure I know how to face.

I've built an entire life around control. Around knowing things before anyone tells me, seeing the shape of a problem before it fully forms. But this — a woman who flinches when I get too close, whose hand keeps finding her stomach like it's protecting something she isn't ready to name — this is a puzzle I can't seem to solve from a distance.

"Why are you avoiding me?" I asked her today, and I watched her build a wall in real time, brick by careful brick, right in front of me.

I've never been the kind of man who waits patiently for answers. I get them. One way or another, eventually, I always do.

I pick up my phone and scroll to her contact, my thumb hovering over the screen for a long moment before I set it back down.

Not yet, I tell myself. Push too hard, too fast, and she'll only build the wall higher.

But soon.

Whatever she's hiding behind that careful, steady voice, I intend to find out. And some quiet, unfamiliar part of me the part that isn't used to caring this much about anyone's secrets but my own hopes, when I finally do, that it isn't something that changes everything between us.

I already suspect it will.