Chapter Nine

DAMIEN'S POV

I'd spent two days trying to find the right words and kept arriving at the same problem. Nothing I said could undo what I'd already said. The night I'd called sleeping with her a betrayal. The months I'd spent making her feel like furniture in her own temporary home. The fact that she'd sat across from me at breakfast every morning for three months carrying my child and hadn't felt safe enough to tell me.

Words weren't going to fix that. I knew it and she knew it.

James came by the office Thursday afternoon uninvited, which meant Victoria had called him.

He sat across my desk and didn't pretend to be there for business. "Tomorrow's the deadline."

"I'm aware."

"What are you going to say?"

"I don't know yet."

"Damien." He leaned forward. "Stop managing this like a negotiation. It's not a contract. You can't find the optimal clause that protects all parties." He paused. "What do you actually want? Not what's practical. Not what's fair. What do you want?"

I looked at the ultrasound image I'd had Mrs. Patterson print from the photo I'd taken on my phone. It sat on the corner of my desk where I'd been looking at it between calls all morning.

"I don't want her to leave," I said.

"Why?"

"Because she's the first thing in three years that's made this house feel like something other than a museum." I said it before I'd fully thought it through. It landed in the room and stayed there. "Ethan reads now. He talks. He ate dinner with me last night and told me a joke. A bad one, but still." I stopped. "That's her. All of that is her."

"That's not a reason to ask someone to stay."

"I know." I looked at the image again. "She deserves someone who chose her from the beginning. I didn't. I put her in a contract and handed her a list of duties and told her not to expect anything real." I exhaled. "I don't know how to ask her to believe I see her differently now without it sounding like desperation."

"Maybe it is desperation."

"Maybe."

"The question is whether it's only that." James stood. "Figure it out tonight. And Damien, whatever you say to her, means it. She'll know if you don't."

He left.

I sat at my desk until seven, then went home.

Olivia was in the kitchen feeding Ethan dinner when I arrived. A normal scene. The kind I'd walked past for eighteen months without registering it properly.

Ethan looked up. "Dad. Olivia made the pasta with the lemon sauce."

"I can see that."

"She said it's good for the—" He stopped. Looked at Olivia. Some communication passed between them I wasn't part of. "She said it's her favorite."

Olivia didn't look at me. "There's more in the pan."

I sat down and ate with them. Ethan talked about a project at school, something involving a map of New York boroughs and colored pins. Olivia asked questions and I asked questions and for twenty minutes it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

After Ethan went upstairs, Olivia cleaned the pan without speaking.

"My interview is at nine tomorrow," she said finally. "Portland time. So noon here."

"I know."

"If it goes well, they'll want an answer by end of day."

"Olivia—"

"Let me finish." She set the pan down and turned around. "I need you to understand that what I decide tomorrow isn't about the week you asked for. It's not about whether you've been decent or whether you dealt with Emma or whether you looked at that ultrasound the right way." Her voice was steady. "It's about what my child's life looks like in ten years. That's the only thing I'm deciding."

"I understand that."

"Do you? Because I think you've been building a case all week. Evidence that you've changed, that you're present, that you mean it this time. And maybe you do. But I've been here for eighteen months, Damien. I watched you choose Catherine's memory over everything in this house, every single day. That doesn't disappear because you had a good week."

"I'm not asking you to forget it."

"Then what are you asking?"

I came around the counter so there was less distance between us. Not close enough to pressure. Just close enough to be honest.

"I'm asking you to stay in New York. Not in this house, not in the contract, not for me. For the baby to know their father. For Ethan, who will not recover from losing you the way he's already lost too much." I kept my eyes on hers. "And because I think you deserve to make this decision from a position of security instead of fear. Portland is an escape. I don't want you to escape. I want you to choose."

"Choose what exactly?"

"Whatever you actually want. If you want to be a pediatric nurse in Portland and raise our child alone and send me photographs twice a year, I will respect that and I will show up every time you allow it." I paused. "But if any part of you wants something different, I'm asking you not to let what I did three months ago be the thing that decides it."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"You still haven't said it," she said.

"Said what?"

"The actual thing. The real thing." She looked at me directly. "You've said everything around it very carefully. But you haven't said it."

I knew what she meant.

"I don't want you to go," I said. "Not because of the baby. Not because of Ethan. Because I don't want you to go. I look for you in every room and when you're not there something's missing." I held her gaze. "That's the real thing."

She looked at me for a long time.

"Goodnight, Damien," she said quietly.

She went upstairs.

I stood in the kitchen alone and waited for tomorrow.