LOGINEMMA'S POV
Three weeks of normal.That's what we've had. Three weeks of Dominic being home for dinner, bath time, middle of the night wake-ups. Three weeks of him learning that Claire needs her sleep sack or she won't settle, and that Sophia wants to be held facing outward or she screams. Small things. The kind of things you only learn by being there.It's been good. Quietly, carefully good.Which is why I'm not prepared for the knock on the door on a TuesdEmma's POV The problem with telling someone you love them is that afterward you can't know that they know. He knows. He's known, apparently, for longer than I said it, which is somehow more destabilizing than if it had been new information. I walked around this apartment for weeks thinking I was concealing something and he was watching me love him with my whole body, his words, and saying nothing because he was waiting for me to get there myself. I think about that in the shower. The patience of it. The specific respect of letting me arrive in my own time without rushing or pushing or making it convenient for himself. I turn the water up and stand there and feel completely undone. He's on a call when I come out. The office door is half open, the serious voice. I leave him to it and take my tea to the window seat and text Lily.
Dominic's POV She kissed me. I've kissed before. That's not what I mean. I mean she kissed me the way she does everything, with her whole self committed to it, hand at my jaw, completely deliberate, and the world rearranged itself into before and after without asking my permission. I sit at my laptop for ten minutes after she goes to call Lily without reading a single word on the screen. Then I close it and go stand at the window. The city is doing its morning thing. Ordinary Friday. Nothing has changed out there. Everything is different here. I press my fingers to my mouth once, briefly, like checking something is real. It is. I go make coffee. She comes back twenty minutes later with the expression she gets after Lily calls,
Emma's POV I woke up on the couch. Specifically, I woke up against Dominic on the couch, my head on his chest, his arm around me, both of us having fallen asleep somewhere after ten without negotiating it. I don't move. I do a very careful inventory of how this feels, the way you test ice before you step on it. It feels like the most natural thing I've experienced in years. That's the problem. It feels like something that was always supposed to happen and simply took a long time to arrive. His breathing is slow and even. Still asleep. I have exactly this much time to look at him without him knowing. I use it. He looks younger. Not softer exactly, Dominic never fully softens, but the constant low-level vigilance he carries is gone and what's underneath it is a face I want to keep looking at for a long time.
Dominic's POV She fell asleep against my chest standing up. Not fully. Just that half-drop where the body decides it's safe enough to let go for a second, her weight shifting into me, and I felt it happen and didn't move. Just held her. Stood in the doorway of my office with my arms around her and the afternoon doing whatever it was doing outside and thought, I would stand here for as long as she needs. That thought would have frightened me three months ago. Now it just feels like information. She surfaces after a minute, straightens, pulls back just enough to look up at me with the particular expression of someone who fell asleep standing up and has opinions about it. "Don't," I say. "I wasn't going to say anything." "You were going to apologize." "I was
Emma's POV Lily calls on Thursday and I almost don't answer because I know she'll hear it in my voice. I answer anyway. "You sound different," she says. Before hello. Before anything. "I'm fine." "Not fine-different. Good-different." A pause. "Emma." "Lily." "Something happened." "Nothing happened." "Something is happening," she corrects. "Present tense. Ongoing." Another pause and I can hear her sitting up, fully invested now. "It's him." I look down the hall toward Dominic's office. The door is half open. I can hear the low cadence of his voice on a call. "We talked," I say. "A few times. Honestly." "Honestly how." "Lily." "I need a scale. Are we talking politely or actually honest."
Dominic's POV I don't sleep. Not insomnia. Not the work-brain that used to keep me up running numbers. Just this clean wide-awake state, lying in the dark, replaying her hands gripping the front of my shirt like I was something to hold onto. She chose to hold on. That's the thing I keep returning to. Emma Chen, who manages everything alone, who built entire systems of self-sufficiency around herself like architecture, reached out in that hallway and held on. To me. I stare at the ceiling for an hour and then get up and go to my desk and actually read the Reyes file, because I need something to do with my hands and my head, and by three in the morning I've annotated the whole thing and sent Marcus six pages of notes and then sat in the chair in the dark feeling more awake than I've felt in years. This is
DOMINIC'S POV Being with Emma is different than I expected. We don't announce anything to Mrs. Kowalski, but she knows immediately. She finds us having breakfast together—actually together, sitting close instead of across from each other—and
EMMA'S POV We don't talk about what happened in the car. For a week, we move around each other even more carefully than before. Dominic leaves early for work, comes home late. I eat dinner with Mrs. Kowalski and pretend everything is normal. It's not normal. I'm sixteen weeks pregnant now. Ther
EMMA'S POVWe don't talk about what Dominic said.For three days, we move around each other carefully. He asks about my doctor's appointments. I tell him the babies are growing normally. We're polite strangers sharing a space.On Sunday morning, I wake up to find him in the kitchen making breakfast
EMMA'S POVMrs. Kowalski discovers I'm crying over a commercial about puppies."Kochanie, what's wrong?""Nothing. The puppies found homes and it's just so beautiful." I'm sobbing into a throw pillow at ten in the morning, still in my pajamas.She sits beside m







