MasukBella POVThe guests were gone by nine, the evening had been long and warm, dinner stretched past sunset, the garden lights doing exactly what I'd hoped, Tom falling asleep against Diana's shoulder sometime around eight with the ring pillow still clutched to his chest. Maya had taken him up as Diana had stayed long enough to help stack chairs and then said goodnight.By nine it was just us, in the quiet of the house, with the lights still strung in the garden and the last of the wine on the kitchen counter and nothing left between us and the fact that we were, actually and finally, alone.Caleb was in the kitchen when I came back downstairs from checking on Tom. He'd taken off his jacket and loosened his tie and was leaning against the counter with a glass of water, and he looked up when he heard me on the stairs, and something in the way he looked at me — the same way he'd looked at me when I'd walked down the garden path, unhurried and complete — made me stop on the bottom step."He
Bella pov Maya met my eyes in the mirror. I pointed at her, she pressed her lips together and went back to my hair without a word.By the time Maya zipped my dress it was eleven-fifteen and the house had settled into a quieter kind of energy — the guests had gone ahead, Priya and Adaeze had left with hugs and lipstick and genuine warmth, and it was just Maya and Diana and Tom and me in the upstairs bedroom.Maya stepped back when she was done and I turned to the mirror.She pressed her lips together in exactly the way she'd promised she wouldn't."You said no face," I said."I'm not doing a face.""Maya.""I'm not," she said, her voice perfectly level and her eyes doing something else entirely. "You just look like you. That's all, the right version of you." She reached out and straightened something at my shoulder that didn't need straightening. "He's going to fall apart.""He doesn't fall apart," I said."He cried at Tom's school play," Diana said, from the corner, without looking u
Bella POVI woke up before my alarm.Six o'clock had been the plan. My body decided five-forty-seven was close enough and that was the end of sleep. I lay there in the quiet for a moment, taking stock — heart rate elevated but not panicked, the fear I'd been half-expecting nowhere to be found. Just the still, certain feeling of a day that had been coming for a long time finally arriving.From down the hall came the sounds of several women who had drunk too much and slept too little attempting to be functional. Something dropped. Someone said ow. Someone else said shhhh in a voice that was louder than whatever it was shushing.I smiled at the ceiling.Maya appeared in my doorway approximately minutes later in last night's makeup and the robe she'd produced from nowhere, her hair in a state that suggested the dancing had ended up being vigorous and prolonged."You're awake," she said."I've been awake.""How long?""Thirteen minutes."She came and sat on the edge of the bed and looked a
Bella POVThe evening was loud and warm and genuinely fun. My staff, freed from the architecture of a normal working relationship for one evening, turned out to have opinions and stories and a collective energy I hadn't fully seen before, and I sat in the middle of it and felt the warmth of having built something that people actually wanted to be part of.Someone pressed a drink into my hand at some point. I held it, let the conversation move around me, and when no one was looking I set it down.My stomach had been like this for days. I had been noting it. The nausea that arrived in the morning and occasionally without warning, the appetite that had gone somewhere and not come back. The glass of wine at dinner three nights ago that had smelled fine and tasted wrong, which I had managed by setting it down and talking to Caleb about something else until he didn't notice.My period had been irregular for the better part of a year, which I had attributed to stress and age. That was what
Bella POVThe only person missing was Diana. She'd called that morning from somewhere with a bad signal, an important trip she couldn't cut, something she'd been vague about in the way Diana was vague when she didn't want questions.She'd apologised once, which from Diana was the equivalent of a full speech, and promised she was on the first flight back in the morning.I will be there before you walk, she'd said. Don't start without me.You're coming to my party, I'd said.I'm Tom's guardian.I hadn't argued with that.Tom had gone with her, which still surprised me a little when I thought about it. A year ago he hadn't known Diana existed, and now he'd looked at me with his father's grey eyes and said he didn't want her to travel alone. I'd spent time talking him into staying behind, explaining that Mummy needed him at the wedding, that Diana would be back soon, that it wasn't that far. He'd finally agreed with reluctance then immediately started crying anyway because he'd wanted to
Caleb POVJames brought it up on a Monday morning, which was either deliberate timing or just James, and with James the two were often the same thing.I was going through the week's schedule when he set a coffee on my desk and said, without preamble, "We need to talk about the bachelor arrangements.""There are no bachelor arrangements," I said."That's what we need to talk about."I looked up. James had the expression he wore when he had already decided something and was now managing the process of bringing me to the same conclusion, I recognised it. I'd been on the receiving end of it for years."I'm not doing a club," I said. "I'm not doing anything that ends with a hangover the morning of my wedding.""I know," he said. "That's not what I'm suggesting.""Strippers""Absolutely not," he said, with a firmness that suggested he'd already considered and rejected this on my behalf. "Nothing that Bella would hear about, nothing that gives anyone a story. Nothing that risks one single th
Caleb pov "I understand." I felt something loosen in my chest, hope flooding in where there'd been only guilt. "Thank you, Bella. You won't regret this.""I already regret it," she said, but there was less bite in her voice. "But Maya's right. Tom deserves to know his father. And despite everythin
Bella pov "Because you can influence how it happens," Jennifer said. "You can work with him to create a schedule that minimizes disruption to Tom's life. You can set boundaries about where visits happen, who supervises them, how Caleb is introduced. Or you can fight him every step of the way, spen
Caleb pov My throat closed up completely. I couldn't speak, couldn't move, could barely breathe. He remembered me. My son remembered me."Hi, Tom," Maya said gently, sitting down next to him. "Remember how I told you we were meeting someone today? This is Caleb. He's Mommy's friend, and he wanted
Caleb pov The question hung in the air, and I saw everyone watching me, waiting to see how I'd respond."years ago, you would have been right," I said quietly. "I was dead inside, so focused on control that I couldn't let myself feel anything. But Bella, losing you broke something open in me. I've







