Episode 12: A Lie Between Us

EPISODE 17

“Bby.”

The word left my mouth.

The room stopped.

Claire turned.

Daniel turned.

Ethan—who had been mid-step toward the door—went completely still.

Brandon stared at me with the expression of a man who had walked into a situation he had not been briefed on and was trying very hard to catch up.

“Sofia, are you okay?” he said carefully.

I looked at him with the most meaningful eyes I could produce from a hospital bed.

Please, I said with my entire face. Just go with this. Please.

Something shifted in his expression—understanding arriving slowly, then faster.

“Are you okay?” he said again, softer this time.

“Bby.” I reached for his hand.

My voice cracked—not entirely performed. The exhaustion, the fear, and everything I had been carrying for months found the nearest exit.

“I’m pregnant.”

My eyes filled.

“We’re having a baby.”

Silence.

Complete silence.

Claire’s mouth was open.

Daniel had gone very still.

Brandon looked at me—at the tears, at the hand gripping his, at whatever was written all over my face underneath the performance—and without missing another beat, pulled me into a hug.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly against my hair. “It’s okay.”

I heard the door open.

And close.

I pulled back slightly and looked.

Ethan and Daniel were gone.

I exhaled.

Brandon pulled back and looked at me properly—no audience now, just us and Claire, who was sitting with her arms crossed and an expression that said she had approximately one thousand things to say and was choosing the order carefully.

“What,” Brandon said slowly, “was that?”

“I’ll explain everything,” I said.

“Sofia.” Claire’s voice was flat. “Bby?”

“Claire—”

“You called him bby.”

“I know.”

“In front of Ethan.”

“I know, Claire.”

“And then announced a pregnancy.”

“I know.”

Brandon looked between us.

“Someone needs to start explaining,” he said.

I closed my eyes.

Opened them.

“I will,” I said. “I promise. Just sit

I looked at the door Ethan had walked out of.

Brandon sat in the chair beside my bed and looked at me with the patient expression of someone waiting for the real explanation.

Claire sat on the other side.

Both of them looking at me.

I exhaled.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Brandon, I’m really sorry for what I did out there.”

“It’s fine, Sofia—”

“No, it’s not.” I shook my head. “I put you in a situation you knew nothing about, and I didn’t even warn you. And you just—” My voice cracked. “You just went with it, and I’m sorry.”

“Hey.” He leaned forward. “It’s okay. I’m not angry.”

“You should be.”

“Well, I’m not.” He looked at me steadily. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

I looked at my hands in my lap.

And told him everything.

The club. Claire leaving. Drinking more than I should have. Waking up in a hotel room I didn’t recognize with no memory of how I got there. The note on the nightstand. The money I didn’t take. Weeks later, finding out I was pregnant by a man whose face I couldn’t remember and whose name I didn’t know.

Brandon listened without interrupting once.

When I finished, the room was quiet.

“I don’t know who the father is,” I said. “I genuinely don’t know. And when Ethan was standing there asking me, and I had nothing—” I looked at him. “You were the only person who had been seen with me recently. You were the only option I had in that moment. I panicked, and I used you. And I’m sorry.”

My eyes filled properly this time.

Not performed.

Not for an audience.

Just everything I had been holding coming out at once—messy and uncontrolled, the way real crying always was.

“Hey.” Brandon crouched beside the bed. “Sofia. Look at me.”

I looked at him.

“It’s okay,” he said simply. “Whatever you need from me—I’ve got you.”

I pressed my lips together.

Nodded.

Claire reached over and rubbed my back slowly.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said softly. “We’ll figure it out.”

We sat like that for a moment—quiet, the three of us, the weight of everything settling into something slightly more manageable now that it had been said out loud.

Then Claire straightened.

Cleared her throat.

Looked at me with a very specific expression.

“Bby,” she said, in my exact voice and tone. “Am pregnant.”

I stared at her.

Brandon burst out laughing—loud, genuine, completely caught off guard.

“CLAIRE!” I said.

“We are having a baby!” she continued dramatically, pressing her hand to her chest. “Bby!”

“Oh my God—”

“That was GOOD, though.” Brandon was still laughing. “Genuinely. You should be an actor, Sofia.”

“I wasn’t acting. I was panicking—”

“Same energy, honestly,” Claire said, grinning. “Very convincing panic.”

She looked at me.

“Bby.”

“Stop saying that—”

“Bby—”

“CLAIRE.”

She laughed—properly, freely, the kind that filled the room and made it feel considerably less like a hospital.

Brandon shook his head, still smiling.

“Well. Since I’m apparently the father of this child now—”

“You are not the father—”

“Publicly, I am.” He raised an eyebrow. “So I should probably know. Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know yet—”

“I want a boy,” he said simply.

“Brandon—”

“Just saying. Since we’re doing this.”

Claire pointed at him.

“I like him.”

“Nobody asked you,” I said.

“I like him anyway.”

I looked between them—Claire grinning, Brandon already fully committed to a role he had been given thirty seconds’ notice for—and felt something loosen in my chest.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. To both of them. “Really.”

Claire squeezed my hand.

Brandon nodded once.

And for the first time since I woke up in this hospital bed, I felt like I might actually be okay.

ETHAN

I got home and sat in my living room, staring at nothing.

The apartment was quiet the way it was always quiet—clean, ordered, everything exactly where it was supposed to be.

Normally, I found the silence useful.

Tonight, it was just silence.

I told myself I was simply processing the evening.

An employee had fainted. I had taken her to the hospital. The doctor had delivered unexpected news.

These were simply facts that needed organizing before tomorrow.

I was good at organizing facts.

Except these ones kept rearranging themselves no matter how many times I put them in order.

My phone rang.

Daniel.

“Sir. About Whitfield and Brennan.”

“What did you find

We couldn’t find anything. No relationship. No communication history we could trace. Nothing that suggests they were ever more than people who knew each other in school.”

“That’s all you found?”

“Yes, sir. We couldn’t confirm whether they dated or not. Just the university connection.”

I said nothing.

“Sir?”

“Thank you, Daniel. That’s all.”

I ended the call.

Sat back.

I know they went to the same school.

I just want to know if they are truly dating.

Whether there had been anything between them—whether Brandon was genuinely the father of her child—nobody could say for certain.

Including me.

I looked at the ceiling.

Tried to think about something else.

Tried to think about the board meeting Thursday. The Meridian account. The eastern acquisition my legal team was still finalizing.

None of it stayed.

My mind kept going back to that night instead.

I think it was her first time.

I sat with that.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Pulling details out of a place I had deliberately not gone back to in months.

A hotel room.

A girl who didn’t know where she was.

Something about the whole thing that had felt different from the moment it started.

Something I couldn’t name then.

Something I still couldn’t name now.

But it sat there.

Quiet and insistent.

Refusing to be organized into anything neat.

I picked up my phone.

Set it down.

Looked at the window.

Who is the father?

I had asked her that in the hospital room, and she had answered without hesitation.

I have a boyfriend. Definitely his.

maybe his actually his.