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CHAPTER 61

Emma's POV We fly home on a Friday morning. The city is still dark when we leave the hotel. I stand at the window for a moment before we go, looking at Singapore doing its pre-dawn thing, the heat already present even at this hour, the lights still going below. Dominic waits at the door with both bags. He doesn't rush me. I turn and go. ******************** The flight is long and I sleep better than I did coming over, the deep sleep of someone who has used themselves well for four days. I wake somewhere over the ocean and Dominic is reading, or not reading, the book is open but he's looking at the middle distance with the focused stillness he gets when he's thinking through something. "Work?" I say. He looks down at me. "No." "What then?" "The house for summer. I fou

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CHAPTER 62

Dominic's POVThe week after we get back settles into itself quietly. Emma goes back to her Tuesday and Thursday shifts. I go back to the office. The girls resume their routines with Mrs. Kowalski and the apartment finds its rhythm again like it never left.Jet lag takes three days to clear properly. Emma handles it better than I do. She's a morning person by nature and her body corrects faster. Mine takes longer and she notices without making it a thing, just puts a stronger coffee on the counter those first mornings without being asked.By the end of the week we're back.Saturday morning she's in the kitchen early when I come out. Not baking. Just standing at the counter with her coffee and the window open, the spring air coming through. She's in an oversized sweater and her hair is down and she's looking at nothing in particular.I pour my coffee and stand beside her."Okay?" I say.

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CHAPTER 63

Emma's POVThree weeks after we got back from Singapore I woke up nauseous.Not dramatically. Just the low persistent kind that sits at the back of the throat and makes coffee smell wrong. I notice it Tuesday morning when Dominic puts my cup on the counter and I take one breath of it and step back.He notices immediately."Coffee?" he says."Not yet." I sit at the island. "Give me a minute."He puts the cup on the far counter without comment and gets me water instead and sits across from me while I drink it.We don't say anything for a moment."It's probably too early to know," I say."Probably.""It's been three weeks.""Yes."I look at him. He's very still in the way he gets when he's decided not to project anything and is just waiting."I'll get a test today," I say."Okay."

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CHAPTER 64

Dominic's POVDr. Patel's office is on the Upper East Side.We leave the girls with Mrs. Kowalski and take the car and Emma is quiet in the way she gets when she's containing something, not anxious exactly, just holding it carefully until there's somewhere to put it.I don't fill the quiet.The waiting room has the particular stillness of medical spaces, magazines nobody reads, a plant that's doing its best. Emma sits beside me with her hands in her lap and I put mine over them and she turns her palm up and holds it.Dr. Patel comes out herself rather than sending a nurse, which tells me she already knows. Emma texted her yesterday before calling anyone else, which I knew and didn't mention because the order of who she tells things is her business and the fact that I'm in the room at all is what matters."Emma." She looks at me. "Dominic." A brief nod that means she's decided to be civil about my presence. "Come on back."

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CHAPTER 65

Emma's POVThe nausea gets worse before it gets better.By the second week it's not just mornings. It's the elevator at the patisserie, the particular smell of the butter delivery on Thursdays, the candle Mrs. Kowalski lights in the hallway that has never bothered me before and now bothers me completely.I don't complain about it.Dominic notices anyway.He removes the candle from the hallway on a Wednesday without saying anything about it. It's simply gone when I come home and in its place is nothing, which is perfect."The candle," I say."What candle," he says.I look at him."Mrs. Kowalski asked me to move it," he says. "Something about the wax type."Mrs. Kowalski has been burning that candle for two years."Thank you," I say."I don't know what you're thanking me for."I let him have it.

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CHAPTER 66

Dominic's POVWeek seven and the nausea is a fixture. Emma doesn't complain. She manages it the way she manages everything, with practical adjustments and no drama. Plain crackers on the nightstand. Ginger in every form Lily keeps sourcing. The bedroom window open a specific amount at night because fresh air helps and she's identified the exact measurement that helps most.I wake up before her most mornings now.Not because I need to. Because if I'm up first I can have water on the counter and the coffee smell contained to one corner of the kitchen before she comes out and the coffee smell on bad mornings is the one she can't get past.She hasn't asked me to do this.She doesn't know I do it deliberately.Tuesday she comes out at seven and sees the water and drinks half of it before she speaks and the coffee is on the far counter with the kitchen fan running and she sits at the island and breathes ca

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CHAPTER 67

Emma's POV Dominic is already dressed when I come out of the bedroom, standing at the kitchen counter with his phone face-down and his coffee untouched, which means he's been standing there doing nothing, which is not something Dominic does. "You're nervous," I say. He looks up. "I'm not." "Your coffee is cold." He looks at the mug like it betrayed him. I take it, pour it out, make him a fresh one, and set it in front of him. He watches me do this the way he watches me do small things sometimes, with this focused attention that I've stopped trying to explain to myself. "Thank you," he says. "Four hours of sleep?" "Five." "Dominic." "The Hanover numbers needed—" "The Hanover nu

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CHAPTER 68

Dominic's POV She falls asleep on the couch at eight thirty with a book open on her chest. Not unusual. The first trimester fatigue hits her in waves and she fights it every time, keeps reading or talking or pretending she's fine, and then she's simply gone, out mid-sentence sometimes, and I've learned not to comment on it because she finds it embarrassing and there's nothing embarrassing about it. I take the book. Mark the page. She doesn't stir. I sit in the chair across from her and open my laptop and work, and every few minutes I look up. I can't explain it. I've tried. She sleeps like she does everything else, with her whole self committed to it. One hand curled under her chin. The other rested on the cushion beside her. Her hair across her face and she won't like that when she wakes but right now it's just there and the lam

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CHAPTER 69

Emma's POV I kissed his forehead and then I lay awake for two hours. Not with regret. That's the thing I kept checking for and it wasn't there. Just this wide-awake aliveness, this awareness of my own pulse, which is new and inconvenient and entirely his fault. I heard him come to bed at midnight. I didn't move. Kept my breathing even. He paused at my door the way he sometimes does, just a moment, and then continued to his room, and I stared at the ceiling and thought about a man who marks your page and moves your coffee and tells you the truth without dressing it up and I thought, I am in serious trouble. Morning comes and I get up first. I make his coffee. I don't think about it. I'm already doing it when I realize what I'm doing, standing at the counter measuring it exactly how he takes it, and I almost stop out of some self-protective instin

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CHAPTER 70

Dominic's POV She left her hand on my face for ten seconds. I counted, not deliberately. Just afterward, sitting alone in my office with the city outside doing nothing useful, I realized I'd counted and the number was ten and that I could still feel exactly where her palm had been. I've closed acquisitions worth nine figures and felt less. Marcus calls at four and I answer because if I don't he comes in person and I don't want anyone in this office right now. "Hanover signed," he says. "Good." Pause. "That's it? Six months of negotiation and—" "It's good news, Marcus. Well done." Another pause. Longer. "What happened?" "Nothing happened." "Dominic." "

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