Semua Bab OFF LIMITS: Bab 31 - Bab 40

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO POV: Zara She noticed on a Tuesday. Not dramatically. Not with any of the ceremony that the moment probably deserved. She was standing in the bathroom of her apartment, her apartment, not Damon’s, she’d been spending most of her time at his but she still had her own place, still needed her own place, that had been important to her, and she was counting. Counting days. The way you counted when something was slightly off and you were hoping the counting would come out differently than you thought. It didn’t come out differently. She put the counter down on the bathroom shelf. Sat on the edge of the bath. Counted again. Six weeks. She sat there for a long time. She didn’t tell Damon immediately. She wasn’t keeping it from him. She needed 24 hours to sit with it herself before she shared it. Before it became a conversation instead of a private thing she was still turning over. She went to the pharmacy on Wednesday morning. Bought two tests because one fel

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR POV: Damon Edinburgh in May was different. He’d been twice now. January in the hospice and April briefly to collect the box. Both times the city had been grey and cold and carrying the specific weight of what he’d come to do in it. May was different. The sun was actual sun. Not the watery winter version that suggested warmth without delivering it but proper light that landed on the old stone and made it golden and made the whole city look like it had been waiting to show itself properly. Zara beside him on the train. Twelve weeks now. She wasn’t showing yet or barely. She said barely and he had a view on the subject that he kept to himself because he’d learned which observations were welcome and which ones required more relationship capital than he currently had available. She was reading. He was looking out the window. The notebook was in his bag. Sandra’s notebook. He’d been carrying it for three weeks without opening it past the first page. He didn’t

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX POV: Marcus He knew. He’d known since Wednesday when Zara called him from a bathroom floor and told him in the careful voice she used when something was too large for her normal voice. He’d known since Edinburgh when he’d watched them at that library table with the notebook. He’d known since February if he was being honest with himself which he tried to be on Sundays. He knew. But they were coming to tell him properly. Which meant he had to act like he didn’t know. Marcus Cole was many things. A convincing actor was not historically one of them. He’d been practicing. They arrived at noon. Together. Of course together. He opened the door and looked at them on the step and looked at Zara’s left hand because he’d been told about the ring by Zara on Thursday she’d called, she’d had to call, she couldn’t not call, she’d made him promise not to say anything and he’d promised, and there it was. Sandra’s ring. On Zara’s finger. He looked at it and felt somethin

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHTPOV: DamonThey moved in on a Saturday in August.Not dramatically. They didn’t have enough between them to make it dramatic, Zara’s books and her specific tea and the reading glasses and too many jumpers. His books and his work things and Sandra’s box which he carried himself and put directly in the back bedroom that was becoming theirs without letting anyone else touch it.Marcus had painted the room.Not the back bedroom, that one was already fine. The room next to it. The small one that got morning light. He’d painted it while they were in Edinburgh in May and presented it as a fait accompli when they’d agreed to move in, standing in the doorway with his arms folded looking extremely pleased with himself.“What colour is this,” Zara had said.“Yellow,” Marcus said.“It’s not quite yellow.”“It’s the yellow from Lisbon,” Damon said.Both of them had looked at him.He’d looked at Marcus. “You went to Lisbon.”“I went to Lisbon,” Marcus said.“Alone,” Zara said.

CHAPTER FORTY POV: Zara She came home on a Tuesday. 5 weeks in NICU. 5 weeks of monitors and nurses and the specific vocabulary of a unit that existed to bridge the gap between too early and ready. 5 weeks of Damon at 3AM in the morning talking to an incubator. 5 weeks of Marcus bringing food every single day without fail, not asking, not announcing, just appearing at the hospital with containers and the specific certainty of a man who understood that feeding people was how he stayed useful when everything else was outside his control. 5 weeks of Isla Sandra Reid getting bigger. Slowly. Deliberately. Like she was doing it on her own terms and wasn’t interested in being rushed. The morning they brought her home Damon carried her out of the hospital in the specific careful way of someone handling something irreplaceable. Not stiff, he’d learned how to hold her in the NICU, had been practising since day 3, had gotten good at it in the way he got good at things that mattered. But pr