All Chapters of My Sister’s Substitute : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The coffee was the first clue and she ignored it completely. Which, fair enough, because who really expects a warning from odd coffee? She shoved the mug away, went with juice instead, told herself it must have been a bad batch and moved on. Neo gave her that glance-the one where you know he registered something and he's saving it for later-and she pretended she didn't see and they finished their mornings like normal people.That was Monday.By Wednesday she was tired. But it was a different kind of tired, not a 'I've been living in a complicated mess for six weeks and my brain is a fried omelet' kind of tired that she'd gotten used to. This was a physical tired. Heavy and slow, like overnight someone had decided her bones were no longer made of strong stuff, and swapped them out for sand soaked in lukewarm water. She’d gone to bed Tuesday at 9:30 with the light on and a book on her chest and when she’d woken, sometime in the night, it was to the lamp off and the book on her nightsta

The thing about carrying something heavy was that it showed.Not always in obvious ways. Neo was too controlled for obvious. But Irina had been living in close proximity to this man for weeks and she knew his rhythms the way you knew the rhythms of any space you inhabited — the specific quality of his silences, the particular set of his jawwhen something was occupying him, the way he held his coffee mug differently when his mind was somewhere else entirely.Something was somewhere else. Had been since Saturday.She noticed it at breakfast Monday — the newspaper stayed folded, which never happened. She noticed it in the library Monday evening — he was at the desk but the pen hadn't moved in twenty minutes and his eyes were doing that focused middle-distance thing that meant he was thinking about something considerably more pressing than whatever document was in front of him.She didn't ask.Partly because she had her own thing she was quietly not dealing with — the ginger tea, the bat

Two lines.She'd taken three more tests after the first one. Different brands, different bathrooms. she had driven to two separate drugstores on opposite sides of Atlanta like a woman on a covert operation, which honestly wasn't far from the truth. She'd taken one Thursday night, one Friday morning, one Friday afternoon just to be absolutely sure the Friday morning one wasn't having an off day.They all said the same thing.Two lines!!Consistent. Committed. Utterly unconcerned to her feelings on the matter.So that was it then.She was pregnant.In a contract marriage.With a man whose actual fiancée was currently waking up from a coma two miles away.She sat on the edge of the bed on Saturday morning and looked at her hands and thought that if someone had told her six weeks ago that this was where her life was going she would've laughed so hard she'd have pulled something.Nobody was laughing now.She didn't tell Neo.Which, okay, she knew. She knew she needed to tell him. It wasn't

They moved to the library.Not because anyone suggested it, just because that was where the serious conversations went. It was like the room had a gravitational pull for anything that required actual honesty and they'd both stopped questioning it weeks ago.Irina sunk into her armchair. Neo sat on the sofa, elbows on his knees. The four tests were still on the kitchen table because neither of them had thought to move them. For a moment neither of them said anything. Irina went first: "So.""So?" Neo said."This is a situation.""It's a serious situation."She adjusted herself on the chair. "You want to go first or should I?""You've had four days longer with this news than I have," he said. "You go first."True. She looked at the bookshelf for a second. "Okay,Here's what's running in my head. The contract — technically, legally, the terms were a temporary arrangement until Anna recovered. Anna is recovering. That means the contract has a finish line which is coming up fast." She paus

Neo sat with the full picture for exactly one day before it started sitting with him in ways he hadn't anticipated.Irina noticed it at breakfast on Thursday. He was quieter than usual. The newspaper was open but he had been on the same page for fifteen minutes and she knew because she'd been watching without making it obvious she was watching, which was a skill she'd developed living in close proximity to a man who noticed everything.She stole his newspaper.He didn't react.That was how she knew it was bad."Neo," she said."Mm.""You've been on that page since you sat down."He looked at the newspaper like he was surprised to find it in his hands. Then he put it down and picked up his coffee and she could see him deciding something."I've been thinking about Anna," he said. "Okay.""About what she was carrying." He turned the mug slowly on the counter. "Two years, Irina. Two years of this — the debt, the payments, the fear of these people, the stealing — and she sat across from me