Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Kabanata 241 - Kabanata 250

She had done it alone. For eight years before I came along. The sick nights and the decisions and being the only adult in the apartment. She had done it with Lucy, then with Alessandro, and she had done it while working two jobs, dealing with eviction notices, and painting at kitchen tables after the children had fallen asleep. I sat in the rocking chair at midnight with my son against my chest, trying to comprehend the full weight of what that had been, eight years of those nights alone, and I couldn't reach the bottom of it. Alessandro was asleep. I watched the fish on the mobile turn. By six in the morning, his temperature was 100.0. I had checked it every two hours. He woke at six-thirty with the energy of someone who had dealt with everything the night had thrown at him and was ready to start the day, and he looked at me from the chair with the expression that meant he was ready for breakfast and found the current seating arrangement acceptable for now, but would soon requir

Rosalie's POV It started with a permission slip. Lucy's school needed a signed permission slip for a field trip to the natural history museum. The permission slip had been in Lucy's backpack for four days. I knew because Lucy had told me on Monday, and I'd said I would sign it that night. Then Alessandro had a difficult bedtime, and I forgot. On Tuesday, I was at the gallery until seven. On Wednesday morning, Lucy reminded me again, and I signed it standing at the kitchen counter, my coat half on, while Mila screamed from her chair because she had dropped her toy and Alessandro told me something important about a dream he'd had, both of them at full volume. I handed the permission slip to Lucy. She took it without comment, but she looked at me for half a second too long, in the way she did when she had decided not to say the thing she was thinking. That look stayed with me all day. It wasn't the permission slip. The permission slip was only the surface of something I had be

"You're the most capable person I know," I said. She pointed at the contract. "Focus." "I mean it." "I know you do. Focus." I looked back at the contract. The full scope they were proposing was more than I could take on without turning those eighteen months into something that would cost more than the firm's growth was worth. I'd seen it happen to other people. Companies grew faster than the person running them could handle, and that person kept the company moving at the expense of everything around it. And what was around them was usually the very thing that had made the company worth building in the first place. I knew what I wanted to do. I called Richard. "I want to make a counteroffer," I said. "Phase one is six cities, not twelve. Expansion in the second year will be contingent on operational stability at the six-city stage. The financial terms stay as proposed. We extend the timeline by nine months." Richard was quiet for a moment. "They're going to push back

Rosalie's POV I had known for two weeks and three days. I knew the exact count because I counted in that particular way you counted things you carried alone, marking each passing day, noticing how the weight changed with it. It didn't get lighter. Important things didn't get lighter when you were the only one carrying them. They got heavier in a particular way, a way that had nothing to do with the thing itself and everything to do with being alone with it. I hadn't told anyone. Not Jeffery, who was usually where I put things that were too big for me to carry alone. Not my father. Not Mrs. Willow, who had that quality of knowing things before you said them, something I had learned to work around when I needed to. I had been working around everyone for two weeks and three days. The dinner had been my idea. Not a grand gesture. Just a real one. I chose Tuesday because Tuesday was the night Lucy had debate practice, and my father picked up the children and kept them for dinner o

Aiden's POV Rosie fell asleep at ten-thirty. I knew because her breathing changed and her hand relaxed on the pillow, and that particular quality of the room shifted the way it always did when I was the only one still awake in it. I lay beside her in the dark, staring at the ceiling and doing the math. I wasn't upset about the pregnancy. I needed to be clear about that with myself first, to separate the parts, because they were getting tangled in a way that made each one harder to look at. Not upset. Not about the baby. The baby was something I wouldn't have known how to want four years ago, and now I couldn't imagine not wanting. That part was simple. The math was the other part. Alessandro's pregnancy. I hadn't been there. She had been in that city, in the smaller apartment, with the eviction notices and two jobs and the nights on the fire escape, carrying Alessandro alone through every week of it. She had gone to her prenatal appointments alone. She had heard the heartbe