PART 4:

I don’t This isn’t I know we are. This is not a simple situation. I am not a simple Victoria. He waited until she was looking at him. I know. She stared at him. Something moved in her face. Something he hadn’t seen before. The edge of breaking carefully held back. I don’t know how to do this, she whispered.

You said that before. This is different. Yeah, he agreed quietly. It is. She pulled her hand back, stood, walked to the window. He stayed where he was watching her. My board will use this, she said back to him. Now, my mother will use this. The media will they’ll destroy both of us. They’ll find you. They’ll find Ava.

She pressed one hand against the glass. I have thought about every possible version of what happens next, and every version is a disaster. Not every version, he said. She turned. He looked at her steadily. Not the version where we figure it out. Her throat moved. She looked at him for a long time, calculating, measuring the CEO side of her running the numbers.

Then something in her face changed. Quiet. undeniable. She walked back across the kitchen, sat back down, put her hands flat on the counter. “I’m terrified,” she said. “Me, too,” he said. “I’ve been terrified for 3 years.” He paused. “You get used to it.” She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, but was adjacent to one.

And then she leaned her head just slightly, just barely against his shoulder. He didn’t move. Outside the city hummed on indifferent, and everything that was coming for them was already in motion. The board, the press, the money, the war. But in that kitchen, for one quiet moment, none of it had arrived yet.

3 days passed before either of them said anything beyond the immediate. Victoria went back to work the morning after she told him. Ethan knew because she sent a single text at 6:47 a.m. I’m okay. Thank you for staying and then nothing until evening. He didn’t push. He understood the need to rebuild the walls before facing the day.

He’d done the same thing for 3 years. He went to work. He taught his classes. He picked up Ava from school, listened to her explain at considerable length why the giant squid was more evolutionarily sophisticated than the great white shark, and made pasta for dinner. Normal things. Life continuing as it always did, indifferent to the earthquake that had just rearranged the ground underneath it.

But that night after Ava was asleep, he sat at the kitchen table and didn’t grade papers. He just sat and thought about the look on Victoria’s face when she’d said, “I’m pregnant.” That stripped bare fear. And the way she’d leaned her head against his shoulder afterward, so careful about it, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed.

He thought about Ava. about what this meant, about the 10,000 ways this could go wrong. Then he thought about Victoria standing at that window, pressing her hand against the glass, cataloging every version of disaster. She’d missed one, the version where they didn’t run. He picked up his phone.

You eat anything today? 3 minutes passed. Half a protein bar and what I believe was coffee, but may have been motor oil. He almost smiled. Come over tomorrow night. I’ll cook. Another pause. Longer. Ethan. We need to talk about what we’re actually doing here. I know. Come over and we’ll talk. That’s not Victoria. Come over.

The longest pause yet. He watched the three dots appear and disappear twice. 7:00. He set the phone down, looked at the ceiling. Okay. Then, he thought. Okay. She arrived at 7 sharp. She was always exactly on time. He’d noticed as if lateness was a form of dishonesty she refused to participate in.

She had a bag over her shoulder and the careful posture she wore in public. But the moment the door closed behind her, he watched her exhale something she’d been holding all day. “Ava’s at Denise’s?” she asked until 9. She nodded, set her bag down, followed him to the kitchen, and sat at the counter while he worked. And for a while, they were just quiet together, the particular quiet they developed over the past weeks, the kind that didn’t demand anything.

Then she said, “I took another test this morning.” And same answer. She said it evenly, but her fingers tightened around the water glass he’d set in front of her. I have an appointment Thursday with my private physician. full confirmation, blood work, everything. Do you want me to come? She looked at him quickly, startled, like the question was unexpected.

You don’t have to. I know I don’t have to. He turned from the stove. Do you want me there? She looked at him for a long moment. Something moved through her face, a complicated calculation, personal and private. Yes, she said finally, quietly. I think I do. He nodded and turned back to the stove because he understood she didn’t need a reaction, just the answer.

And he gave it to her without making it a moment, which was exactly what she needed. That was the first night she fell asleep on his couch. And he didn’t wake her. He sat across the room and watched her and thought carefully and seriously about what kind of man he was going to be in the next few months. Because a decision was coming.

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