I should get up. The doctor’s appointment isn’t until this afternoon, but I have numbers to run, listings to review, and a life to pretend I’m still planning.
Instead, I lie still and memorize the weight of his arm. The way his heartbeat thunders slow and steady against my spine. I let myself have this one selfish minute and bathe in his scent. Because minutes are all I have. The contract in his desk drawer says so.
He stirs before I do. Always does. Like some part of him knows the exact moment consciousness returns to my body.
“Riley,” He says as his hand slides upward from my stomach to cup my breast, thumb brushing idly over the nipple until I arch into him. “Stop thinking.”
“I’m not thinking at all.”
“Liar.” But he doesn’t push. He just presses his mouth to my shoulder, bites gently, and then rolls away with the discipline of a monk.
The loss of his heat is immediate. Cold air rushes in to fill the space.
The kitchen smells like coffee and the cinnamon sugar of French toast.
He’s already at the island when I shuffle in, wearing another of my new thigh-length nightshirts. He's reading an actual newspaper—who the hell still reads physical newspapers?—is spread next to his tablet.
“Read this,” he says, not looking up. His finger taps the screen of the tablet. “Somerville. Union Square. Foot traffic is heavy, and rent is manageable for a first-year operation. The space was a bakery before, so the plumbing for shampoo bowls is already roughed in. Saves you eight thousand in build-out costs.”
I blink. He’s done research. Real research. Not just throwing money at a problem to make it disappear, but actually studying floor plans, pedestrian flow patterns, and water line schematics.
I slide onto the stool beside him, close enough that his bare shoulder presses against mine. The listing shows a narrow storefront with big south-facing windows and original hardwood floors scarred by decades of boots.
“You hate Somerville,” I say. “You said the traffic is a nightmare.”
“I hatedrivingin Somerville. Somerville is acceptable if the revenue projections hold.” He turns the tablet toward me.
There’s a spreadsheet already open. Rent per square foot. Estimated client throughput by hour. Product markup on salon-grade color. He’s calculated everything, his formulas neat and ruthless, the same mind that moves contraband through the Port of Boston now applied to my margins.
My chest tightens until I can barely breathe. It’s so fuckingnormal. So domestic. So cruel.
Because he’s planning a future for me, that doesn’t include him—or the baby growing inside me.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask quietly.
He finally looks up. Gray eyes, sharp enough to cut. “Doing what?”
“Helping me. Like… like you care if the salon succeeds.”
The silence stretches. He sets down his coffee cup too carefully.
“Because,” he says, “whether you believe it or not, I want you to have what you want.”
I will,I think. After…
I don’t say it. I just nod and stare at the spreadsheet until the numbers blur.
When he leaves an hour later—black coat, gun holstered under his arm, a kiss pressed to my temple like he’s done it a thousand times before—I stand in the silence of the penthouse and let the walls shrink around me.
I take his laptop to the library. I have seventeen tabs open. Salon shampoo chair wholesalers in New Jersey. Hood dryer units with adjustable ventilation. Sterilization cabinets, color bar stations, and ergonomic cutting stools. I make a spreadsheet of my own because that’s what I do—I budget, I plan, I survive.
But every number feels hollow.
I price a reclining shampoo chair at $1,200 and imagine washing a client’s hair while my back aches from pregnancy. I look at sleek, minimalist stations and see a toddler’s sticky fingers reaching for the bottles. I calculate break-even metrics and wonder if the baby will have his eyes or mine, and whether it will matter when I’m just a story told in hushed tones.Your mother? She was a surrogate. She opened a salon. We don’t talk about her.
I close the laptop.
It’s too much. I wander to the window. Boston glitters below, crooked and distant. From up here, I can’t see where Dante Briggs once counted my money and named my price. I can’t see who Iwas. Worse, I can't see who I'll be.
