“Lila Bennett,” she says.
I stand, and she grabs my shoulders and looks me over like she’s checking for bruises.
“You look alive,” she says.
“That’s my new aesthetic,” I reply.
She exhales, then pulls me into a hug that’s tight enough to make my eyes sting. Jo and Dani pile in, and suddenly I’m in a three-person sandwich of perfume and warmth and anger.
Dani pulls back first, eyes flicking to my stomach, then to my face. “Don’t tell me,” she says, already smiling. “No.”
I glare at Ethan over their shoulders. He sits there, composed, hands folded, watching me like he’s braced for impact.
“I’m pregnant,” I admit.
Jo freezes, then lets out a breath. “Oh my god.”
Priya’s eyes sharpen again. “Okay,” she says, then she looks at Ethan like she’s measuring him in inches. “So you’re him.”
Ethan stands, polite and calm, and offers his hand. “Ethan Cross.”
Priya doesn’t take his hand right away. She holds his gaze, then she shakes it, firm.
“I’m Priya,” she says. “This is Jo, and that chaos gremlin is Dani.”
Dani beams. “I’m not a gremlin, I’m a concept.”
Ethan’s mouth tilts. “Nice to meet you.”
Jo leans in toward me, voice low. “Are you okay?”
I nod, and I mean it. “I am now.”
Priya’s eyes don’t leave Ethan. “Good,” she says, then she gestures at the seat beside me. “We’re joining.”
Ethan doesn’t argue. He just signals the server and has chairs added like this was always the plan.
Dinner turns into laughter—and not the forced kind. Priya tells a story about a client who tried to expense a yacht as “team building.” Jo describes a disastrous date she bailed on by pretending she’d been called into work, and Dani says she recently got out of a speeding ticket by crying and then got annoyed when the cop handed her tissues like she was a child.
Ethan listens, adds a comment here and there, and doesn’t dominate the table. He watches me more than he talks, and I feel it, the steady awareness, the way he tracks my reactions without turning it into control.
At one point, Priya raises her glass of sparkling water and clinks it lightly against mine.
“To the fact you’re still here,” she says.
“To the fact I’m stubborn,” I reply.
“To the fact,” Dani adds, grinning, “you’re having a tiny person and that tiny person is going to have the best aunties and the scariest dad.”
Ethan’s brow lifts. “Scary?”
Jo smiles. “I didn’t make the rules.”
He blinks once, then he nods, accepting it like a contract he actually wants.
“I need the bathroom,” I say after dessert, partly for pregnancy reasons and partly to breathe for a second.
Priya points her fork at me. “Text me tomorrow.”
