Page 45 of Leverage & Obedience

“Done,” I announce to my empty apartment as I wipe my hands on my jeans.

I stand in the middle of my packed-up living room. My hand is flat against my stomach, and I don’t remember putting it there. I know exactly why it’s there, which is the actual problem. I’m late. Five days late, and I’ve run like clockwork since I was fifteen. I did the math yesterday and then spent the rest of the day pretending I hadn’t. That stopped working when I felt a little nauseous this morning.

There’s a pregnancy test in my bathroom. I bought it eight weeks ago, after he spanked me for being a brat and fucked me silly on his desk. I stashed it in my apartment because I wanted to pretend I wasn’t hoping.

I pee on the stick and sit on the lip of the tub. The three-minute wait turns out to be a geological era.

Two lines.

The second one is faint, so I do the responsible adult thing and hold it up to the light at four separate angles like I’m appraising a diamond. Still pink. Still knocked up.

“Holy hell.”

I’m pregnant and I’m sitting on the edge of a bathtub in an apartment I’m packing up so I can move in with the man whose baby this is, and everything in me is shaking, and I press my palm flat to my stomach and cry.

The crying lasts five minutes. The pacing lasts longer. I get through a full sleeve of peanut butter crackers without remembering I dug it out of my purse.

The breeding talk started as dirty words he said to make me clench. Somewhere in there, we both started meaning it. Now it’s a fact, and I’m thrilled and terrified in roughly equal amounts, which tracks, because I spent years making damn sure nothing ever got the chance to stick.

The test goes in a tissue, in my purse. My phone says 8:20, and he’s going to be here in ten minutes.

I’m telling him the second he walks in. Before I can find forty reasons to wait or wrap it in a joke so I don’t have to say the real thing out loud. I grab a bottle of water and what’s left of my nerve.

The knock comes at 8:32. Two minutes late, which is so unlike him I almost open the door wrong.

He’s standing there in a Henley and jeans—moving clothes—with two empty boxes folded under one arm. His eyes do their usual sweep of me before they land on my face.

He goes still. Whatever he reads stops him in the doorway.

“Lily.”

“Come in.”

He sets the boxes down without looking away from me, and I step back to let him through. The door closes behind him, and the click is the loudest thing in the room. He’s reading me—too well, like always—and I haven’t said a word yet.

“Should I be worried?”

“No. Maybe. Sit with me.”

I lead him to the couch, which is the only piece of furniture still where it belongs. He sits angled toward me, knee against mine, patient, which somehow makes it harder.

I open my purse, find the tissue, and set it on the cushion between us. It falls open enough. Two pink lines, the second one faint but fully committed.

“I’m pregnant.”

The room goes quiet. His gaze locks on the test, and his face does about six things in one second. He picks it up like it’s made of spun glass, and his fingers are trembling—that same tremor I saw when he collared me.

When he looks up, his eyes are wet.

“Bren—“ My voice cracks, and then his arms are around me, pulling me in hard enough to crush the air out of me, and neither of us cares. His face is in my neck. His shoulders are shaking.

“Say it again.” His voice is wrecked.

“I’m pregnant.” I kiss his temple. “You knocked me up. Turns out all that breeding talk delivered. Who could have predicted.”

He laughs and pulls back to look at me. His eyes are bright with tears, and his mouth won’t stop smiling.

His hand settles on my stomach, palm flat, fingers spread, the same gesture from his bedroom the night I came back.