Page 206 of Say My Name

I move into Dominic’s apartment through accumulation, not a formal conversation or scheduled meeting about square footage and commute times. I spend the first night after Colorado there because neither of us wants to be alone. Then I stay the second night because my prenatal vitamins are already beside his coffee machine.

After that, things begin to migrate.

My tea claims a shelf in his kitchen. A charger materializes beside the couch, then another on his nightstand. My coat hangs beside his in the entryway. Dominic clears one side of his study for my dual monitors, although he measures the desk twice and spends an hour adjusting their height before he will let me use them.

There is a key to his apartment on my ring now.

He gave it to me while I was brushing my teeth, setting it beside the sink as if granting access to his home while I stood there in his T-shirt was a minor logistical correction.

“For convenience,” he said.

“Of course.”

His reflection met mine in the mirror. “And because I want you here.”

I put the key on my ring.

Now Dominic carries both suitcases from my condo into his apartment and stops outside the bedroom.

“Where do you want these?”

The question catches in my throat. He has cleared half his closet. There are empty drawers in the dresser and new hangers waiting beside his suits, but he still asks.

His patience used to give me room to hide. Now he uses it to give me a choice.

“Your bedroom.”

“Our bedroom?” he asks quietly.

I look at the man who flew across the country after withdrawing from a deal worth hundreds of millions. The man who stayed in Colorado after I gave him every truth I had spent months choking down. The man who asks before moving my suitcase ten feet.

“Our bedroom.” The word settles between us, solid and real, anchoring me to this new, shared space.

Satisfaction warms the sharp lines of his face. “That’s what I thought.”

A genuine curiosity cuts through the warmth settling in my chest. “Then why did you ask?”

“Because thinking I know what you want isn’t the same as hearing you tell me.”

He carries the suitcases inside, and I follow with the last thing I brought from my condo.

The original binder lands on the desk with a heavy thud.

Dominic glances at it. He knows what it is. The anonymous-donor profiles are still tucked behind the tab marked OPTIONS, followed by clinic research, projected costs, and the timeline I once believed could protect me from needing anyone.

“Do you want me to get rid of that?” he asks.

I rest my palm on the cover. For months, this binder was proof that I could build a future alone. Then it became evidence of the one variable my plan never accounted for: him.

“No.”

His eyes lift to mine.

“I don’t need it anymore. I’m also not ashamed of the woman who made it.” My fingers trace the edge. “She was scared. She was trying to give herself something she wanted.”

Dominic comes closer without touching the binder. He doesn’t offer to burn it or tell me to let it go; he gives me agency, even over this. “Where do you want it?”

I open the bottom drawer of the desk and place it inside.