Page 28 of Say My Name

“You’ve already talked to an attorney.”

“Only in hypotheticals. I didn’t use your name.”

She braces both hands on her desk, her knuckles white, and looks down at the report without reading it.

I want to tell her everything—about the last three days, about the future I can already see. But that would be a confession, not an offer. It would turn her choice into a referendum on my feelings, and I promised myself her answer would be free.

I stand and move toward the door.

“You don’t have to answer tonight,” I say, keeping my voice level. The only way her answer is free is if she feels the space to give it. “You don’t have to consider it at all.”

She looks up. “How am I supposed to go back to work after this?”

“Go home, Elena. Your hours are your decision, but you’re finished for tonight.”

Her eyes narrow. I feel a rush of relief; anger is a response I can meet, where her stunned silence was a void.

I stop at the doorway. “Your answer won’t cost you anything here. Take whatever time you need. The offer expires the second you say no.”

She doesn’t respond.

I have to leave now, before my own desire turns this offer into pressure. The elevator doors close on Elena standing behind her desk, staring at the empty doorway.

CHAPTER 5

Elena

My answer is no before Dominic reaches the elevator.

He’s my employer. Cliff’s best friend. The power imbalance is a chasm between us, and if I fall in, I don’t just lose a job. I lose Cliff. I lose my family’s peace. If we had a child and this went wrong—and it would go wrong—he would be a permanent fixture in my life, a ghost at every holiday and a name on every school form. The thought is suffocating. Saying yes isn’t just reckless. It’s insane.

I repeat that while I shut down my computer, during the drive home, and all the way through the lobby of my building. By the time I unlock my condo, I’ve nearly convinced myself the discussion ended when Dominic walked out of my office.

Then I remember the way he said he preferred the old-fashioned method.

I close the door and lean against it. “No.”

No one is here to argue. My skin is still hot from the conversation, a completely useless physiological response.

Dominic knew exactly where my mind went. He let me recover without teasing me, and that restraint left plenty of room for my imagination to supply everything he didn’t say.

His hands. His mouth. His weight over me while he tells me how he wants to make a baby.

My mind flashes to Cliff’s wedding. To what I know about him naked, about how he moves, about the way he likes hearing his name. His old nickname is accurate. None of which has any place in a sensible analysis of a prospective co-parent.

I push away from the door and set my bag on the entry table. My condo is exactly as I left it this morning. The counters are clear, the couch cushions are straight, and there’s nothing here to distract me from the proposal.

“He’s the wrong man,” I say.

Unfortunately, he fits almost every requirement I’ve spent months using to evaluate strangers.

I change into soft pants and an old college T-shirt, pour sparkling water over ice, and take both to the kitchen table. My fertility binder is locked in my office, but I don’t need it. I know the criteria well enough to recreate them from memory.

I draw a line down the center of a legal pad. The left column gets Risks. The right gets Qualifications.

The risks fill quickly.

Employer and employee.