Page 29 of Say My Name

Professional power imbalance.

Cliff.

Eleven-year age difference.

Permanent connection to my boss.

No clean emotional exit.

I underline the last one, then regret it. The word emotional exposes the part of this I’m already trying to hide. Dominic offered a legal co-parenting arrangement. I’m the one complicating a legal co-parenting arrangement with four years of attraction I keep filing under irrelevant.

Sexual attraction should probably go in the risk column. Writing it would make this exercise more honest. It would also create a document containing the words Big D in my handwriting, and I have professional standards.

I move to the other side of the page.

I can verify his health. He already offered medical records, genetic screening, and any additional testing I require. He takes care of himself, a fact confirmed by the concierge doctor his assistant schedules and the indecent fit of his suits.

I write Health and refuse to elaborate.

Intelligence follows. Dominic will be unbearable if he ever sees the list, but denying the obvious won’t make him less qualified. He built Rowe Holdings from two rented offices into a company that can move entire markets. I’ve seen him absorb a hundred pages of analysis, find the assumption everyone else missed, and still remember a comment I made three meetings earlier.

Financial security requires one line. Stability takes another. His work consumes most of his time because he allows it. Rowe Holdings can survive if he decides a child comes first, clears his calendar, and expects everyone else to adjust.

Then there are shared values.

We argue about methods, timing, risk, and whether his deadlines violate labor laws. We don’t disagree about the importance of following through. Dominic values family, loyalty, education, and work done well. He respects my career because he knows what it costs to build one. He has never treated my ambition like an unfortunate habit I’ll eventually outgrow.

I stare at the two columns, the ink bleeding slightly where my pen has rested too long. Every risk on the page stems from work and family. Every qualification is Dominic himself. The man is both the problem and the solution.

Cliff’s name sits near the top of the left column. He trusted Dominic with my career when I needed a way out of my old job, and he’ll see this offer as a violation of that trust. My parents will struggle with it too. They can support my decision to become a mother and still have strong opinions about choosing a man who already occupies a place in our family.

I keep coming back to Dominic’s argument because the logic is irritatingly sound. They’ll worry if I choose someone anonymous. Cliff will ask about medical history, legal rights, and whether I’m prepared to handle every difficult day alone. He’ll hate that he can’t know the man whose genetics I choose.

He already knows Dominic, and he trusts him with his own children.

I tap the pen against Cliff’s name until a small blue dot appears beneath it. His anger matters, but it doesn’t give him approval rights over my body or the family I choose to build.

By midnight, the ice has melted in my glass, and the two columns on the legal pad stare back, perfectly balanced and utterly unhelpful.

Every clinic profile gives me facts: height, eye color, education, medical history, carrier-screening results, and an essay polished enough to reveal almost nothing about the person who wrote it. I can compare the information, confirm the testing, and choose without ever meeting him.

I can’t learn whether he shows up.

Dominic does.

I’ve watched him crouch beside Sophie while she explains a dance routine with the seriousness of someone presenting a merger. He listens through every detail and asks her to demonstrate the part he doesn’t understand. He never talks over her or glances toward an adult for a faster translation.

Theo trusts him with the complete confidence of a child who has never reached up and been ignored. I’ve seen him lift both arms toward Dominic in the middle of a conversation. Dominic picked him up, settled him against his side, and continued talking as if carrying a small boy for the next hour had always been part of his evening.

That same dependability defines him at work.

Dominic has defended my analysis in rooms where letting someone dismiss me would have been easier. He corrects people who give him credit for my ideas. When I challenge him in front of senior executives, he argues the point instead of punishing me for the setting. He has never used praise to make me owe him something afterward.

Daniel once made admiration feel like a debt I could never finish paying. Every opportunity came with an expectation, and every compromise became proof that I should make another one. Dominic has enough authority to do the same thing, and in four years, he never has.

I write Reliability under Qualifications, then circle it.

The man who listens to Sophie’s dance recital will show up to a parent-teacher conference. The man who holds Theo without being asked will learn which stuffed animal we can’t leave behind at a hotel. He won’t just appear for birthdays; he’ll be there for the stomach flu.