Page 42 of Secret Baby Daddy

Tonight, after everything we’ve already said to each other in this room, the performance feels more ridiculous than the alternative.

“I’ll take the floor,” Calder says, already pulling a cushion off the armchair like he’s building himself a nest.

“You’ve been awake for two days managing an extortion crisis and a physical assault. You are not sleeping on a hardwood floor so I can have a queen bed to myself out of some misplaced chivalry.”

“I’ve slept in worse places.”

“I don’t care where you’ve slept. I care that tomorrow you need to be sharp enough to keep Sloane alive, and you will not be sharp after a night folded up like a lawn chair.”

I’m already dragging pillows off the bed, lining them up down the center like a makeshift Maginot Line.

“We’re adults. We can share a mattress without it meaning anything, provided you stay on your side of this extremely reasonable pillow wall.”

He studies the arrangement for a long moment, something almost fond flickering across his face before he schools it away.

“You built a border.”

There is something almost unbearable about being looked at like that by a man who spends his days assuming the worst about everyone’s intentions.

I built the pillow wall half as a joke and half as the only defense mechanism I had left standing after three days of watching him work.

It is doing a remarkably poor job of its actual function.

“Yep. Don’t cross it.”

“Understood.”

He sets his flashlight on the nightstand, angled toward the ceiling so the room isn’t entirely dark, and lowers himself onto the far side of the bed with the careful movements of a man mapping out exactly how little space he intends to take up.

“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t objecting to sharing the bed. I was objecting to being told what to do in my own extraction plan.”

“Everything is about your extraction plan to you, isn’t it.”

“Most things, yes.”

A faint, tired almost-smile.

“It’s a difficult habit to set down.”

“Try. Just for tonight.”

I pull the extra blanket up over both of us, careful not to disturb the pillow wall, and something in the gesture feels more intimate than it has any right to.

“Pretend you’re just a person in a bed, not a man clearing a room.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He doesn’t argue further, which tells me exactly how tired he is, and we settle in on opposite sides of my pillow diplomacy with the fire burning low and the wind still working at the old windows.

For a while neither of us speaks.

I listen to him breathing, slower than I expect.

No reporter waiting for a quote.

No client expecting the right answer.

No room I need to control.