Page 199
Not out of the pregnancy. That part is already real in a way no contract could ever fully contain. But out of this arrangement. Out of being managed. Out of pretending that because there was money and paperwork and signatures, the whole thing can continue exactly as planned while reality politely adjusts itself around the Alester Chandler.
I shake my head once. “I can’t keep doing this like nothing’s changed.”
Alester is still looking at me. Too quietly.
I push through the silence because I know if I stop now, he’ll start speaking and I’ll lose the thread of my own thoughts.
“I know I signed things,” I say. “I know I accepted the money. I know I agreed to terms. But this—” I gesture toward the folder. “This changes what the agreement was. It has to. And I’m not saying that to be difficult. I’m saying it because I don’t want to keep pretending this is still what we both thought it was.”
My voice gets thinner on the last sentence, so I force myself to breathe.
“I’ll work out the money,” I say. “However long it takes. I’ll return it.”
Still nothing. That finally unnerves me.
I frown. “Are you hearing me?”
“Yes,” he says. Just that.
I wait.
He leans back slightly in his chair and studies me in a way that makes me feel like I’m standing in the wrong part of my own life. Then he says, very evenly, “This changes nothing.”
For a second, I think I misheard him. “I’m sorry?”
He taps the folder once with two fingers. “The results change the biological facts. They do not change what I want.”
I stare at him.
“I still want the baby,” he says. The words are simple. Calm. Not angry. Not emotional. Which somehow makes them hit even harder.
I laugh once, because I honestly don’t know what else to do with that. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m entirely serious.”
“No, Alester, you can’t just say that like this is a furniture order that arrived the wrong color.”
His expression doesn’t change. “It isn’t.”
“Then why are you talking like it is?”
“Because emotional language is not going to improve the situation.”
I blink at him. “That may be the most disturbing thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He ignores that. Or maybe he hears it and decides it’s irrelevant.
“I entered into this arrangement because I wanted a child,” he says. “That has not changed.”
I take a step back from the desk. “This child is not biologically yours.”
“Yes.”
The calmness of it nearly knocks the air out of me.
No outrage. No disbelief. No moral recoil. No demand for names.
Just yes.
