“Look, I’m not happy about this entire situation. I’ve been with Greenwich since day one and now… what? I never applied to work at Grey Enterprises Holdings. No one in the New York office did, and we’re not stoked about it.”

The way he says Grey Enterprises Holdings makes it sound like something sonomous with Nazi Death Camp. There’s animosity in every word he’s said to me, and that’s become something of a pattern with my employees in New York. And several from Grey Publishing. There’s a possible mutiny brewing beneath me, and I’m too sick to put a stop to it.

“I hear you,” I start, my voice already breaking with each nauseating contraction in my stomach. “But can you just hold on one second, Mitch?” My finger barely has time to swipe against the mute button on the screen of my phone before I lean into the toilet and lose my breakfast. The floor is cold and too hard through my stockings and my toes are pinched past the point of pain in my slightly too tight Jimmy Choos. I’ve been trying to leave for the office for over an hour, but I can’t stop throwing up. No matter how many nausea lozenges I suck on, no matter how many crackers I force down, no matter how many minutes I lay down sipping water… I always end up sprinting for the bathroom. This happened once on a weekend I was home with Christian while I was pregnant with Calliope, and I’d ended up in the emergency room for dehydration.

If that happens today… I don’t even know what Christian will do.

“Mrs. Grey? Are you there?”

“I’m sorry, Mitch,” I say, pulling my head out of the toilet and unmuting the phone. I slump back against the wall and place a cool hand over my clammy forehead. “I’m listening.”

“Are you, though? Because it seems to me like you’ve just come in here like a bulldozer and flattened everything us lifers have built! You ran off Scott, you closed our press… now we’re not even Greenwich anymore? We didn’t sign up for this!”

“Neither did I. Believe me, this was not in any of my plans. But it was Carmen’s decision to sell, and I can’t do anything to change it. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure there is as little disruption in this process as possible, and no one loses their job. That’s the best I can give you, and if that’s not enough, I’ll be happy to write you a letter of recommendation.”

A bitter huff sounds through the phone, and I glance up at the ceiling, praying he’ll hang up before I hurl again.

“The amount we’re expected to deal with right now better be reflected in our compensation once annual raises start coming around…” he grumbles.

“That’s actually one of the positive things about this transition. As an entity of Grey Enterprises Holdings, we’re now much better funded. I expect that will be reflected in salaries going forward.”

His strife draws out for several more minutes, and I do my best to talk him down. By the end of the conversation, I’m at least sure he won’t quit. But even that small victory doesn’t stop me from once again falling face first into the toilet the moment I set the phone down.

“Ana?” Evan calls from behind me. I turn and see him watching me wearily, his frown deepening as he closely examines the color of my cheeks. “You alright?”

“Oh, yeah. Having a great time.”

He cringes. “Sorry… I just came up here to see if you were still planning on going to your doctor’s appointment. We should be leaving shortly.”

“Oh, shit…” I let my head fall into my hands, the general misery so close to overwhelming me I almost tell him to cancel. But then I remember that Christian said he would be there. So I have to put on a brave front to communicate to him that I can handle this and that his reaction to this pregnancy is completely overblown.

It’s that resolve that pulls me off the bathroom floor. I hurriedly take yet another nausea lozenge from the tin on my counter, then hand it over to Evan. Downstairs, Harper gives me a bottle of water to sip on the drive, and I cling to it for dear life.

All of that ends up on the asphalt of the parking lot in front of my OBGYN’s office when I step out of the SUV and immediately double over.

“Wyatt, is that a photographer?” Evan asks, bending to pull my hair away from my face and gesturing to the bushes at the front of the medical complex. I follow his gaze and see the movement that drew his attention. As Wyatt sets off to investigate, Smith and Harper move to surround me, shrouding me from view while keeping me in a claustrophobic bubble. I groan and hold onto Evan while he moves me around them and guides me through the front doors of the building.

Christian isn’t there waiting for me.

We check in at the front desk and I sit in the waiting room with my CPO, just like I did back in Boston. It’s painful this time. Not just because I’d prefer the CPO I had then to the one I have now, but because he doesn’t have to be here at all. This time, I should have Christian next to me, and I don’t. Not even after he promised he’d be here. Every second that ticks past seems to come slower and slower, but my eyes stay trained on the door. With each and every one of them, I can hear the words he said to me yesterday as clearly as if he was saying them in front of me right now. “I’ll be there.”

Well, where the fuck is he?

“We’re ready for you Mrs. Grey.”

My eyes shoot up to the friendly looking woman in magenta colored scrubs, standing at the door with a clipboard in her hands. She smiles at me expectantly, but my eyes move back to the door one last time. Then I reach into my purse for my phone. There isn’t a text from Christian, so I send one of my own.

You said you’d be here.

“Anastasia?” The nurse presses me. I toss my phone back in my bag, take a deep breath, and smile at her.

“Yes, sorry.” She sweeps her arm through the door and directs me to a room at the end of the hall. It’s oddly relieving walking into the examination room without my security team hovering over me. The nurse directs me to take a seat on the table and asks several questions. Then she leaves me for a few minutes to let me change into a paper gown. I take the time before the doctor arrives to check my phone for Christian’s response, but there’s nothing.

Only a ‘read’ receipt.

“Mrs. Grey?” I glance up at the knock on the door, and Dr. Greene steps into the room. She beams at me with all the summer light of August as she plops down on a stool and rolls her way across the room. “I hear you might be pregnant?”

“Yeah, I took a test and it was positive.”

Somehow, her smile brightens. “Well, we’re going to take another one, and if that one comes back positive, we’ll get you an ultrasound.”

“Okay, tha—“ I’m cut off by another knock on the door, which Dr. Greene acknowledges with confusion.

“Yes?”

A balding man who wears a suit beneath his white coat enters the room, looking embarrassed before he even starts to speak. “I’m sorry, Dr. Greene, but Mrs. Grey is actually going to have her examination performed by her… uh, personal physician.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Personal physician?”

He steps back and Christian walks into the room, followed closely by… Dr. Baker. My OBGYN from Boston.

“Good afternoon,” Dr. Baker says, her overly polite handshake a clear play at breaking the awkward tension in the room. “I’m so sorry that this is happening.”

“But it is,” Christian says, leaving no room for argument. He holds the door open and glances at Dr. Greene. “If you wouldn’t mind…”

The look of shock on Dr. Greene’s face is palpable. Her eyes move to the man in the suit, but he shakes his head in return. Straightening her jacket, she turns the same cheery smile on me and takes my hand.

“I’m sure you’re in very good hands, Mrs. Grey. Excuse me.”

Dr. Greene gets off the stool and marches proudly from the room. Once the door closes behind her, I turn wide eyes on my husband.

“You have got to be kidding me?”

“Don’t,” he snaps back, his voice a warning. I grind my teeth together and turn to Dr. Baker.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s alright.” She lowers herself onto Dr. Green’s vacated stool. “How are you feeling?”

My eyes move nervously to Christian, only to find him staring intently back at me, clearly ready to analyze everything I say.

“The morning sickness has been… a lot,” I tell her, trying to downplay any negative as much as possible. She nods and flips through the files she must have brought from her own records.

“That was true with Calliope too…” She flips through her papers again and starts reading through her notes, reciting the medications that had worked for me in the past. She’s not even able to get her prescription pad out though, before Christian is cutting her off.

“Tell her what you told me.”

“Mr. Grey, perhaps we should…”

“No! Tell her what you told me.”

Dr. Baker takes a deep breath and swivels on her stool to face me again. There’s hesitance in her eyes that wasn’t there before, and it makes me feel cold.

“What?”

“Mr. Grey called to talk to me about your history, and how it may affect this pregnancy…” She pauses, as though she’s uncertain how she should continue, and I take a bracing breath.

“And?”

“Well, generally, women who experience a placental abruption during their first pregnancy are at high risk for reoccurrence for every pregnancy thereafter.”

“How high is the risk?”

“It’s about 1 in 10.”

I take a much easier breath and look between the doctor and my husband like they’re crazy. “That’s only a ten percent chance it’ll happen. That means there’s a ninety percent chance it won’t.”

Christian turns yet another insistent look on the doctor, and she frowns. “It’s just that, it’s such a rare complication to begin with that the jump in probability is, medically, staggering. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a healthy pregnancy. It just means…” She pauses, like she can’t decide whether or not she’s actually trying to scare me or encourage me. “You had a very traumatic delivery the first time. There will be some damage and scarring to your uterus that could make any future complications you do experience… more severe than they were in the past.”

Christian stiffens, and my mouth goes dry.

“Oh.”

Dr. Baker smiles again, picking up the mood of the room in the same skilled way Dr. Greene did. “But we shouldn’t panic until we know all the facts. Why don’t we take a look, huh? You wanna lay back for me?”

I do as she asks, and place my legs in the plastic stirrups on either side of her. She wheels the ultrasound closer to me and pulls a long line of blue gel across the probe. Once it slides inside of me, my eyes immediately dart to the monitor it’s connected to, and Christian’s hand wraps around mine. I flinch a little as the wand moves around, but any discomfort vanishes from my mind the moment I see the small flicker amongst the static in front of me. When Dr. Baker turns up the volume, and the sound of a thrumming heartbeat fills the vacant silence around us, Christian’s hold on my hand tightens.

I turn to him, and feel the first sense of hope I’ve been able to conjure in days. His eyes are stuck on the monitor and the crease in his brow isn’t from anger or defensiveness. It’s discovery. For a long breath, Christian stares at the flicker as though he’s seeing the sun rise after a night he thought would never end. There’s awe. There’s surprise. There’s want…

And then he looks at Dr. Baker and his eyes cloud over again.

“What’s wrong?”

My gaze shoots to Dr. Baker only to find her carefully composed demeanor now colored with concern.

“It seems…” She shakes her head and stops, moving the wand around again and narrowing her eyes as she leans in to examine the screen. When she finds whatever it is she’s looking for, she turns a grim look on Christian. “I see two heartbeats.”

“What?”

She points to the monitor, circling her finger around one black circle, then another. “It’s twins.”

Twins?

My mouth drops open as what she’s showing me comes into focus. Two tiny disturbances in a field of static gray that each flicker with their own unique signs of life. It takes a careful ear, but listening to the sound from the ultrasound machine closely, I start to hear the difference between the two heartbeats.

“Oh my god,” I breathe, reaching out to touch the screen.

“What does that mean?” Christian asks.

“It means… Well, pregnancies with multiples present risks all their own. With Ana’s history…” She pauses in the same way, like she’s preparing to give devastating news. “It makes the risk of a placental abruption much higher.”

“How much higher?” I ask, before Christian can go on whatever rant he’s got on deck. “20%? 30%? 50?”

The doctor worries her lip a bit with her teeth, then takes a deep breath. “I’ve never seen a case where a woman with your history became pregnant with multiples and had a normal pregnancy.”

“No,” Christian says, dropping my hand and storming away from the bed. He begins to pace, his hands up in the air as if he doesn’t really know what to do with them. “No. No. No. No. No.”

I block him out and turn to the doctor. “So, you’re saying this pregnancy isn’t viable?”

“I’m not saying it isn’t viable. I am saying it’s high risk. Extremely high risk.”

“So what does that look like?”

“Well, let me take some measurements.”

She starts to drag her cursor across the screen, drawing lines that measure the size of the babies. Christian returns to my side, but his jaw is locked, his body is seized with stress, and there’s a dangerous fight brewing in his eyes. He shakes his head the entire time Dr. Baker works, so I do my best not to look at him.

“I’d say you’re about nine weeks, and based on the size of the fetuses, I think you’re looking at permanent bed rest starting around four, maybe five months.”

So only two months from now…

“And that will let me carry them to term?”

“I can’t give you any definitives, but if you intend to move forward with this pregnancy…” 

“I do,” I say before any other suggestion can be made. 

“Well, then… I would probably account for an early delivery in your birth plan.”

“Will I be able to carry them long enough for them to survive?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about her?” Christian interjects again. Dr. Baker turns to him, a questioning eyebrow arched high over her amber colored eyes. “You said that the damage from Calliope’s delivery could make all of this worse, and the only thing that could be worse than her almost dying, is the absence of ‘almost.’”

Her lips press together as she weighs the advice she has to give. “We know what to expect this time and we can plan in a way we couldn’t before… I’m the best, and I’ll do everything I can.”

“That’s not good enough.” He turns again, moving all the way to the far side of the room. His back is turned to us, his hands on both his hips, his breathing exaggerated. “Dr. Baker, would you give me a moment alone with my wife?”

“Of course, Mr. Grey.” She gives me a reassuring kind of smile and squeezes my hand before she makes her exit. I keep my eyes focused on Christian, waiting for a tirade that doesn’t come. He just stands there, looking at the wall.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Christian…” I begin, nervously. He lets out a defeated sigh, then turns back to look at me.

“You know, I know what Kate is going to say to you on your deathbed. It’s a beautiful speech, you’re really going to love it..”

My throat tightens, and I swallow automatically. “Stop…”

“I know what your dad’s face looks like the moment he realizes he’s lost you forever. I know what my mother’s tears sound like, I know what color Mia’s complexion turns… You think I’m being callous, but it’s only because all of that is very real to me. I’ve been trapped in that moment every time I’ve gone to sleep this week, and I’m telling you, Ana… I can’t live through that again. I can’t lose you.”

“Christian…” My eyes start to fill with tears and words fail me. Stuttering sounds croak their way from my throat like a broken muffler, but I can’t turn them into sentences. What is there to say?

I think he senses my moment of weakness, because he flies across the room and takes me by the hand.

“Please,” he pleads. “Ana… please. You can put it all on me. You can hate me for it. You can punish me for it. I can live through that. I can’t live through losing you. Please, don’t do this.”

I turn away, unable to bear the unusual supplication in his gaze. Dr. Baker’s insights have suddenly painted this whole scene a new color that my eyes haven’t quite adjusted to yet. I don’t even know what I’m thinking right now, and Christian’s pleas on top of my own uncertainty is overwhelming.

“I need to think about it,” I mumble. His calm and subjugated demeanor evaporates, and he shoves away from the examination table.

“Think about what? Did you hear what the doctor just told you? You can’t do this, Anastasia.”

“That’s not what she said…”

“That’s exactly what she fucking said! You can wade through the margins looking for as much hope as you want, but she was very clear about what we should expect. It’ll be worse than it was last time. You’re not going to make it through this, and I will never accept that.”

“Well then let’s talk about things that we’ll never be able to accept, Christian. What do you think it’ll do to me to wake up everyday knowing that I made the choice to end the lives of my children?”

“They’re not our children.” He growls the menacing words through clenched teeth, the same uncontrollable rage boiling to the surface I saw last week before I ran to my dad’s, and it once again has me moving away from him. This time though, he stops and takes a moment to breathe, rather than let his anger explode out of control. Still, when he speaks again, it’s through clenched teeth. “What about Calliope?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling you!” I reach down for my stomach. “This could have been Calliope. It was Calliope. And I wouldn’t trade her to take everything that happened back, even if it had been worse. I wouldn’t even consider it. Not for a second.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, if you don’t…” He chokes slightly over his words, so he has to swallow and change direction. “Calliope is here, real, and she needs you. You’re her mother and right now, what you’re talking about could leave her in this world without you. I lost my mother at four and all that I have left of her are a couple flashes of a hairbrush. Calliope’s not even two, Anastasia. She’ll have nothing. She won’t even remember you.”

That hits me harder than anything he’s said so far. The pain in the last part of that statement is almost unfathomable, and I have to turn around again so he doesn’t see the tears welling in my eyes. Half of me expects his touch, though it never comes. He lets me cry softly to myself, letting me feel everything he just said to me.

“This is real too,” I say at last.

“What?”

“I saw you during the ultrasound, the moment you saw the heartbeat. This is real. You can pretend it isn’t all you want, but it is. I heard what Dr. Baker said, I hear the pain in your voice… but that does not make this an easy decision for me.”

“I don’t expect it to be easy. I expect you to be rational.”

I blink, then look away again. I can feel the fight inside me dying away and the feeling that takes its place is dark, like a cloud rolling across a clear blue sky that bleeds the color from everything around me. I feel an echo of oppressive hopelessness swirling menacingly over me, calling me into it’s deadly depths like a misplaced lighthouse in the middle of a storm.

It’s everything I fear, and I feel it creeping towards me with a kind of inevitability that can’t be stopped, except by the warmth and light emanating from my womb.

“I need some time to think about it,” I say, numbly.

His head rolls back with frustration, but he doesn’t scream at me anymore. He clenches his jaw, pulls his lips tightly together, and starts to nod.

“Fine. I’ll go back to Escala tonight. But I’m coming home tomorrow, and we are going to make a decision.”

I nod. 

“I don’t plan on changing my position.”

“I know.”

He swallows, then starts toward me. I nearly trip and fall to the floor in my hurry to be engulfed in his arms. He holds me so tightly against him, it’s like he’s ready to fight a tug-of-war against death to keep hanging on.

“I love you, and I won’t survive without you.” He leans his forehead against mine. “Your heart beats, my heart beats. Please remember that.”

I nod, and his lips melt into mine.

An hour later, I’m home and am greeted with the sounds of Calliope’s misery filled cries the moment I come through the door. Mackensie has her in her arms, while Gail hovers over them with her favorite pink elephant in hand, but my baby just wants to scream. Big alligator tears roll down her cherry red cheeks, and the sight of them makes my nipples ache.

“Oh, Calliope,” I say, reaching for her the moment I step into the kitchen. Her gray eyes lock with mine, and she nearly throws herself from Mackensie’s grip in an attempt to get to me. I catch her just in time to keep her from tumbling to the floor, while she suctions to me like an octopus wrapping around her prey. Her tears stop almost the moment I have her, replaced instead with a whimpered ‘mama’ that she repeats into my blouse over and over again.

“She’s been like that since you left,” Kensie says, drooping onto a barstool and laying over the top of the counter. “I’ve tried everything.”

I reach up and place a hand on her forehead, then kiss both of her cheeks. She doesn’t feel warm, and now that she’s in my arms, she’s fairly pacified.

“She misses her Daddy,” I say, hugging her against me and swaying back and forth.

“Should I take her to Escala?”

I shake my head. “No, I want her with me. Go ahead and take the day, Kensie. I’ve got her.”

“Are you not going into work?”

“Not today.” I lean back so I can look at Calliope’s face, and brush away a few stray hairs that have stuck to the tears on her cheeks. “She can hang out with me in my office here.”

“Alright,” Kensie says, though her tone expresses a great deal of reservation. “I’m just going to hang out in the staff residence then, if you need me.”

“Thank you.” I give her a kind, but dismissive smile, and start towards my office. Calliope’s playroom is just across from me, so I set up the baby gate at the end of the hall to keep her where she’s supposed to be, then keep both doors open for her to move between the rooms freely. Her toys end up scattered over the pretty rug on the floor that keeps my office from being too oppressive and masculine, the way Christian’s office feels. I find myself distracted on most of my phone calls and ignoring more emails than I probably should, but I can’t bring myself to care. I know what a dire position we’re in right now, I know that Phoenix is still in it’s baby stages and needs my nurturing to get it where it needs to be, I know the promises I’ve made… but the only thing that feels good right now is Calliope.

She makes the storm clouds part, she breaks through the darkness shrouding my thoughts like golden sunlight.

She’s what I’m fighting for, she’s what I have to lose. And yet, the battle waging between Christian and I, between my fear and my hope, and between reality and possibility doesn’t touch her. She is joy, and nothing can dampen that.

After yet another lonely dinner, Calliope and I move into the living room. I build her a squishy bed of pillows and blankets on the floor and turn on The Little Mermaid while I read through the edits Stevens has submitted for Phoenix. It’s a good arrangement, until Calliope starts trying to sing along with ‘Under the Sea,’ and everything else, work included, disappears.

I push my laptop to the side and move closer to her, brushing the tip of my nose against hers again and again until she starts to giggle. The sound makes my heartbeat quicken.

“I love you so much, Calli-lily,” I tell her. She lets herself fall forward so that her lips mash into mine, and I pull her into my lap while I smother her with kisses. Her laugher chimes around me like a bell that wards away the demons, clearing my mind and calming my soul. I lean back against the couch and stare into the eyes that mirror so perfectly the ones that own my heart. “Do you want to be a big sister?”

“No,” she replies, with the same kind of causal dismissal she would use if I offered her more peas or a cup of juice. I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion, the stress, or the start of a complete mental breakdown, but her response makes me laugh so hard, I nearly lose my grip on her. She laughs back, clearly having a fabulous time even though she has no idea what’s going on, and it only makes the warmth surrounding her glow brighter. I squeeze her as hard as I can.

“You really are your father’s daughter.”

“Daddy?”

“Yeah. Just like Daddy.”

My fingers find their way to her sides and I start to tickle her just as an unexpected commotion erupts in my entryway. I look up, hoping the beep from the security alarm is a prelude to Christian’s entrance, but instead, it’s followed by raised voices. Harper, who has spent the last hour silently camped out at the kitchen table, gets up with her hand on the holster attached to her hip. I nervously start to take Calliope in my arms, preparing to dart to the basement, then stop when Kate, clinging tightly to Kennedy, storms into the living room looking as though she’s just been through an ordeal.

I perk up immediately.

“Kate?”

She lets out a huff and moves Kennedy higher up on her hip, pointing over her shoulder to the four hulking figures hovering in the shadows behind her. “That’s a little much, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah. Well… Christian.”

She nods her head in agreement, but rolls her eyes as she moves next to me on the couch. After placing Kennedy in the pillowy bed next to Calliope, she kisses my baby on the forehead and plops down on the couch next to me. There’s an accusation in her eyes that I don’t understand.

“What?”

“Your husband is having a breakdown in your apartment.”

“What?!”

She shrugs. “Elliot is over there right now trying to talk him off the ledge, but apparently he’s completely fucking losing it. And there’s lots of alcohol involved so, you know, only good things can happen from this point forward.”

I shake my head in disbelief and start to get off the couch, but she reaches out and wraps her fingers around my wrist to stop me.

“Ana. I know you had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and now Christian is on a rampage.” She hesitates, which is unusual for Kate. “What happened?”

I collapse back into the sofa, fighting against the pinprick sting of tears at the corners of my eyes. The darkness my afternoon with Calliope managed to keep at bay, starts to seep through the cracks in the armor around me, and I feel myself falling into the pain-filled chasm Christian and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of once again without any idea how I’ll ever climb out.

“It’s twins,” I tell her, and the concern on her face is instantly replaced with joy.

“Twins?! But Ana, that’s amazing!”

I give her a dark glare that drains away her relief like water through a sieve. “It’s going to be like last time. The doctor told me that I was already at high risk for another placental abruption, twins makes it a certainty. And the scarring from my first abruption could make this one worse. Much worse.”

In the exact same way I watched it happen with Christian, then Luke, then my father, a look of abject horror sweeps across her face. Her color fades, her mouth drops open, and her eyes reflect a kind of terror I can’t let myself feel. She blinks wildly for a few minutes, processing what I’ve said and somehow coming up more lost.

“He flew in my doctor from Cambridge,” I continue. “I thought maybe she was overreacting or letting my history cloud her actual, medical opinion, because everything she told me just got worse and worse. But I stopped by my regular obstetrician’s office and when she looked at the charts… well, she didn’t even give me the slim ray of hope Dr. Baker did. She told me the risk is so bad that the states with the strictest abortion laws have exemptions for this situation. ‘Danger to the life of the mother.’” 

The quote tastes bitter on my tongue.

“Jesus.” The word is filled with hurt and disbelief, in the exact same tenor that resonates inside of me. She curls into herself a little as she pushes back into the cushions, then blinks back at me with a kind of sympathy that tells me she doesn’t have the sage words or wisdom to guide me forward. “What are you going to do?”

A tear breaks over my waterline, and I dash it away before more can follow. “I don’t know. I hear what the doctor’s are telling me, I understand what it means, and I can feel what it’s doing to Christian… but I just can’t do it.”

“You’re pro-choice…”

“Yeah, choice. I don’t choose this. I don’t want this. I—“ My eyes fall on Calliope, who has started drifting off with her cousin, and the argument inside of me changes. I don’t know how, I don’t know what to… and the frustration I feel in that confusion breaks the last of my self-control. I dissolve into all consuming tears, and Kate wraps all the way around me.

“I know, Ana. You’re a mother protecting her children. Of course you can’t.”

“Am I though?” I shake my head and pull away from her, tears still streaming down my face as I unload everything on her that I can’t carry alone anymore. “What if I don’t survive, Kate? What if it happens exactly the way it happened last time, except I don’t wake up? I’ll leave Christian absolutely devastated, alone, with three kids under the age of two. Even if it’s just Calliope… He’s twenty-four, he could live another seventy years. I couldn’t even fathom having to live through that amount of time without him. How can I risk putting him through that?”

There’s a vision that runs through my mind then, one I’ve seen over and over again since I took that pregnancy test. Christian and I tossing the kids into the rust colored piles of leaves beneath the giant trees in our backyard. It suddenly disappears. There’s no laughter from my daughter, no blissful happiness behind the smile of the man I love. It’s just gone. A picture of Calliope’s graduation takes its place, but as I disappear from the image, the pride on Christian’s face changes to regret and longing, while Calliope smiles through a deep kind of sadness I can feel the permanence of.

“So… are you going to terminate the pregnancy?” Kate’s nervous voice breaks through the picture. I bite my lip while the images dissolve from my mind and slowly shake my head.

“I can’t. There’s absolutely no way I could go through with it, and even if I could, I’d never be able to live with myself.”

She nods solemnly, then wraps her arms around me again. I sit in her embrace for a few long, silent moments, then I bury my face in her shirt and let myself fall apart.

Next Chapter

Christian really didn’t come home Sunday night, but my security team was there waiting for me. Even Woods, who I thought might get the axe once Christian realized he’d been the one to let me go. The moment Calliope and I came through the door, we were shut down tight. Wyatt stood behind me while I fed Calliope dinner, Harper hovered in the room while I set her in the bath, and Smith spent the night acting as a century outside my bedroom door. 

The moment I wake up, all four of them take shifts shadowing me so that I’m never left alone. None of it phases me or even feels off… until we pull up to my office and find Taylor there waiting for us, pushing the paparazzi back. 

And he isn’t alone. 

Luke is standing on the opposite end of the courtyard, holding the line from the other side, which surprises me because I fully expected Luke to be put on the security team’s persona-non-grata list for a while after he helped me evade my handlers. But he would only be here if Taylor called him. And Taylor would only call him if there was a reason…

He doesn’t look at me when I get out of the car, and when I turn to eye him speculatively, I notice there’s a gun on his hip. Taylor has one too, so I turn to the people filing out of the SUV behind me and, sure enough, I realize for the first time that every single one of them has a weapon holstered somewhere on their body. 

Suddenly, the casual brush off Luke gave me in the car back in Montesano feels like a dire warning, but I can’t get his attention while he’s busy pushing back on aggressive photographers. Harper takes hold of my elbow and drags me inside while Woods, Smith, and Wyatt form a protective bubble around me. Luke and Taylor wait til we’ve got a wide berth, then take the car to park. I’m ushered into the building so aggressively that I don’t even have the time to demand to know what the fuck is going on before they push me into the elevator.

“Owe!” I whine, wincing as Wyatt jumps away from me and the toes he’s just crushed beneath his boot. The elevator is too full with all five of us crammed inside, so he bounces off of Woods and steps on me again. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Grey. Here, let me…” He tries to back away but he’s blocked by Harper. She tries to shift around Smith, but by the time they’ve reshuffled, I’m merely pressed up against Woods instead. 

Thankfully, the doors open.

The four of them file through the doors in front of me, then stand to the side to let me lead the way into my office. The elated faces that greet me when I come through the doors make my heart thud uncomfortably in my chest.

“Hey, boss!” Stevens grins. “I gotta say, you were right. I flew through my Phoenix chapters this weekend. I couldn’t put it down!”

It takes me a moment to breathe through the residual chaos beating furiously in my chest before I understand what he’s talking about. 

“Oh. That’s great,” I reply, weakly. His brow furrows at my less-than-enthused response.

There was an email from Christian waiting for me in my inbox this morning, giving me explicit instructions on how I’m supposed to start this transition. He imagines we’ll be fully moved into the fourth floor of GEH by the end of today. And somehow, that’s only the second most ludicrous demand he’s made this week.

“I need everyone to meet in the conference room,” I announce to the room, failing to hold any strength in my voice that might assuage the concern that’s reflected back at me. When no one moves, I stand to the side and sweep my arm towards the door, and the uneasy quiet breaks with the commotion of their migration. I pause just briefly before I follow them in to slip a nausea lozenge in my mouth, praying it will carry me all the way through this meeting.

But it’s not just pregnancy that has me ready to throw up right now.

The nervous chatter around the table seems to center mostly on Phoenix. That something happened and Grey Publishing took it back. They’re right, but not in the way they think they are.

“What’s going on, Ana?” Jacki finally asks.

I take a deep breath. No need to sugar coat it.

“We’ve been bought out. Starting today, we’re being absorbed into Grey Publishing.”

There’s silence, then uproar.

“I knew it!” Roberts shouts. “I knew it the moment you walked in here. She’s a plant. She always was. That’s why Grey built the app, he was building it for himself! She ran Scott out of here, and made things real nice and easy for her husband to come in here and take out the competition.”

I hold up my hands defensively. “Look, I know how this looks. But I swear, this was done above me. Carmen agreed to the sale last Friday, and the contracts were signed before I even knew about it.”

“Yeah, we’ll be sure to find comfort in that from the unemployment office,” Stevens sneers.

“No one is losing their job,” I assure them. “We’re all moving together.”

“Moving?” Jacki asks.

I nod. “You have until noon to pack up your desks and move your belongings to the GEH building. We’ll be on the fourth floor. I’ve been told Grey Publishing is making room for us now.”

“And then what? We just… continue on? What am I supposed to tell my authors?”

“That their contracts are still valid and this acquisition means they have a much more powerful press and better funded marketing arm behind them.” I pause for more questions or comments, even complaints. But the only thing I get are bitter looks. I lean over the table, pressing my palms to the cool wood. “We have a meeting scheduled with the New York office and GP at 1PM to discuss our strategy going forward. I suggest you start packing.”

“Does this mean that GP is going to take over the Greenwich Library?” Steven asks before anyone can move.

“Yes.”

“And Phoenix?” Jacki adds. “They get that back too?”

“They get everything. Our press, our warehouses, our inventory, our front list… all of it. We are now wholly part of Grey Enterprises Holdings.”

“So, we didn’t win,” Rogers grumbles. “You made that big show here last week about how we’d finally come out on top. But we didn’t. Grey always wins in the end.”

That hits me in the gut. Not just because this was a battle and he did win, but because I’m fighting another battle with him now. He can’t always win, and I try to convey that to my team now.

“Because this was the only way they would survive.” I stand up straighter and try to force my face to reflect the sincerity of what I’m about to say. “I want every single one of you to know how proud I am of everything we’ve achieved here. This sale is because all of you worked so hard that it scared the most powerful name in Seattle publishing. So, if you think I’m going to go in there and let them change what we do, then I’m afraid you’re about to be very disappointed.”

Stevens nods. “Alright. Let’s go, I guess.”

I offer the room a weak smile as each of my employees pushes away from the table. Abby follows me to my office to tell me that she’s scheduled my OBGYN appointment for tomorrow afternoon, and stops the same way I do once we come through the door. My security team is spread out across my office, loading my things into boxes.

“What are you doing?” I demand. Evan shoots a guilty look at me.

“Sorry, Ana. Mr. Grey’s orders. He doesn’t want you lifting anything.”

I want to scowl, but I can’t help but feel a small amount of hope, that maybe, this means he’s coming around. Not happy about it, but at least starting to make accommodations…

That’s something, right? 

Abby joins me at my desk to help me start packing the little things I have tucked inside, and the personal items strewn across the top. With so many helping hands, I’m done much more quickly than the rest of my team, so I meander through the office, lending help where I can.

Most of my staff travel into the city on the train, so there’s a kind of caravan we have to organize between the few cars we do have. My security team makes several trips to the office before anyone actually leaves, transporting boxes and office equipment. It’s just before noon before we start figuring out how to move people.

“I can take five,” I offer, simultaneously sending a text to Woods to leave the rest of my team at GEH to free up seats. He isn’t happy about it, but with Taylor and Luke back on paparazzi duty, he eventually relents and returns to GSP with an empty vehicle. Every spot is filled. 

I slide into the front passenger seat, while Woods moves Calliope’s car seat to the trunk. There are impressed comments about the quality of the leather on my seats or the gentle purr of the powerful engine as we weave through the streets to our new building. It makes me feel a little self-conscious. Like I’m reminding them how close I really am to the force that’s displacing them.

That this is all my fault.

But when we finally get to GEH, all the resentment I felt back at GSP melts away into awe. We step through the main doors and wide eyes bounce around at the state-of-the-art lobby. I’ve been here so many times that it’s all very unimpressive to me now. But seeing it again through their eyes reminds me of the remarkable things that have happened here, that we’re now a part of. And the remarkable man behind all of them.

My heart seems to skip a beat, then stutter unevenly as I start towards the elevators.

We’re greeted with celebration when we come through the main doors of Grey Publishing. There’s a banner over reception offering welcome, gift bags with Grey branded swag, and plenty of desk space already cleared out to accommodate everyone. They even have their technology all set up and ready to go, complete with full GEH user profiles.

Which is I guess what happens when you go from having John in New York handle all your IT, to Welch.

“Ana, we’re so excited you’re here!” Claire beams the moment I’m in range of a hug. She throws her arms around me, and pulls me against her. “If I had to pick one person to take over for Elizabeth, I’d want it to be you.”

“Take over?” I blink around at the staff, noting the happy recognition that comes back to me every time I lock eyes with one of the old SIP hold-overs. Elizabeth isn’t anywhere. “We won’t be working together?”

Claire shakes her head. “No, she cleaned out her whole office last Friday for you. Take a look for yourself.”

I follow the same carpeted path I took a few weeks ago when I’d come to get the Grey Publishing contract out of her. Sure enough, the office that had been so crammed full of books and various plants then, is completely stark now. Nothing is left but the furniture, a computer, and a giant bouquet of pink peonies waiting for me in the middle of my new desk. I stumble towards them numbly and pull the card from their petals. It’s written in Christian’s handwriting.

I miss you.

My lip starts to tremble and my heart races against my ribcage. I stare down at the indents his pen made in the paper, tracing them with my finger as if feeling them will let me feel him too. It’s an empty kind of hope that makes me feel worse, until I hear a soft knock on the door behind me.

When I turn, he’s there.

“Hi,” he begins, wary. I have to take a breath before I can respond.

“Hi.”

“Your uh… security team told me you weren’t able to keep anything down this morning.” He fidgets nervously with something in his hands, which draws my attention to it for the first time. It’s a take-out carton. “I thought you might be hungry.”

My stomach growls, and he almost smiles. 

“Thank you,” I reach out for the cardboard container and when our fingers brush, there’s a jolt of warm electricity exchanged between us. It doesn’t spark and make me jump away, it makes me want to move closer. It makes it feel impossible to pull back. I think he experiences the sensation in the same way, because his hand lingers against mine far longer than necessary before he pulls it away. And when he does, he looks almost tortured. 

With a step back, I hop up on my new desk, pop open the lid of my container, and dip my chopsticks into the noodles. 

“Did you fire, Elizabeth?” I ask, keeping my eyes on my food.

“No. She received an offer for an editor-in-chief position at a much higher volume publishing house. She was very excited to hand me her resignation last week.”

I frown, knowing in my gut that it’s not a coincidence that his current editor-in-chief just happened to find a better job at the exact same time Christian wanted to give his wife this one. And, honestly, her absence isn’t extremely welcome. With the explosion of the Greenwich Library that damn near always keeps my email in a gridlock, it’s become clear that I’m going to need to split some of my responsibilities. Elizabeth would have been a great partner.   Without her, well, I guess I’m back to having no one…. 

He takes a few steps towards me while I eat and mull over this new information, then he places a finger beneath my chin and tilts my face up to his.

“How are you feeling?”

It’s difficult for me to respond at first. His touch once again sends tingles over my skin that I just want to stop and let myself feel. I want him to lower his lips to mine and tell me that he understands me. I want to collapse in his arms and hold him while I paint the picture of the future I see for us now. The one that makes it all worth this risk… Maybe if he sees it, he’d understand.

Instead, I place the noodles on the desk next to me and look up at him with lost eyes.

“Fine. I—uh… I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. They’re just going to do labs and some tests, but I’m going to get an ultrasound.”

He nods, solemnly. “Okay. Just have Abigail forward it to Andrea so she gets it on my calendar, and I’ll be there.”

“You will?”

His face crinkles with pain. “Of course I will. Ana, I love you. I’m always going to be there for you.” He steps closer, moving his body between my legs, and rests his forehead against mine. For a moment, he just stands there and lets his declaration simmer between us. Then he starts in an agonized whisper, “Please, just… try to see it my way. Try to see what you’re asking me to risk.”

The next breath I take feels heavier than just air. Like, I’m breathing in his torment. A flash of my father’s face moves through my memory from when I told him I was expecting. Even Luke had flinched.

“I do,” I breathe back. “It just… doesn’t change anything.”

His body deflates slightly with the defeated breath he lets out, so I reach around and pull my body against his, holding him as tightly as I can. He shakes his head a few times, then makes a resigned sound that ends with his lips crashing into mine.

It isn’t an admission of defeat, or an attempt to sway me to his side. It’s a temporary truce that has to happen because he simply cannot go on not touching me. Not kissing me. Not loving me…

And I fall into it just as hard as he does.

We wrap around each other in every way we can, pulling against the other in a constant attempt to drag them closer. His tongue tangles with mine in the way his fingers tangle in my hair. My ankles lock together behind his hips as if they’ll hold him there forever. I let myself pour every ounce of the longing I’ve felt for him in these endless days apart. 

When he finally pulls away, we pant together in silence for several long seconds, then he reaches up to cup the side of my face.

“There must be something wrong with your sense of self-preservation.”

I let out a humorless laugh. “You know what it’s like to love someone more than your own life.” A hand drops to my stomach, and he follows it with his eyes. Then he shakes his head, and pulls that hand away from my body and into his.

“Come on. We’re going to be late.”

We’re the last to walk into the much larger conference room where my team is gathered. Normally, I hate that. But Christian doesn’t seem fazed. He pulls out a chair for me at the head of the long, rectangular table, then steps into the open space at my right and looks around the room. The faces of my employees from New York on the huge screen against the wall show mostly confusion, which Christian acknowledges with an air of surprising humility.

“Good afternoon. On behalf of Grey Enterprises Holdings and Grey Publishing, I would like to extend our warmest welcome. The accomplishments of the Greenwich team are truly remarkable and it is my hope that we will continue to build on those successes going forward. And I don’t think there is a person I’d have more confidence in to ensure that success than your new editor-in-chief, Mrs. Anastasia Grey.”

He gestures for me to take over, but as I rise and he takes the seat next to me, there’s a cough from one of the Grey Publishing employees across the table.

“You’re wife,” he says beneath the obnoxious, fake hacking. Christian’s eyes flash dangerously in the man’s direction, but it’s Claire and Jacki who leap to my defense

“Shut up, Jason,” Claire snaps.

“Yeah, who even are you? Because she’s a best-selling author,” Jacki adds.

His eyes widen in surprise, and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Jesus. Sorry for having a little loyalty to Elizabeth.” Steven’s leans across the table, mouth open like he’s about to say something, but I hold up a hand to stop him.

“It’s alright. This is a very sudden change and we’re going to have some growing pains. But I hope, Jason, that I’ll earn your trust the same way that Elizabeth did.”

“Uh… yeah.” He recedes slightly in his seat, his face turning the lightest shade of pink. Several smug pairs of eyes from the GSP team turn to me, while the Grey Publishing staff I don’t know looks at me with a new curiosity. I turn to Christian, expecting him to leave, but he leans back in his seat and stares back at me with rapt attention.

“Alright,” I begin, turning away from him and trying not to feel his evaluating eyes. “We’ll get started with the Greenwich Library…” I hesitate, feeling my shoulders droop as I realize how difficult this acquisition is about to make my job. “Which I suppose will have to be rebranded… As of eight o’clock this morning, we’re at 203,000 subscribers and 14,000 active titles. Our top downloads now are the Meghan Michaels title, the new tell-all from that madam out of Kirkland, and… get this,” I give my team a sardonic look. “The Black Rose.”

“Are you kidding me?” Stevens asks. I shake my head at him, subtly letting him know that I’m not.

“Oh, no. Turns out that if you don’t make them pay for it upfront, it’s not contrived anymore. It’s just complicated… which, I guess is a good thing now? I don’t know.” I shake my head irritably. “Either way, Daves is pulling in significantly more downloads through the library than he did through the traditional press.” 

After a brief rundown of everything we have on the New York and Seattle office front list, and some intensive discussion on Phoenix that makes most of the Grey Publishing team start grinding their teeth, I turn to Jacki.

“Where are we at on your romance sequel?”

“Close. She’s got two chapters left and I’ve made her promise to have them for me by October. We’re going to miss the Christmas rush, but I think it might actually time well with the Phoenix release.”

“Excellent.” With a smile and a check against the last item on my list, I turn to Claire and ask for the Grey Publishing front list. She passes me a single sheet of paper with two titles listed at the top. I turn towards Christian dubiously, and he gives me a now-you-know-why-I-had-to-buy-you-out kind of look. With a very fulfilling sense of superiority, I turn to the editors representing the titles that are here and get as many of the details as possible, offering my support for whatever they need going forward.

There are a few housekeeping items I touch on, and procedures that will be changing going forward. There’s no point in keeping both Claire and Penny as receptionists, so I assure both of them Christian and I will have answers for them by the following morning. Then the team files out of the room to work on all the actionable items I’ve left them with, and Christian and I are once again left alone.

“You’re incredible,” he starts, the compliment marred by the weighty conflict he isn’t speaking aloud. “You really are a natural leader, Anastasia.”

I nod my gratitude while I take my things into my hand, then give him a resigned kind of look. “I can’t manage the library app and the operations of what is now the equivalent of three branches all on my own. I’d like to promote one of my editors to take over those responsibilities for me.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“Jacki. I trust her taste and her vision. She’s organized, she knows what she’s doing, and she’s ambitious. She’s the only one I know would make the same decisions I would. Penny can take her place on the editing team and Claire will remain as receptionist.”

“What qualifies Penny to be an editor?” 

“An English degree from Santa Clara. She took the receptionist job because she was waiting for an opening.” 

He nods. “Alright. Make whatever offers you want. Anything you need, it’s yours. You have my complete support.”

I breathe that in, but it doesn’t bring me any relief. Outside of Grey Publishing, that hasn’t proved to be true.

“Yeah,” I mutter, bitterly. “Thanks.”

“Ana…” He gets out of his chair, slowly, like he’s trying to buy more time to figure out how to say the things he’s already told me a hundred times in a way that will make me finally understand. “What if it were me? What if I had some disease that the doctors could just… cut out of me to save my life, and I refused? What would that do to you?”

“This isn’t a disease, Christian.” And honestly, the comparison is one of the more painful things he’s said so far. But if he’s going to deal in hypotheticals, so will I. “What if it was Calliope?”

“What?”

“If you could go back in time and tell your past-self exactly what would happen when Calliope was born, would you be telling me then what you’re telling me now? Would you throw Calliope away too?”

“That’s not fair…”

“That is exactly how it feels to me, Christian. This baby is not a concept or a thought experiment. I can feel it. It’s a baby that makes me sick every morning, and so tired I can barely walk straight. It’s a baby that makes my boobs hurt, and it’s a baby that has me breaking down into tears every fifteen minutes. Our baby. Just like Calliope is our baby.”

His jaw sets in an angry line. “I don’t know this baby. I don’t love this baby. But I do love you, and there’s no one in the world I would trade you for, Anastasia. Your heart beats, my heart beats. That’s not just correlation, it’s sequential.”

Defiant tears begin to echo behind my words. “You don’t know that this will be like it was with Calliope, Christian.”

“And you don’t know that it won’t.” There’s a finality to his words that tells me this argument isn’t going to be productive, so I let my head hang in defeat and start to turn. He calls me back.

“I’m going to take Calliope home with me tonight.”

I swallow to relax the tightness that suddenly grips my throat, wishing I was anywhere but here so I didn’t have to fight so hard to keep it together.

“That’s fair, ” I croak back. 

His face turns hard and the tension in his jaw pulls so tight, it almost pulses. “You know, this is what divorced couples do. Make custody arrangements…”

“We’re not getting divorced,” I reiterate. “That’s not how this ends. I’m not leaving you, Christian. No matter what.”

His eyes move down to my stomach, a look of disgust shrouding his face. “Aren’t you, though?”

He turns and leaves, and I have to sit in a chair to keep myself from collapsing on the floor. I can feel the fight inside me start to waiver as the exhaustion overcomes me again, but I can’t let myself lose it. I have to fight this battle. I have to fight for my baby. I just don’t know how to do it against the man I love. I don’t know how to withstand this pain. His pain. 

I reach up and press my fingers into the hollow of my neck, feeling my pulse and finding my heart racing. Despite my insistence that this time it could be different, that it will be different, I’m still wary of my symptoms. A thundering heartbeat is a little concerning given my history, so I take a deep, calming breath, and try to release the stress lingering in my body. I decide that the best way to do that is to go home and finish my day in a pair of sweatpants, where I can break down and cry if I have to.

After gathering everything I need and packing it into the bag that reminds me of Christian, I summon my security team and start for home. Or the empty building where my stuff is anyway. It becomes very clear once I’m wandering through the empty rooms that seem to echo in the eerie quiet, that it’s not home without Christian and Calliope.

And suddenly, I understand exactly why Christian had to leave. The hours of work I try to bury myself in are only just enough to shake the overbearing feeling of abject loneliness. So, when eight o’clock rolls around and I can’t force myself to stare at my computer screen any longer, I finally pull out my phone.

“Are you grounded for life?” Luke answers.

“Not any more than I already was. What are you doing?”

“Oh, you know. Really important things. Like… seeing how long I can sit on the couch before I start to become part of it.”

“Where’s Jade?”

“Working. She won’t be home until after three or so.” He sighs. “So it’s just me and me, having some good old quality me time.”

“Yeah, me too. Christian took Calliope to Escala tonight.”

“You guys still haven’t worked it out?”

“No. I don’t think that we’re going to be able to. He said he’ll come to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but not because he’s changed his mind. He’s already convinced himself this is a death sentence.”

“I mean… is it?”

“No!”

He pauses, like he has to rehearse what he wants to say next so that it comes out right. “Ana, maybe, before you go to war with Christian, you should hear what the doctor tells you. I was there last time, and she warned you–” He stops again. “Look, I know you think that you can get through this if you’re just on your best behavior… but it doesn’t always work out that way. It didn’t last time, no matter what you tried. And we really did almost lose you.”

“I know that, Luke. Don’t you think I know that?”

He sighs. “Yeah, I guess you would.”

There’s a heavy silence that falls between us while he wades through his emotions and I try to form the feeling swirling in my gut into words. 

“Luke…” 

“Hm?” 

“Why were you at my office this morning?”

“Because Taylor asked me to be.” 

“Why?”

He takes another long breath, which tells me he doesn’t want to answer, that that immediately makes me wary of whatever he is about to say. 

“Please don’t lie to me.” 

“Taylor didn’t want you to be held up by the paparazzi. He wanted you in the building as quickly as possible.” 

“Because?”

Another pause. “Think about it, Ana. I’m sure you’ll get there.” 

“Because someone was coming for me?” 

“And he found out about it three days ago. He came to talk to me late last night and we put his plan into motion before you even woke up this morning. It went exactly the way that he planned it would, we got the guy, we took care of it.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know, some dude who wanted to hock your wedding ring on the black market.”

“My wedding ring?!”

“It’s a ten million dollar diamond, Anastasia… But he was an amateur, working alone, and very, very carelessly. We were prepared for him. No need to worry.” 

“All I do is worry…” 

“I know, and it’s stupid. I don’t know what more I can say to you except that no one is ever going to get to you or Calliope. Ever. Your husband is a powerful man, and all of that power is constantly being directed into keeping you safe.” 

I swallow, as I’m reminded of the double-edge to that sword, and how his concern for my safety has that sword currently held at my throat. “Yeah… okay.”

“Do you want me to come over? Keep you company?”

“Would you?”

“Be there in a few minutes. Just tell your security to stand down, huh? I’d like to avoid stray gunfire, if I can.”

“You know they don’t listen to me.”

“And that’s part of the reason you’re so safe.” He laughs and promises he’s on his way before the phone goes dead and leaves me alone in the ghostly shell of my house. I can’t bring myself to sit and wait. 

The emptiness that fills the rooms around me is too oppressive. Instead, I wander aimlessly until I find myself in Christian’s office. With a careless drag of my finger, I walk along the edge of his desk, eyeing the immaculately neat piles of things that weren’t important enough to take with him. His laptop is missing, leaving a defined empty place in front of his chair. I squeeze the shiny, espresso colored leather wrapped around it and let my eyes wander to the framed picture displayed proudly on the corner of his desk.

Our wedding day.

“He’s not in here,” Luke says from the doorway, calling my attention. I look up and give him a sad smile.

“Almost feels like it though.”

The way his face morphs at those words tells me that he feels the pain roiling through me as acutely as I do, and the empathy that shines back at me through the blue eyes I’ve grown to trust so much draws me into his arms.

“It’s going to be alright, Ana.” He squeezes me. “You two will get through this like you’ve gotten through everything else.”

I sniff against his shirt, unsure of how much I believe those words anymore. A few days ago, absolutely. But Christian Grey is an intractable force, and I’m just now being confronted with how absolute that really is…

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

“Come on,” Luke says, rubbing a hand over my shoulder. “Let’s go watch an awful movie that I’m going to hate.”

I laugh and let him drag me out to the living room.

He pops some popcorn and even throws a few bags of the Scooby-doo fruit snacks I would have committed murder for while I was pregnant with Calliope on a tray, while I build us a fortress of pillows on the couch. He grabs the remote before I can, but goes straight for It Happened One Night, and hits play. I give him a knowing smile that makes him roll his eyes, but not a single word of complaint breaks through his lips as we settle into the opening scene.

“You wanna know the real problem with this movie?” he says about half-way through. He sits up straighter and moves the bowl of popcorn off his lap like he’s about to give a Ted Talk. But his speech is interrupted by Woods, Shaw, and Wyatt, who suddenly file into the living room.

“What’s going on?” I ask. My answer comes from the beep of the alarm that says an exterior door has been opened. Luke automatically reaches a protective hand back and angles his body between mine and the door. It drops though, when Christian walks into the kitchen with Calliope on his hip.

His eyes narrow on the space between Luke and I on the couch, which makes Luke shoot me an irritated look before he scoots away. I look at Christian.

“What are you doing here? Calliope should have been in bed hours ago.”

“You’re telling me,” he says, adjusting the wide-awake baby with tear-streaked cheeks on his hip. “She didn’t have her elephant.”

“Oh. I’ll go get it for you.” I start to unravel the blanket from around my lap, but Christian moves through the kitchen and waves me off.

“I know where it is.” He exits through the archway, toward the stairs, and Luke turns to face me.

“He’s not just here for the elephant, is he?”

I take a cautious breath, trying not to let myself feel too much hope behind my response. “No. I don’t think so.”

He nods and leans over to kiss my forehead, holding a hand back to stop my security when all three of them take a step closer to me. Then he turns back to me to roll his eyes and peels himself off the couch. I go after him, walking him to the door with my security team following half a step behind me the entire way. I give each of them an annoyed look before I tell them I’m off to bed and start after Christian.

He’s in Calliope’s nursery, standing over her crib, placing her stuffed animal close enough that she can see it, but far enough away that it won’t suffocate her in the middle of the night. He reaches in and strokes the top of her head lovingly, then turns to look up at me. 

And then, he changes. There’s no fight or obscured sense of betrayal in the way he looks at me. Only longing. Even from all the way across the room, it’s almost powerful enough to make me give in.

I look away, and he appears in front of me.

“Christian, I can’t…”

Just as they had this morning, his lips cut off my protest. I feel his hands curl around my face, holding me in the kiss that grows deeper the moment I start to kiss him back. While I melt into him, his hands drag down my body, gently caressing my cheeks, neck, shoulders, arms, hips… all the way down to the backs of my thighs. I push up when he lifts me in his arms, and wrap my legs around his waist. Then I lower my lips to his again, and keep them there while he makes his way back to our bedroom.

Our clothes fall to the floor without any words. His careful fingers gently pull my t-shirt over my head, then roll my leggings over my feet. He draws the tip of his nose up the inside of my thigh. His tongue sweeps gently across the curve of my neck. His eyes take in every inch of my skin, as though he’s experiencing my body again for the first time. Or maybe, just really taking the time to appreciate it.

I could melt in the wonder that looks down at me. I could swim forever in the depth of the love he demonstrates through each sweet touch of his lips. When my panties find their way to the floor and the tip of his erection brushes my clit, my body starts to yearn for him. Not in the greedy, heady way it does when my mind is drunk on sex and desperate for release.

I just need him to touch me.

I need him to envelop me.

I need him to consume me from the inside out, until every doubt I’ve felt over the past few days has been burned away by his unrelenting passion.

I need him to love me and I need him to feel how much I love him back.

He slides inside of me, and I moan for each and every inch of him. His wandering hands return to my face. His gaze holds mine. Only then does he move. Slowly. In a metronomic pace that’s so even and vital it could be a heartbeat. And the moment the comparison falls into my thoughts, I realize that’s exactly what it is.

A heartbeat. His heartbeat. This is why it beats, and this is what each and every one of those beats means.

Your heart beats. My heart beats. 

Next Chapter

“I’m telling you, they’re following us,” I say to Luke, nervously glancing over my shoulder at the car trailing a few dozen yards or so behind us. They followed us out of the pharmacy parking lot in Olympia where we’d stopped to stock up on diapers and other supplies for Calliope, and they haven’t even so much as fallen behind since. 

Luke looks in the rearview mirror and shakes his head. “We’re on a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere, where do you want him to turn off?” 

“He’s not going to turn off, because he’s definitely working for Taylor and he’s definitely following us.” I turn in my seat again, trying to decide whether or not I can recognize the car. Luke sighs. We’re just passing the first few signs announcing the upcoming exit for Montesano, so he puts on his blinker and pulls off the highway. 

The car behind us follows. 

“See?” I shriek in panic. Luke looks up, his eye bouncing between the road ahead of us and the rearview mirror. He takes us down the road to a Burger King and pulls into the parking lot. The car behind us continues on down the road. 

“No, you see?” He lets out a breath. “Come on, it’s late and the road to your dad’s house is garbage.” 

He pulls the car out of his parking place and takes it through the drive through. I move to the backseat so that I can feed Calliope bits of chicken fries as we make our way towards the woods, then climb over the console into the passenger’s seat again when Luke gets lost. 

It’s dusk by the time the road begins to dip down into the valley where Lake Sylvia is, and my breath catches at the sight of it. The scenery before us is absolutely magnificent beneath the setting sun. The deep lake, crystal blue in my memory, is black and so perfectly still that it looks like glass. The towering mountains caging us in are deep purple, which contrasts with their snow capped tops in sharp, broken angles. The crisp, clean air that pours in through the open windows of Luke’s car carries the smell of fresh pine.

I breathe it in and let it breeze away as much of the hurt as I can unload on it, relieved by even just the small amount of levity it brings me.

We come to a stop next to the rustic cabin with golden light pouring through the windows and curls of smoke twisting from the stone chimney into the periwinkle sky. I’m just reaching into the back seat to pull Calliope into my arms when I hear the squeaky-whine of the screen door and turn to see my father, looking simultaneously shocked and solaced to see me.

“Anastasia Rose! Christian has been calling here every fifteen minutes for the last three hours asking if I’ve heard from you. He’s been looking for you everywhere!”

I settle Calliope on my hip and look up at him with lost eyes. “Did he tell you why?”

My father’s attention is caught by Luke, and the overnight bag he pulls from the trunk and swings over his shoulder. As we start for the stairs that lead up to his porch and he catches the tone of our solemn march, he frowns.

“What happened?”

“I-“ The word moves through my throat like water rippling through a ragged river bed, then dies away. I cling a little tighter to Calliope, gently rubbing my hand in circles over her knee to try and distract myself from crying. It doesn’t fool my dad.

“Come here, kiddo.” He puts a broad smile on his face and takes my daughter from me, swinging her high in the air before settling her on his hip, pulling a laugh from her that I haven’t heard all day. Then he looks up at me. “Come inside. We’ll get you settled in, then you and I can talk.”

I nod, gratefully, and step through the door Luke holds open for me.

There’s a creak from the floorboards as I step into the small front room. None of the furniture in here is familiar to my childhood, but there’s a blanket my mother crocheted years and years ago folded over the sofa that reminds me of home. Everything is neat and tidy, in the perfect order my father became accustomed to after years of being in the military. I glance at the sound humming softly from the corner, and see a pre-season football game playing on the television.

The 49ers. Gross.

“I haven’t been here before,” Luke says, turning back and looking at me expectantly. I motion with a nod of my head to the wooden staircase at the back of the house, then follow after him as he begins the climb.

We emerge in an open loft with a full-sized bed pushed into the corner, which Christian incessantly complained about the one time we stayed here overnight. There’s a desk my father built in his woodshop out back that rests, lovely and sturdy, beneath the window. The rest of the space is barren.

“You can take the bed,” I offer, noticing Luke’s frown as he glances around at the empty, hardwood floor. He gives me a slanted look.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Luke, you don’t have to-“

He holds up a hand to stop me. “I’m fine. Why don’t you leave Calliope with me so you and your dad can talk?”

I start with a thankful smile, then pull him into a hug. “Thank-you. And thank-you for today… and every day, I guess. I don’t know what I did to deserve a friend like you.”

He squeezes me tighter. “By being that same friend to me.”

I hum in acknowledgement before pulling away. Reaching out to squeeze his hand affectionately before turning and descending the stairs again. My father is in the living room. The TV is muted and the newspaper he’d been reading has been cleared away from the empty seat next to his on the sofa. He’s setting a piping hot kettle on a protective pad on his coffee table when I come up behind him.

He gives me that familiar comforting smile, the one that reminds me that I can tell him anything and that he’ll never stop loving me, then motions for me to take a seat. I pull my mother’s afghan off the back of the couch and do just that.

“Talk to me kid.” He hands me a mug of tea.

“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

The lines of deep concern in his forehead go smooth as the shock spreads across his face. He blinks a few times, then shakes his head a little as if he’s trying to dispel a troubling thought.

“What?”

I sweep my finger across the rim of the mug in my hands, working up the courage to confirm the words that, despite being married, and despite already having a daughter who he adores, I feel some shame in admitting.

I’m in trouble because I got knocked up.

“I’ve been sick a little over a week, so Kate thought I should take a test. I did, and… I’m pregnant.”

This time, the confession makes direct impact. He leans back as though he’s trying to get away from what I’ve said, and his hands ball into fists. His flushed complexion bleeds away to white, and then turns a slight, pale green.

I can see it then. There wasn’t a spark of joy that was dampened by reality or a wistful hope that, maybe, just maybe, it could be different this time. He looks like he’s seen tragedy. The same way Christian looked when I told him yesterday.

I turn to look out at the mountains through the window, now nothing but jagged silhouettes against the last of the sunlight disappearing behind them. “Christian doesn’t want me to keep it. We got in a fight.”

He takes an uneasy breath, pausing for a long time before he proceeds with obvious caution. “Yeah. I think I remember him saying he didn’t want any more kids.”

I snort. “Oh yeah, he’s made damn sure of that. He had a vasectomy behind my back this morning.” The consequence of that statement once again coils around my stomach and squeezes with the strength of a 20 foot python.

We’ll never have more kids. This is it.

“He did?”

“Yeah. Obviously, that was part of the fight.”

My father’s face changes, caught somewhere between concern and understanding. He reaches out and squeezes my hand.

“I—“ He hesitates again. “You’re sure you’re pregnant. I mean, you’re really sure?”

“I haven’t gone to the doctor yet, but I took like 10 tests and they were all positive.” The buzz of life that’s so unique to this experience once again vibrates through me. “I’m sure.” 

His hands tighten around mine and his lips part as though he’s going to speak, but… he doesn’t. He looks lost, and the turmoil in his stormy ocean eyes feels like it could break me. I’m completely out on a ledge. I have absolutely no idea how to resolve this impasse I’ve found myself in with the one person I can’t live without or bear to hurt, and if my father can’t give me any guiding wisdom, I don’t know where else to go. He’s never been speechless.

“What do I do, Daddy? I can’t even consider what he’s telling me to do. I wouldn’t be able to live with it. I’d never forgive myself. It’s… it’s not what I want.” I reach down and unconsciously lay a hand over my stomach. “I can feel him. Or… her. I don’t know. And I know that sounds ridiculous, and I know that I really can’t, but I can. He’s there. His heart is beating, and he needs me to protect him. You taught me to protect the things I love, and I am his mother. I’m already in love.”

He grinds his teeth together, chewing on the words as though he has to feel their substance to believe them. Before the tense silence becomes overbearing though, it’s broken by the shrill scream of the phone, and my father’s shoulders deflate.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m–,” I pause to breathe through the unwelcome sense of Deja-vu. “I don’t want him to come here, so… if he asks for me, I’m not here.”

He doesn’t acknowledge me while he strides across the room and takes the old-fashioned phone off the hook. There’s a quiet reserve to his face as he brings the portable handset to his ear.

“Hello?” A blink, then a frown. “Yeah, she and Luke showed up here about ten minutes ago. They brought Calliope with them.” My eyes widen in horrified betrayal, but he holds out a hand to keep me silent. “But I’m not telling you that because I’m giving you permission to show up here. You’re Calliope’s father, and you have a right to know where she is. But that’s it.” Another pause, this time paired with an uneasy glance in my direction. “She’s staying the night, and I don’t know anything beyond that. You can call her tomorrow and figure out what comes next, but tonight… She needs a little bit of space. You stay put. I mean it, Christian. Do not test me.”

He paces back and forth a few times, offering one word responses to Christian’s questions that don’t give me much context to what he may be asking. I wonder if Christian is as frustrated with the evasive way he speaks as I am because, after only another minute or so, my father hangs up the phone. He rests it back on the hook, then moves back to me with a much heavier gate.

“Congratulations, Annie. I should’a said that earlier.”

It would mean a lot, if his congratulations didn’t somehow sound more like a condolence.

“Daddy… not you too.”

“No,” he shakes his head, and pulls away from me. “No, I’m on your side. I’m always on your side, you know that. I just…” He stops, but it looks as though he doesn’t want to. The words are there, he’s just purposefully holding them back. I don’t need them really. I know what they are, and I know why he feels that way.

“Was it really that bad?” I whisper.

A flash of pain moves across his face that tells me I don’t have to clarify that I’m talking about Calliope’s birth. He hangs his head again, nodding. “Yeah. It was that bad.”

My eyes flood with tears and I turn to look through the window again. I try to keep it together for about half a second until I realize that I don’t care whether or not my father sees me cry, and then I lose it.

He scoots next to me and pulls me into his chest.

“Hey, Annie…. We’re going to figure this out, okay? It’s gonna be alright.”

I turn my face up to his, honestly pleading now. “I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do…” 

A melancholy look crosses his face before he finally brushes the tears from my cheeks and starts to nod. “Yes you do. You know exactly what’s right. And I promise you that no one is going to force you into anything you don’t want. Do you hear me?”

I sniff. “Yeah.”

“It’s going to be okay, Ana,” he says again, hugging me again and rocking me back and forth. “Christian’s just… he’s scared.”

“I know.”

With one last squeeze, he pushes me back and once again looks into my eyes. “Are you tired?”

“I just told you I’m pregnant. I’m always tired.”

He lets out a single, soft laugh that carries enough humor to melt away some of the ice enclaving my heart.

“Why don’t you go to bed? We’ll talk more in the morning, okay?”

“M’kay. Thanks, Daddy.”

“Anytime, Sweetheart.” He kisses me on the cheek before he lets me go, and I gather the blanket I’ve had wrapped around me in my arms. I head up the stairs and find Luke lying with Calliope. She’s tucked in beneath the covers, her head nestled into her pillow while she breathes through her deep, unperturbed sleep. He’s cuddled up next to her, reading aloud from a magazine he’d shoved into his bag on the way out of his apartment. His low voice suggests that he’s reading to Calliope, but after hovering and listening closely for a few seconds, I realize he’s reading her an article about some new, high-speed computer about to hit the market and that none of the excitement in his voice is for her.

I nearly roll my eyes, but watching him makes me think of all the times I’ve watched Christian read her to sleep. The way he holds her, always like he wishes he could pull her in closer. The way he’ll linger on a page with only a single sentence written on it for minutes, just because the colorful artwork makes her eyes go wide with wonder. The way his hushed tones encase his words in velvet and lull her into complete serenity.

Christian is an incredible father. He loves our daughter, absolutely. He’d do anything to make her happy. He’d die to keep her safe.

So why can’t he understand that what he’s asking me to do is impossible?

“Hey…”

I realize I’m staring off into space when Luke calls my attention. I try to give him a bashful smile, but I think it just shows pain because he gently pulls away from my sleeping daughter and comes to wrap me in his arms.

“He’s going to come around, Ana.”

I nod into his shirt, because he has to, then allow Luke to lead me back to bed. With as much care as I can manage, I ease Calliope toward the wall enough that I can slip beneath the covers next to her. Then Luke tucks the blankets in around me and leans over to kiss my forehead. There’s a cabinet at the top of the stairs, filled almost to bursting with extra blankets, so Luke grabs a few and makes a makeshift bed on the floor next to us.

Once he turns off the light, the tears that I hadn’t been able to hold back downstairs come back with a vengeance, and I start to weep in the darkness.

I manage to keep silent at first, embarrassed for Luke to hear me, and worried that Calliope will. I keep my lips pressed so tightly together, it borders on the edge of painful, and I tamper as much of my shallow breathing as possible while my body convulses.

It doesn’t fool my best friend.

Luke’s hand reaches up through the darkness and wraps around mine. Every time he hears me take a broken, stuttering breath, he squeezes. One, long squeeze that’s only meant to convey one thing.

I’m right here.

I cry myself to sleep.

---

The next morning, I wake to the sound of mountain blue birds chirping merrily through the window. It’s pleasant, or would be if I could hear them over my now expected morning sickness.

“Ana,” Luke groans from his place on the floor outside the bathroom door. “Puke quieter.”

I groan as I flush, then hurry out of the bathroom in search of the nausea lozenges in my purse. Calliope is awake, sitting up on the bed, holding on to her toes, and glancing around at the room looking slightly confused. When I turn to her, she looks up at me, curiously.

“Daddy?”

I gnaw at the inside of my cheek before plastering a perfect smile across my face. “Why don’t we get some breakfast, huh?”

She reaches up for me, so I make a big production of scooping her up off the bed and swinging her around before I pull her into me. She giggles, and I smash my lips into her cheek before I carry her down the stairs.

She wants down the second we get to the living room, but she follows me into the kitchen asking about pancakes, or at least… I think that’s what ‘pinchems’ is supposed to mean. I go to the fridge, hoping against hope that my dad has buttermilk, or at the very least some lemon juice, but it’s empty. And I mean empty. There are three cans of Rainier beer on the top shelf, an open box of baking soda, a bottle of ketchup, and a covered Styrofoam container filled with fishing bait. In the freezer, a stack of hungry man frozen dinners and a few Ziploc bags full of trout.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” my dad yawns, coming out of the bedroom on the other side of the kitchen. I round on him, fists pressed firmly to my hips.

“Why don’t you have any food?”

He stutters. “Well, I wasn’t expecting you…”

“What about you?”

“Annie, you know I don’t cook. Your mom did. Then you. Then…” The strength of his voice trails off before he can say her name, but my mind can fill it in. Kim was a great cook. It had actually been one of the more petty things that had irritated me about her. That despite how much I hated her, everything she made almost had my eyes rolling back in my head it was so good.

I reach back into the freezer and pull out one of the blue boxes shoved into the back corner. “Is this what you’re living off of?”

He presses his lips together, looking guilty. I throw it down on the counter and turn angry eyes back on him. “Are you insane? You’re not a young man anymore, Daddy. You can’t be eating this much sodium. It’s bad for your heart.”

“It’s not so bad…”

“Yes, it is!” I shake my head in frustration and move back to the freezer, yanking out each and every box out and tossing them in the trash. Once they’re gone, I stomp towards the stairs. “Luke, we’re going into town!”

His head pops over the bannister and he raises an eyebrow. “Where are we going?”

“Grocery shopping. So, if you want to eat breakfast anytime soon, you better get a move on.”

It only takes him a few minutes, then we’re in the car, being jostled by the potholes as we make our way down the primitive dirt road. I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but I spend the drive making a list of everything I need to buy while Luke sings along softly to the garbage coming through his stereo. It means I don’t have to think about Christian, or the baby, or the Grey Publishing merger, or even the reasons behind my trip to the store in the first place.

I just make a list.

The grocery store we pull up to in Montesano is the exact same one I’d grown up with. I can feel the nostalgia pulling out the cart and pushing it through the automatic doors. The smell that hangs in the air immediately conjures images of my small hands wrapped around the cool metal bars, while my mother concentrated on the calculator in her hands that would ensure we didn’t go over our budget.

It’s much different now. Pacing the aisles with a limitless credit card, I find myself deciding between the turkey sausage I should buy and the pork sausage I know my father will eat, instead of carefully examining everything in front of me for the best price per pound. I don’t even bother to weigh out the bulk ingredients I scoop from the barrel sized drums into plastic bags, and I take sometimes three or four times the amount of the non-perishables I need, just so I can be certain I won’t come here again and find his cupboards empty.

“We’re going to need another cart,” Luke says, giving me a sideways look. “Which I hope you’ll agree is absolutely ridiculous since your dad lives by himself.”

“I won’t. Will you go get another one? And…” I pause, doing the math in my head. “Forty-two food prep containers. Make it fifty.”

“Jesus Christ.” He shakes his head in dismay, but does as I ask. I tighten my hold on the cart so I can heave it around the corner and make my way towards the bulk bags of brown rice.

“Anastasia?”

Turning, I find a man standing a few feet away from me who doesn’t look like he could be much older than I am. I narrow my eyes at his casual maroon t-shirt over jean shorts, trying to judge their authenticity. “Are you a reporter?”

“No, it’s me. Cody Findlay. We went to school together.”

No we didn’t. Kaci Rice, the woman standing on the other end of the aisle from me trying to get a bottle off the top shelf, went to school with me. The one person I can see stocking the freezers at the back of the store, Dean Schmitt, was a senior when I was a freshman at Montesano High School, but I’d recognize his face anywhere. There were less than 500 kids in my entire school, and less than 4,000 people in the whole town. I know everyone who lives here, but I don’t know this man.

“Who the fuck are you?” Luke’s voice demands from behind me. I whirl around and see him pushing a cart filled with black and clear plastic containers. His expression is hostile and the reaction it draws from the stranger is stark.

“I uh… I was just…”

Luke holds up a strong finger, pointing down the aisle. The command is silent, but Mr. Cody Findlay obeys it immediately. He scrambles away from me, disappearing around the corner as fast as he can, and Luke’s eyes move to me.

“You know him?”

“No.”

He frowns, then clamps his teeth together so hard I can see the tick in his jaw. “Then let’s get out of here. Stay close to me.”

A protective hand finds its way to my back and stays there pretty much the entire time we’re in the check-out line. Even though it’s no longer his job, the light, carefree Luke I left the house with has vanished and been replaced by the CPO. While I scan my credit card, his eyes scan the people around me, looking for danger. He hovers just a little too close to me to be natural as we make our way back to the car, then insists I sit inside with the doors locked while he unloads the groceries.

“What’s going on?” I ask him the moment he’s closed himself in with me.

He sighs. “Nothing. Probably nothing…”

“What do you mean, probably? Is there something I should be worried about?”

“How would I know? I’m not on your security team anymore.”

“Which means that you don’t have to follow protocol anymore. You don’t have to be my CPO anymore and you don’t have to follow Taylor’s rules. Tell me what you know.”

He grinds his teeth again. “I can’t. I signed an NDA as part of my employment. I can’t talk about anything Taylor has deemed classified, even after separation.”

“I’m a covered entity.”

He turns to look at me, and I stare back, unwavering in my resolve. His fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and his lips pull together so tightly that they turn white. But he nods, eventually.

“You’re married to a very rich man who attracts a lot of attention, is very open about how much you mean to him, and doesn’t have an easy time making friends.”

“And a very easy time making enemies?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not really one person in particular. Mostly, I think it’s a bunch of crazies who wouldn’t know what to do with you if they ever did get to you. But, ever since Endurance, it’s been… escalating.”

I can feel the blood drain from my face. “What do you mean escalating?” 

He turns to me, and offers me a joking grin to cover his regret. “It’s nothing. Seriously. Taylor’s got it under control, obviously, since your oblivious ass hasn’t even noticed.” He laughs to himself. “A few weeks ago some dude tried to come over the back wall while you and Kate had the babies in the pool, we flagged him before he got anywhere near the house and I was there waiting. Taylor let me absolutely wreck the guy so we could send a message back to whoever sent him. It was pretty funny telling him to keep quiet while I very thoroughly beat his ass to Kidz Bop.”

He laughs again, trying to make all of it seem like a joke so I won’t be worried… But I feel like I’ve been plunged into the pretty lake we’re headed back to.

“Someone tried to attack me in my own backyard?” 

I watch the calculation that runs through his head before he answers. “Uh…”

“Do not lie to me, Lucas.”

 He swallows, then turns to look at the road ahead of us. “Well… yeah. But a lot of people have tried to attack you in your own backyard. And at your office. At the marina. At the airport. Kate and Elliot’s. Grace and Carrick’s. And pretty much everywhere in between. They never even get close.” 

“Christian has told me over and over again that there’s nothing to worry about!”

“And there’s not! You’re not in danger, because you are very well protected. The secret service is a joke compared to what Grey has put around you. Honestly, it should make you feel better knowing that your team is so good at what they do, you didn’t even know what little problem you did have. Because they are good, Ana. I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t believe you were 100% safe.”

“You didn’t want to…” 

“But I did.”

I frown, staring ahead through the window. He tries to assure me several times on the drive home that everything is fine. Taylor is smarter and faster than I’m giving him credit for, my current team is made up of former black-ops and specialized military personnel, and do I seriously think that my loves-to-overreact-about-everything husband would have let him go if there was a serious threat?

None of it breaks through the cold. My mind races in the exact uncontrollable way it did in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln, when I’d eventually snapped and decided to just preemptively eliminate any threat I could possibly imagine. It’s not healthy, but it permeates my every thought, even while I’m surrounded by steaming pots, baking dishes, and piles of cut up vegetables back at the house several hours later.

“Smells good in here,” my dad says, coming through the creaky porch door with a joyous smile spread across his face. I can still hear Luke and Calliope playing together outside. “What are you making?”

“Chicken and lentils,” I reply, my voice flat and automatic in my distraction. He makes a face as he leans over the pot.

“Lentils?”

“They’re good for you, and you’re going to eat them.”

“Couldn’t have just made potatoes…” he grumbles.

“I did. They’re over there.”

His head swivels in the direction I point, but the chagrin on his face isn’t wiped away. “Those aren’t potatoes. They’re orange.”

“They’re sweet potatoes, and they’re packed full of fiber and vitamin A.”

“And they’d be better if they were deep fried. Or covered in marshmallows…”

I pop the last dish I’ve prepared in the oven and turn back to him, wiping a hand across my forehead. “I’ve done enough to get you through the next couple of weeks. You should just be able to pull one of these out of the freezer and heat it up. I’ll have Gail do a week at a time after that and we’ll bring it all up here to you.”

The pain I’ve held back under concern and constant motion breaks through my face when I realize that “we’ll,” includes Christian, and the hours I’ve had to think about our situation haven’t given me any kind of clarity. This problem doesn’t have the same easy solution my father’s empty refrigerator did.

And then, as if he heard me think his name, the phone rings. My heartbeat starts to flutter and there’s a measurable sense of relief that courses through me as Christian’s presence immediately fills the room.

My dad moves to answer it.

“Hello? Hi, Christian. She’s, uh…”

I take a bracing breath, then reach out for the phone. He hands it to me, kissing me quickly on the forehead before he darts back outside to give us privacy. I pull the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” He sounds miserable. Lifeless, almost. Worse even than the times I’d been stuck in Cambridge and couldn’t make it home for weeks at a time. “How… how are you feeling?”

Horrible.

Helpless.

Devastated.

“I’ve been cooking all day.”

“How’s your head?”

“My head?”

“Any headaches? Light sensitivity?”

“No.”

“What about pain? Any cramps or swelling?”

“Nothing more than to be expected.” I hold up my hand and stare at the now too tight wedding band wrapped around my tattooed finger. I don’t know if I could get it off if I wanted to. 

And I don’t.

“Were you sick this morning?”

“A little.” It’s the same checklist he used to go through each night when I was in Cambridge. It had irritated me then, like he didn’t trust me to take care of myself when I was doing everything in my power to do exactly that. Now, it feels like he cares. And I cling to it. “I feel good, though. Really.”

He sighs. “How’s Calliope?”

“Good. She’s outside catching butterflies with my dad and Luke right now. We’re going to have dinner soon.” He doesn’t respond, leaving me only with his pained silence. “What about you?”

The disgusted sound I get in response makes me press him.

“What did you do today?”

“I wore a path in the floor of my apartment, mostly.”

“Apartment? You’re not at home?”

“No.” The word hangs heavy in the dead air over the phone. “I couldn’t stay there. I don’t know how to be in the home we built together when you’re not there. Escala… Well, I have a lot of practice surviving without you here.”

Every ounce of reprieve I’ve been able to draw from the tranquil isolation here evaporates with those words. The beat of my heart feels harsh and burdened when the image of him, alone at Escala, empty the way that it was before I moved in, flashes before my eyes. There’s a kind of dread in his sentiment that I know will lead him down a dark and destructive path, so I head it off before he can go any further.

“I’m not leaving you, Christian. Everything about this is… awful, but I’m not running away. I just… you scared me yesterday.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have… I mean, I didn’t want to…” He lets out a frustrated huff. “I’d never do anything to hurt you, Anastasia.”

“You did though. I’m hurt, Christian. And I don’t know what to do now…”

“You could come home. You could come back to me.”

I push my lips to the side and drag my finger over my father’s countertop, carefully choosing my words before I say them. “I’m coming home tomorrow night. Lucky for you, I can’t exactly take any time off work right now because my company was just bought out from under me and I need to go deal with the acquisition.”

I half expect a small, breathy laugh, but he’s not in anywhere near the kind of mood to appreciate sarcasm right now.

“Should I be there?”

I gnaw on my lip, considering my answer. “I hope so. But I only want you there if you’re ready to accept that this is happening and it’s not going to change.” 

He swallows audibly, then leaves me in silence for several long drawn out seconds. There’s more defeat than defiance in his response. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

The phone goes dead without an, “I love you,” and my eyes well with tears. I stare blankly at the handset before I return it to its place on the wall, and finish my meal prep behind a teary haze that doesn’t clear away until my father and Luke bring Calliope in for dinner.

“Smells like heaven,” my dad tells me, squeezing my shoulder before pulling out a chair at the dining room table. I give him a small smile and start to dish some peas out for Calliope when there’s a knock on the door. For half a second, my heart goes cold in my chest and I wait for a pair of gray eyes to meet mine when my father opens the door.

“Kim,” he says instead, obviously surprised to see her. She’s standing on the porch with a box in her hands, looking impishly at him.

“I found these things mixed in with mine, so I figured I should return them.”

“Oh.” My dad takes the box out of her hands and looks through its contents, taking great care to sort the items he has no way of counting. I decide he’s buying time, trying to keep her standing in his doorway for as long as possible.

It’s what Christian would do if I showed up at Escala tonight. Because he loves me, and every second he’s in my presence is precious to him.

Fuck.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner…” Kim says cautiously, peering over my father’s shoulder and finding Luke, Calliope, and me all seated around the table. She bites down on her lip as she shifts her eyes back to my father. “Maybe… some other time, we could talk?”

“Yeah,” my dad responds. “I—uh…”

“Kim?” Her eyes move from my father’s, back to me, and I swallow back the defiant trepidation that rises up my throat. “Would you mind if… we talked for a second?”

My dad’s eyes narrow, but I ignore him.

“Sure.” Kim gives me a weak smile as she steps back on the porch and I get up from the table. My fingers reach out to brush my father’s in a reassuring kind of way as I pass, but his suspicion never wavers.

I close the door behind me.

“What can I do for you, Ana?” Kim asks, settling down in the porch swing and looking at me like I’m responsible for every ounce of the pain in her eyes. Hell, I guess I am.

“I don’t like you,” I start. She frowns before turning away and looking out over the water.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“You certainly don’t do anything to change it.”

The cadence of her breathing changes in a way that makes me think she’s trying to calm herself down, almost as though this is a familiar pattern with her. Like maybe, she’s had this argument before, only… just with herself. “I don’t know how. I don’t know what I did to make you hate me.”

“Well let me lay it out for you.” I move to the railing in front of the porch swing and pull myself up on it, letting my legs dangle between us. “You’re constantly trying to mother me, and I hate it. You’re not my mom, and I don’t need a replacement. I hate the way you always have commentary for everything I do and it’s always to make me feel like I’m shallow or callous because you think that having money and spending it on the people I love means that my feelings aren’t real.” I pause, tasting the bitterness of the words I now have to admit. “But… I like the way you treat my dad. I like that you give him companionship when he’s all by himself out here, and I like the way you take care of him. I like how happy you make him. I don’t like the way his life is when you’re not in it.”

A look of warmth slowly moves across her face as she takes in what I’ve said. Then she reaches out to remove the hand I have tucked underneath my arm and holds it in hers.

“I don’t think you’re shallow, Ana. Actually, I think you have a beautiful heart. The way you and your father are together… well, it makes me regret the man I chose as the father of my own children. The way you love Kate and the family you inherited through Christian, it’s wonderful. You think that I’m overbearing or that I’m meddlesome, but everything between us has always been about trying to get you to open your heart to me the way you do so easily for everyone else… To get you to see how much I care about you. How much I want to love you. All I’ve ever wanted was your approval. Your acceptance. You never wanted to give me a chance and everything I tried only made you hate me more.”

I frown and look down at my shoes in shame. Not just because it hurts to hear her perception, which is more intuitive than I’d like to give her credit for, but because I haven’t made my last confession yet.

“I hate the way you take him away from me. I’m not used to sharing my dad, and I don’t like it. Even when he was still with my mom, she would have never dreamed of trying to come between us. It feels like… that’s all you ever do. Find the things that are most precious between us and put yourself in the middle of all the best parts. That’s not where you belong.”

“Yeah.” It’s her turn to shift her eyes now. Everything she says next, she says into her own lap, rather than directly to me. “I’m sorry, Ana. I’m so in love with Ray and I want to be a part of all things that he loves. He doesn’t love anything more than he loves you and I thought, if I could make you love me, if I could make myself a part of your bond, then… you’d both want me to stay. That maybe, it would make him need me the way I need him.”

“It’s not where you belong,” I repeat.

“I know that now. I’m sorry.”

I take a breath and release it in a long, resigned exhale. “Christian and I are both public figures and that’s not going to go away. Anything you say or do or post online has the potential to become national headlines. Anything.”

“So I’ve learned.”

“No pictures of Calliope online. In fact, I don’t want you posting anything about us at all unless you’re supporting GEH. Nothing about our personal lives, period.”

“Of course not. I just thought it was such a cute picture. None of my family ever sees yours and since Christian got me on that damn PixC thing, I thought it could build a bridge, you know. Open a door. Create a possibility. I didn’t realize this would happen.”

“Then we’ll work on that,” I promise. “Just as long as you never, ever, ever, ever, ever do it again.”

“Never.”

“I mean it, Kim. This isn’t a thing you get to mess up. There aren’t any do-overs, and once something is public, it’s out of our hands. There are consequences to that, dangerous consequences, and if you’re in our lives, you need to understand how serious that is.” 

“I do. I didn’t before, but now…” She bows her head in misery. “I’ll never do anything like that again.” 

“Then, would you consider coming back? I don’t want my dad to have to choose between me and happiness, and you make him happy. I’m not going to stand in the way of that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh, Ana!” She leaps to her feet and yanks me off the railing, pulling me in for a hug. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

“Yeah,” my dad’s voice sounds from behind the screen door. “Thank you, Annie.”

Kim releases me in an instant and rushes for my father, yanking the door back and leaping into his open arms the moment she’s close enough. He wraps her against him so tightly, I worry for a moment he might break her. But she just laughs.

“I’m sorry, Kim. I didn’t know what else to do…”

She kisses him, then cups the side of his face when she pulls away. “There’s no need to apologize. I would never expect you to pick me over your baby.”

He nods, expressing overwhelming gratitude at her understanding, and pulls her in for a deep kiss that’s uncomfortable for me to witness.

“I’m going to eat,” I say flatly, maneuvering around them and sliding through the door. Neither of them notice me go.

Luke is walking around the living room with the house phone pressed to his ear when I come back, his food abandoned and a look of euphoria spread across his face. It only takes a couple seconds to deduce that he’s talking to Jade. I’ve never seen him look so overjoyed without someone handing him a gun first, and, even though I’m incredibly happy for him… it hurts a little.

My dad.

Luke.

Everyone I know is in love and happy. I’m… in love and drifting because of it.

How am I going to get out of this mess?

I sit back at the table and scoot closer to Calliope, keeping my eyes focused on her so Luke feels like he has the space to say the things he wants to tell the woman he loves. She grabs a handful of peas and smashes them against her face, only a few of them actually making it into her mouth.

I laugh and wipe away the mess.

“Daddy, wut?” she asks again. This time, it’s not as easy to hide my pain.

“Yeah. Daddy’s at work.”

Her face crinkles with sadness so I pull her out of her seat and into my lap, cuddling her more to comfort myself than her. “I miss him too, baby.”

It’s true. More so than I ever thought it could be. And for the first time since I found out I was pregnant, I wonder to myself if I could be happy with just Christian and Calliope.

But I don’t even finish the thought before I have my answer.

Not anymore.

Next Chapter

I don’t see Christian again for the rest of the night. I stay hidden in our room, fuming. Continuing the argument in my head and landing vicious barbs that I’ll be glad I never really got the chance to say to him in the morning. Really, I’m just waiting for him to come after me. To make it right, the way he always does in the end.

But not tonight. He locks himself in his office downstairs and Calliope is carried between us according to her constantly changing whims. I actually keep her up later than I should, waiting to see if Christian will come through the door to help me give her a bath. He doesn’t, and I put her to bed alone.

When I wake up to find his side of the bed cold and empty the next morning, I decide to go looking for him. But I barely make it two steps from our bed before my stomach rolls, and I have to cover my mouth to hold back vomit as I run for  the bathroom. Each horrible, deep wretch carries a sense of loneliness that reverberates deep in my bones. The last time I did this, I was by myself. On the other side of the country with the entire heartland lying between Christian and me. But he was always only a phone call away. And if I chose to make that call, he’d sit there and offer reassuring words that were like life preservers when I was drowning in misery. If I called him now, would he even answer? I don’t know the answer to that and the uncertainty I feel pounds like a fist against my heart.

The tears that well in my eyes have nothing to do with how sick I am. I sob between retching, wishing I could curl up into a ball and wrap my arms around my body, instead of around the porcelain bowl in front of me. When I hear a soft knock against the door frame behind me, my heart flutters for a moment. Then I turn, and find Gail’s indigo eyes looking down at me with concern, instead of Christian’s stormy gray ones.

“Are you alright, Mrs. Grey?”

“Yeah.” I nod weakly and reach up to flush, then pull a square of toilet paper off the roll to wipe my mouth. “Where’s Christian?”

She frowns. “He left very early this morning.”

“Of course he did.”

“But…” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small, rectangular box. “He did ask me to pick these up for you.”

I take the box from her and glance down at the label, a fresh wave of tears pricking at the corners of my eyes as I realize what she’s handed me. The nausea lozenges I survived on during my last pregnancy.

“He loves you, Anastasia,” Gail says, softly. “I know that you disagree right now, but that hasn’t changed. He cares. So much.”

I nod, dashing a tear out of my eye, because… I know that. I know that no matter how distant he feels from me, he’s never going to leave. I know that no matter how angry he is, he’ll never stop loving me. I know that no matter how cold and indifferent he may act, every one of his thoughts is occupied with me. Our love has been tested too many times for me to doubt its staying power, but that doesn’t erase the pain of what he suggested or the callousness in his voice as he doubled down. It doesn’t take back what he wants me to do, and the very thought of following through with that… No, I can’t even think about it.

“Congratulations, Ana,” Gail says to break the tense silence. “If that means anything.”

“It does.” I look up at her with tear-filled, but grateful eyes, and smile, before I break down again.

Ten minutes later, I have the crying and the nausea under control enough that I’m able to peel myself off the bathroom floor and get ready for work. I breeze through it, not caring much about how good my makeup looks or what I’m wearing. It’s hard to care about anything at all besides the cold war brewing between Christian and me, especially after I do try to call him and am greeted immediately by his voicemail.

But when I go to wake up Calliope so I can get her ready for daycare, the burden of that pain is lightened a little. Changing her, dressing her, hearing each little happy sound that escapes her lips as I pull her hair through small, pink rubber bands… it all pulls me into her in a way that is more intense than usual. The attachment I feel to her is somehow stronger today. Every familiar feeling of pregnancy that comes over me is like a secret that only she and I have shared. And it all reminds me of just how much I love being a mother. How much I love her. How much I already love the baby growing inside of me.

When I drop her off at daycare, I have to hold back tears.

She couldn’t care less.

“Ana?” Evan questions me when we leave Calliope’s daycare and my hand hovers over the elevator buttons. 30 will take me to Christian’s floor. G will take me back to the car. I debate between the two buttons for enough time to make my entire security team shift anxiously behind me, then sigh as I press my finger into the button for the garage.

More than anything, I just wish I could abandon my morning, go home, and crawl into bed until Christian decides he’s ready to come home and work this out with me. But I promised Hailey I would work harder for her than Grey Publishing did. That I would make Phoenix a best-seller. So, I drag myself into my office, intending to stay put and ignore the rest of my staff while I do my best to fulfill that promise. I’ve only gotten a good ten minutes into the marketing plan I’m putting together though, when there’s a knock on my door.

My heart once again beats like the wings of a hummingbird, desperately hopeful that I’ll look up and he’ll be there. I’m shocked, however, when I do look up and I see Carmen Gallagher standing in the doorway.

I didn’t even know she wasn’t in New York…

“Carmen,” I start. “Uh… come in.”

“Thank you, Ana.” She saunters forward, moving slowly as she lowers herself into the chair across from me. The corners of her mouth are turned slightly down and there’s an uncomfortable confession trying to conceal itself in the deep brown irises of her eyes, as though she’s holding onto a perturbing secret.

It doesn’t make any sense.

“We’ve surpassed 200,000 subscribers,” I begin in earnest. “My projections had been hopeful at 50,000, and we’ve more than quadrupled that within the first quarter. I’ve been running numbers with accounting and I really think it’s enough to make this next release we’ve got… big. As in quarter of a million copies sold. Maybe half-a-million. I’m not sure, I have to work with our printers to figure out what our max capacity might be but, in terms of potential…”

“Ana.” She holds up a hand to stop me and gives me a patient smile. It makes my nausea return, so I take a breath and slip another lozenge in my mouth while she gathers her thoughts. “I’m selling GSP.”

My blood goes cold. “What?”

“Sold, actually. Effective Monday.”

“Wh-“ I lose the word half-way through, along with all the air in my lungs. Suddenly, everything around me seems very far away and there’s an almost vacuum like silence filling the room that makes the words I’d told Hailey only two days ago echo in my head.

I’m going to work so incredibly hard for you.

As the shock wears off, reality comes rushing back. Only now, it’s all colored red. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. No matter how impossible, no matter how unreasonable… I have done everything you’ve asked me to do. I’ve taken a crumbling press in a dying industry and made it sustainable. Profitable, even! I just signed a new title two days ago that I know will be a best-seller!”

“I know. It isn’t about that…”

“Then, why?”

“I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.” I stare at her, unblinking, expecting more. She sighs, the guilt returning to the lines around her eyes. “Your husband made a play last night. He’s been quietly buying the controlling shares of our largest clients. The ones who use our fiber optics services. If I didn’t agree to sell GSP, I was going to lose everything. So I took the red-eye out of New York to sign the contracts for the sale in his office early this morning. Greenwich Small Press will be absorbed into Grey Publishing. I don’t know much about what that will entail except that he plans to keep you in charge, and he doesn’t plan on laying off any staff.”

I stiffen. The crimson red tint that colors the room seems to pulse at the edges of my field of vision. I feel hot, like my blood has started to boil through my veins rather than flow like a life giving river. The slash of rage that cuts through me is so intense, I can taste it. And it bites me back with the same, sharp snap of black pepper.

Carmen shifts awkwardly in her chair. “I’m sorry it ended this way, Ana. Really, I am. I truly enjoyed working with you and I was very much looking forward to seeing how far you were going to take this library project you came up with… You really are everything everyone told me you were.”

An hour ago, that would have meant more to me than just about anything ever said to me by a professor, an editor, a publisher… Now, it’s empty. It’s a platitude. It’s a cruel shift of the guilt she feels over the coals she’s dragged me over again and again.

“Get out of my office,” I breathe in disgust. She looks taken aback.

“Excuse me.”

“You’re not my boss anymore, and I am so incredibly tired of trying to kiss your ass. So please, just get the fuck out of my office.”

She stutters for a moment, but doesn’t grasp anything to say back. My glare never breaks as she turns to leave, and the ice behind it is enough to silence her final pause at the door and send her down the hallway.

I reach for my purse and stomp out behind her.

“Ana?” Evan calls, standing up in surprise when he sees me storming towards the front doors. I shoot an impatient look in his direction.

“I’m going to GEH. If you’re coming, you better move.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He’s already in motion as he swings his blazer off the back of his chair. I’m at the elevator before he catches me, but once we’re released again, he doesn’t slow me down. In fact, as out of control with anger as I feel right now, having him drive probably gets me there much faster.

Normally, I’d already be planning the over-the-top speech I’d give him the moment he was in range of my shouts, but my mind is empty. Mostly because, beneath the rage, I’m incredulous. This isn’t our normal tête-à-tête, where he screws me over and I throw it back in his face until he escalates it again. That’s all just foreplay.

This? This is a punishment.

Evan sticks to me like glue as I stalk towards the elevator and slam my finger against the button for Christian’s floor. I don’t even pause when Andrea stands up to greet me from behind her desk. I move for my husband’s office as if it were a pre-destined path, ready to unleash the volcanic eruption building inside of me that will make his worst moments look like angry kitten videos on YouTube.

But when I throw open the double doors at the end of the hallway, I’m met with an empty room.

“That’s what I was going to tell you,” Andrea says from behind me. I round on her and actually feel a good degree of the heat inside of me being doused away when I see her cringe.

“Sorry. It’s not you… I—“ I take a breath, letting it slow the beat of my heart. “Where is he?”

“He had an appointment this morning. He told me not to expect him back today.”

Did he actually schedule an appointment he knew I wouldn’t show up for? 

No… if he had, he would have made sure my security team got me there, whether I liked it or not. They haven’t so much as stepped in my way all morning.

“What kind of appointment?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, he made it himself.”

“He did?”

“Oh, no one is more shocked than I am, believe me. The man has me put reminders on his calendar to call his mother.”

Irritation bubbles up somewhere amongst the anger, and I spin on my heels towards Ros’s office to see if she has some idea of who he might be meeting with. She doesn’t though, so I decide to pull Calliope out of daycare early and wait for him at home. He did, after all, tell Andrea not to expect him back in the office, which could very well mean he intends to go home early.

She’s the only thing that keeps me sane while I wait. Just like this morning, I feel as if it’s impossible to be close enough to her. She pulls away from me over and over again while we’re sitting together on her playroom floor, too interested in the toys she’s been away from all day let me snuggle her the way I want to. So, I settle for watching her. Just staring and soaking in everything she does. Memorizing every sound she makes. Letting the harmonious trill of her laughter tattoo itself across my heart.

It might be the pregnancy hormones, or just the overpowering love of a mother, but I find myself fighting back tears as the love I hold for this beautiful baby girl overwhelms me. A love that somehow, impossibly, has multiplied with this new life growing inside of me. Love for another child. Love for Christian’s child.

“Ana?” Evan’s head pokes through the gap in the slightly ajar door. His voice is pleasant enough, but the look on his face is all apprehension. “Mr. Grey is at the gate.”

“Oh.”

I look down at Calliope and my heart starts to thud heavily in my chest. The fight I’ve been anticipating is already waging in my gut, pulling me into a battle I know that I have to fight. I kiss the soft curls that are the same shade as mine and whisper that I love her before I pass her off to Mackensie and leave the room I’m now praying is at least decently sound proof.

I’m already screaming at him before he’s even come through the door.

“Who in the actual fuck do you think you are?!”

There isn’t surprise or hesitation in the gaze that meets mine. He’s ready for me, and I recognize the stiffening of his back and the arms that cross over his broad chest as defense.

“Your boss, actually.”

“And how dare you. How fucking dare you bring my career into this, Christian! As if everything I’ve poured my heart and soul and desperate desires into over the last few months is nothing more than an inconsequential chess piece that you can maneuver out of my reach because you’re mad at me. You said that you wouldn’t bring this fight between us. You said this war was between Grey Publishing and Greenwich Small Press. ‘Never between us.’ But this isn’t business, Christian. This is punishment.”

He raises an eyebrow. “This acquisition has nothing to do with your…” His eyes move down to my stomach, and when he speaks again, his voice is so tight, I’m surprised he can wrap it around coherent words. “Condition. I have been in negotiations with Gallagher for months to acquire GSP, ever since you were hired. I’d proposed this particular deal last week at your launch party. She gets the fiber optics deal out of Texas and Barney goes to work in her R&D department; I get you.”

“That’s a pretty shit deal for GEH.”

“It might have been a month ago, though that wouldn’t have stopped me from making it. But with your app overperforming the way it is and Sawyer integrating seamlessly into my R&D department to take Barney’s place, we’re going to be just fine.” 

I shake my head. “That’s all bullshit anyway. Carmen told me that this wasn’t what she wanted. It was your play and she had to take the red-eye here to appease you. That’s what you were doing in your office all night, right? Threatening her with a hostile take-over unless she immediately caved and gave you what you wanted?” 

His expression goes cold, verging on deadly. “I told you I was coming for you. I warned you that you weren’t prepared to take me on. I always win, Anastasia. Remember that.”

His eyes once again move down to my stomach and I start barreling towards him. I don’t even know why. Whether it’s to beat my fists against his chest or to fall in his arms and cry, I need to release the hurt and anger and defeat all compounding inside of me like an insidious pressure cooker. But when I take a step towards him, he backs a step away. At first, I’m hit with a cold, unfamiliar prick of rejection that’s more intense than I would have been able to prepare for, even if I had expected it. That dejected kind of embarrassment melts away, though, when I realize that the step Christian took makes him wince.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

“Fine?” I make a quick movement, like I’m going to lunge at him. He flinches and takes another step back that, this time, makes him grunt in pain. I raise an accusatory eyebrow at him. 

He sighs. “I just had a minor… procedure done this morning. I’m fine.”

Procedure? I think back to what Andrea had told me in his office earlier. After dismissing that he’d made good on his threat from yesterday, I’d assumed she meant he was in a meeting. But thinking back on it, she said he had an “appointment.” As in… doctor’s appointment.

“Are you okay?” I ask, the anger now completely overcome with worry. He eyes me wearily, as though he doesn’t trust the authenticity of my concern, and nods.

“I’m fine.” He winces again. “I just… need an ice pack.”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

The lump in this throat moves as he makes room for the confession I see in his eyes he doesn’t want to make. “I had a vasectomy.”

I feel my face morph from apprehensive to completely blank, but that seems to be the only thing I really register. The word hangs in limbo between us, and I have to repeat it several times before it really sinks in.

He had a vasectomy. He’s decided that he’s done having children, and so he’s made it an impossibility. No discussion, no concern for any future possibility of what I might want. He wants this pregnancy terminated and all future talk of children erased from our vocabulary.

The rage comes back in full force, though, this time, the room around me isn’t colored red. Everything is sheathed in blinding white that’s so hot, even I can feel its danger. And it all pulsates around Christian.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

The vitriol in my voice makes him cringe slightly, but he doesn’t back down. “You said yesterday that I should be using condoms. That’s not going to happen, but you were right. It’s just as much my responsibility to keep us protected as it is yours. I’ve done that now.”

“By taking away any chance of us ever having more children?!”

His teeth snap together, grinding slightly as he forces his words through them. “Maybe I haven’t made it clear how I feel about you being pregnant, Anastasia…”

“Oh, you’ve made yourself plenty fucking clear.”

I’m shaking my head, and realize only after I’ve taken several steps, that I’m backing away from him, arms up protectively between us. Putting distance between us… like I’m about to run. 

Panic flashes across his face and his reaction happens more on instinct than rational thought. He charges through the foyer and grabs me, pinning me to the wall at my back and caging me in with his body. I let out a terrified gasp and, to my relief, his bruising grip on my arms loosens.

Loosens, but does not let go.

I watch his face crinkle with pain. His head falls between us and his body stops trembling. When he looks up at me again, there’s no more fire behind his ashy eyes. Only a plea for understanding.

“Please, Anastasia. If you want more children, I will give you more children. As many as you want. We can adopt, we can use a surrogate… Hell, we can open a boarding house and raise every homeless child in the city if that’s what you want. Just. Not. You.”

It falls on deaf ears. I’m too embroiled in the hurt and anger over what he’s done to even attempt to hear the reason in what he’s asking for. There is no reason. He’s altered our entire future, his own body, without even talking to me about it first. What would he do if I were to go… get breast implants without telling him, or if I were to suddenly feel very generous and donate a kidney to a complete stranger? Except, no… those aren’t even comparable because none of those things would take away futures he hadn’t even yet had the chance to wish for. None of those things put a limit on the family we’ve started together. A limit I now see he’s already surpassed.

“Do you even like being a father? Or is this all just a charade you put on because you knew I wanted kids?”

If Christian could ever look like he hated me, I think I get a glimpse of it right then and there. His hands tighten around my arms until I whimper, and the intensity in his eyes once again flames so hot, it’s like I can feel it burn my skin. 

“How dare you. I love Calliope just as much as you do. I do everything for her. I am an excellent father, and you can feel however you want about this situation, but I will not allow you to take that from me.”

The cold, dangerous tone in his voice sends a real wave of regret washing through my body until the apology is all but bubbling through my trembling lips. But I swallow it back, because, even though I’m the one who will have to take every one of his blows, this fight isn’t about me.

“You’re a father to this baby too, Christian. Because I am pregnant. Am. As in, current state of being. That’s not going to change. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, I have every intention of having this baby. So you really need to get used to the idea that you’re going to be a father of two.”

He shakes his head, the cruelty that fills his gaze still spilling over me like poison. “No. I told you, this isn’t up for discussion. I’ve made the appointment for you tomorrow morning so that you can take the weekend to recover. You are going, and I will get you there by whatever means necessary.”

“You can’t force me to…”

“No!” He slams his fist so hard into the wall beside my head that it goes straight through the drywall. “I’m not fucking fighting with you about this! I will not lose you!”

“Mr. Grey,” Evan’s nervous voice comes from the living room. Christian’s eyes snap in his direction. “Maybe you should… uh, take a step back from your wife for a minute. Get some space. Calm down a little.”

He looks down at me again, softening as he registers how far beyond his control he’s let himself go. He pushes off the broken wall and backs away from me, not making eye contact.

“I’m sorry… but it doesn’t change anything. We’re not doing this. You’re going to the doctor tomorrow morning and I’m not going to hear another word about it.” He moves away from me, the surety of his statement reflected in his walk. He pauses as he approaches the new head of my security team. “She doesn’t leave the fucking house. Understand?”

Evan glances uneasily between us, his eyes lingering on mine for much longer than they do on Christian’s.

“Woods?”

“Yes, sir,” he finally responds, and Christian stalks out of the room.

I don’t hesitate. Evan looks as though he wants to say something comforting to me, but I blow right past him. I’m single minded, driven by an instinctual fear that only a mother can feel. 

I head straight for Calliope’s playroom and immediately scoop her up into my arms. She whines as the toy in her hand falls to the floor, but I don’t stop to pick it up. I don’t stop when Mackensie calls after me. I don’t stop when Gail looks up as we come into the kitchen. My purse is on the counter, so I shift Calliope on my hip and swing an arm out to snatch it up without stopping. The moment my hands close around the leather straps, I hear the first shouts from my security team coming from their office.

Just keep moving.

Pounding on the button to open the door as I hurry into the garage, I move straight for the SUV. But only because it has Calliope’s car seat in the back. I don’t have any of the things I need for her. No diapers, not a single change of clothes… nothing. The car seat is non-negotiable.

I pull open the back door and thrust her into the seat. She’s surprised and starts to cry as I pull the straps over her, but it doesn’t stop me. I buckle her in faster than I ever have before and then slam her inside. Without her weighing me down, I sprint for the drivers side, digging in my purse for my keys as I climb through the door and take my seat behind the wheel. The door to the house swings open and four heads fill the newly open space. I slide the keys into the ignition and yank the gear shift into reverse, and Smith’s hand darts out to close the garage door and cage me in.

I’m prepared to back out either way, but Evan reaches up and stops him before I have to do anything really stupid. His fingers wrap around his wrist and fold his elbow back just long enough for me to make it out of the garage. I can hear the ensuing argument as I back down the driveway.

“What the fuck, Woods?” Harper screams at him.

He shakes his head and waves to the other cars. “Well, follow her!”

They scatter as I pull out onto the road and start towards the freeway. I haven’t even made it out of our neighborhood before Christian’s name appears on the screen and his call rings insistently through the stereo speakers. But I reject him, and the call from Taylor that comes after it. I can see the shiny black car holding my security team in my rear-view mirror, making every turn I do and keeping a close enough distance that no car could merge between us.

Where do I go?

My first thought is Kate, but since she and Elliot never come out on the same side when they get involved in arguments between Christian and me, they’ve decided to stop being involved at all. So, I take the next best option.

“Hey, what’s up?” Luke answers almost immediately after the phone begins to ring. His light, happy tone is at odds with the painful sobs trying to claw their way up my throat.

“Where are you?”

“Uh… I’m at Jade’s apartment. Is everything alright? Why are you crying?”

I sniff, pulling back my emotions so I can focus on driving. Calliope is in the car after all. “Where is Jade’s apartment? I’m coming to you, right now.”

“32^nd Avenue. Go north on 522 and turn left after the Taco Bell. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He hangs up, not asking why, not pushing for details I refused to give him. He’s just there, waiting for me in the parking lot when I pull into his apartment complex.

“What’s going on?” he asks when I leap from the car and yank Calliope out of her seat. I turn to answer him, but the four bodies climbing out of the next car over do that for me.

“Mrs. Grey, you need to return to the house immediately,” Wyatt orders. I scoff and push past him, and he actually tries to grab onto me to make me stop. He ends up grabbing Luke instead, who steps between us with a careless smile playing at his lips.

“Ah, Wyatt. I’m flattered, but I have a girlfriend and… she’s something special.”

Wyatt’s hands fall to his side and his eyes shift uncomfortably to the rest of his team. “We have orders. She’s coming with us.”

I pull Calliope into me, pressing one of her ears to my shoulder and covering the other with my hand. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Back the fuck off!”

“Mrs. Grey…” Harper starts, but Luke cuts her off.

“I think she’s made her position pretty clear. Why don’t you guys just chill? I’ll take care of it, alright?”

Smith grinds his teeth together. “You’re not on this team anymore, Sawyer. You take her up there, I’m going to have to get Taylor involved.”

Luke laughs, his eyes glittering with humor as he nearly doubles over. He makes a show of wiping a tear away as his chuckles die down and he maneuvers Calliope and me to the stairs that lead up to his apartment. “You do that.”

We climb to the third floor, then he leads me down a dark, narrow corridor to a door near the end. The paint is peeling away from the wood, the number is hanging wrong, and Luke has to shove his body weight against the door to get it to open, but he’s all smiles as he leads me inside. My guess is that it has everything to do with the dark haired beauty lying casually across the couch with another pretty girl I’ve never met before. But based on her similar dark hair and eyes, I assume they’re related.

The strange girl looks up from the TV as we come through the door, and when her eyes meet mine, she goes stiff.

“Oh my god. You’re…” She stops, sputtering slightly, then turns to Luke. “You weren’t lying. You really are best friends with Anastasia Grey?” 

Luke grins. “No autographs, please.” 

“Holy shit… “ She turns to me, mouth agape, and Jade rolls her eyes. 

“Ana, this is my sister, Amber.”

“And I am a huge fan of your husband’s,” Amber continues in a rush. “I’m a physics student at UW and I’ve been following his Endurance project very closely and can I just say… he’s just… and he… no else has ever… he’s SO AMAZING!”

I stare at her blankly for a few seconds, and then completely dissolve into tears.

“Hey!” Luke croons, pulling Calliope out of my arms and passing her off to Jade so he can wrap me in a hug. “What happened?”

I push away from him and take a deep breath to get a grip on myself. Then I blink up at him through tear saturated lashes. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh.” He says the word like it’s a shock. A bad shock. And as he starts to process the news, he begins to nod. “Yeah, I can see how that would go. I take it he’s not happy.”

I let out a noise that makes it clear that’s the understatement of the century. “He wants me to… to end it.”

“And what do you want?”

“He doesn’t care. He made the appointment. He told me I was going by any means necessary, so… I left.”

“When’s the appointment?” 

“Tomorrow morning.” 

Luke lets out a long, heavy exhale, then turns and glances around the room. It’s nice, not having to live through each excruciating detail again to make him understand. He knows me well enough, knows Christian well enough, to fill in the blanks on his own. To know the situation I’m in now, and what it means. Why I came here.

Because Luke will always take my side.

“Well, you can stay here if you want, but we don’t really have a lot of… space.”

I too glance around the room, and realize only then how cramped it is. The living room isn’t much bigger than my entryway. Just a slouchy sectional and TV take up almost the entire space. There’s one small bedroom off to the left, and a crowded kitchen behind me. And that’s it…

“Oh, right. That’s okay, though. I can just go… to… uh…” I bite my lip as I fail to come up with a single place Chrisitan won’t immediately find me, and Luke lets out a long sigh. He turns to Jade.

“You mind if I take off for the weekend?”

“Where are you going?”

He grins and lets out a small growl as he leaps on top of her and smothers her face with kisses. “Somewhere Grey won’t follow us.”

She narrows her eyes. “How are you going to get all the way to Saturn and back by the end of the weekend?” Luke laughs and she shoves him off of her. “Fine, go. I’ve got work all weekend anyway. Be good, though.”

“Aren’t I always?” He flashes her a toothy grin that once again has her rolling her eyes. Then kisses her on the cheek once more and moves to the window, slowly pulling the curtain aside so he can peer down at the parking lot where my security team is still huddled.

“They’re not going to leave,” I tell him. “No matter where we go, they’re going to follow us.”

“I know,” he says, then he holds his hand out to me. “Give me your phone.”

“My phone?” He waves his hand more insistently, so I reach into my purse to retrieve it and give it to him, ignoring the missed call notifications that litter the screen. He pulls his own phone out of his pocket and turns back to Jade.

“Wanna help me out?”

“Is it cool spy shit?”

He chuckles. “Kind of. Take the back way down to my car and go out the south entrance. I want you to drive to Sammamish. Ana, here, is going to book you the most expensive suite in the resort there, and you and Amber can spend the rest of the night pampering yourself and ordering room service. Her treat.”

Both girls look up at me eagerly, but I stare at Luke, confused. “Uh… sure?”

They shriek with giddy excitement and leap up from the couch, hastily pushing Calliope back into my arms so they can run off to pack some things to take. Luke unlocks my phone and dials the number for the resort he promised his girlfriend. He books their best suite and ensures there are strawberries and champagne waiting for their arrival. It’s my name, however, that he leaves on the reservation, though he tells them the keys will be picked up by my assistant. Ms. Jade Marroquin.

Twenty minutes later Jade and Amber are ready to leave. Luke walks them to the back door, which leads to a small balcony with a sketchy fire escape that drops into a back alley. He asks for Amber’s keys, which she hands over before he sweeps Jade into his arms. They kiss goodbye and exchange several whispered secrets that are only meant for the two of them, then he helps her onto the ladder over the railing and holds it steady and she and Amber climb down. Once she’s gone, I follow him back into the house and throw the hand not clinging to my daughter up in frustration.

“What is going on?”

“I slipped our phones into her purse.”

“What? Why?”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “Well, since I’m officially no longer a member of your security team, I guess I can tell you that there’s a tracking device on your cell phone that sends an alert to Taylor every time you leave the Seattle city limits. There’s also a tracking device in my car. In about fifteen minutes, I expect Woods down there is going to get a phone call demanding to know why you and I are driving across the I-90 bridge while they’re all still at my apartment. He’ll track Jade to the hotel and confirm you have a reservation there.”

“And what happens when they realize they’re not really following me?”

He waves his hand as if to bat that very unimportant concern out of the conversation. “We’ll be long gone by then.”

“Where are we going?”

His brow furrows and he looks at me as though the answer should be obvious. “Lake Sylvia.”

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