Chapter 9
1039 Words
ELENA
I sat with it for two days.
I was not afraid to tell him but it was still new and tender. I wanted to hold it alone for a little longer before it became something that belonged to both of us.
So I went to work. I approved the final placement for the Reyes installation. I answered emails and took calls and did my job.
A couple of days later...
I had never visited Liam at the office.
It wasn't a rule but more of an unspoken arrangement. His world and mine ran parallel and rarely intersected. Carter Group occupied fourteen floors of a glass tower on Park Avenue. I have attended company events. I had never simply appeared.
The receptionist on the executive floor looked up when I stepped out of the elevator.
"Mrs. Carter. Do you have an appointment?"
"I don't." I smiled pleasantly. "I was hoping to surprise him."
She weighed this briefly.
"He's just finishing up. Do you know the way?"
"I'll find it," I said.
The corridor to Liam's office was glass-walled on one side. There were meeting rooms and open-plan desks. People were moving with the Friday energy and trying to end it well. His office was at the end.
The door was ajar.
I heard her before I saw her.
A laugh. Low and easy. The kind that belonged to a private conversation rather than a professional one.
I pushed the door open.
Chloe stood on the other side of Liam's desk.
Not sitting but standing. Her one hand resting lightly on the back of the chair across from him. Her coat was already on and a small gift bag from somewhere expensive hanging from her two fingers.
She was turning slightly toward the window in mid-sentence.
Liam was leaning back in his chair with the relaxed posture.
They both looked at me at exactly the same moment.
The room recalibrated in the space of a breath. Liam sitting forward. Chloe's expression moving from something unguarded to something smooth and social. The gift bag shifted in her hand as she straightened.
"Elena." Liam was already on his feet. "I didn't know you were coming."
"I know," I said. "That was the point."
I looked at Chloe.
She looked back at me with a smile that arrived exactly one second after it should have.
"Elena. What a lovely surprise." She lifted the gift bag slightly, offering it as explanation. "I was just dropping something off. Client thank-you. We've been working on the Harlow account together." A small laugh. "Your husband is very difficult to shop for, as it turns out."
Liam laughed too.
I looked at Chloe.
"I know. I'm his wife after all," I said pleasantly.
Her smile fell.
Chloe said something about running late. She touched her hair once in a gesture I was beginning to recognize and said goodbye to us both with the bright competence of a woman making an exit look effortless.
The door closed behind her.
Liam crossed the room and kissed my cheek.
"This is a nice surprise. Are you all right? You look—"
"I'm fine." I set my bag on his desk. "I need to tell you something."
Something shifted in his face. A brief internal adjustment, quickly resolved into attentiveness. "Okay."
"Sit down," I said.
He sat.
"I'm pregnant."
The silence lasted exactly one beat too long.
I watched it happen. The stillness that crossed his face in the fraction of a second before he knew what expression to wear. It was not shock exactly. It was underneath that. But it came and went so fast I almost missed it.
Then the warmth arrived.
He stood and went around the desk. He took my face in both hands and looked at me with something that resembled wonder. His voice when he finally spoke was rough at the edges in a way that sounded convincingly like a man undone by good news.
"Are you — Elena." He exhaled. "Are you sure?"
"The clinic confirmed it Friday."
"Friday.?" Something moved in his eyes. "You've known since Friday."
"I needed a day," I said. "I couldn't believe it myself."
He pulled me in. Both arms around me, his chin on top of my head, holding on with the full conviction of a man for whom this was the best thing that had happened in years.
I stood in it and let myself feel the relief of finally having something to give him. Something that made me necessary in a way that four years of marriage had not quite managed to do.
"We're going to have a baby," he said quietly, into my hair.
"Yes," I said.
He pulled back and looked at my face. His eyes were bright and his smile was full. Everything about him was exactly what I had needed him to be for four years.
He kissed my forehead. My temple. He held my hand in both of his and talked about calling his mother. He said something about finding a proper doctor and taking care of me. I listened and felt warmth spread through me that I hadn't felt in longer than I wanted to admit.
I almost didn't notice.
Almost.
But somewhere between his hand squeezing mine and his voice making plans my mind went back to the silence that had lasted one beat too long.
To the expression that had come and gone before he knew what expression to wear.
I looked at his face, animated and warm and fully turned toward me, and I told myself I was reaching for problems in a moment that didn't have any.
I was good at that. Telling myself things.
He walked me to the elevator himself, his hand at my back, and we passed the receptionist who smiled at us both, and at the elevator doors he kissed me once more with the full warmth of a devoted husband.
The doors closed.
I stood alone in the descending elevator and looked at my reflection in the mirrored walls.
I looked happy.
I almost was.
But the silence that had lasted one beat too long rode down with me all the way to the lobby.
And I couldn't make it stop.
- Writer
