Pregnant by My Boss, Married to His Uncle

I know the exact moment Adrian Voss walks into a room before I see him. It's in the way conversations soften, the way Owen at reception straightens his tie, the way the air itself seems to hold its breath. "Morning, Emma." Priya from Legal drops a stack of contracts on my desk without slowing down. "You're a lifesaver. Board wanted these by nine and I completely forgot." "They're already flagged and tabbed." I don't look up from my monitor. "Page twelve needs his signature, not initials." "How do you even—" She's already walking away, laughing. "Never mind. You're a witch. A helpful witch." I've heard every version of that joke in three years. I don't mind it anymore. There's something steadying about being the person everyone trusts to have already thought of the thing they forgot. I know which conference room has the broken thermostat, which floor's coffee machine actually works, which board member needs his materials printed in fourteen-point font because he refuses to wear his reading glasses in meetings. Small things. The kind of things that make an office run and that no one notices until they're missing. The elevator chimes. I don't turn around. I count his footsteps instead — unhurried, certain, a rhythm I could pick out of a hundred people walking a hundred hallways. "Ms. Spencer." His voice, formal, for the benefit of the floor. "My nine-thirty?" "Confirmed. I moved your ten o'clock back fifteen minutes — Whitfield's flight was delayed." I hand him the folder without looking up, and for exactly one second, his fingers brush mine over the edge of it. That's all we get out here. One second. It's enough to make my whole morning warmer. He disappears into his office, and I go back to the emails stacking up in his inbox, the ones I've learned to sort by urgency the way other people sort laundry — whites, colors, delicates. There's a rhythm to loving someone in secret that I've never admitted out loud, not even to Priya. You learn to live for small currencies. A brushed hand. A private smile across a crowded conference room. A text at eleven at night that says nothing more than thinking about you, and somehow that's enough to carry you through another day of being invisible to everyone but him. His office door clicks shut behind me eleven minutes later, ostensibly to review the Whitfield notes. The glass wall behind him faces the city, gray and glittering, and for a moment neither of us says anything about the folder in my hands at all. "You look tired," I say. "I am tired." He rubs the bridge of his nose, and something in his shoulders loosens — the version of him no one else on this floor gets to see. "Board's been circling the Meridian numbers like vultures. Another two weeks, maybe three, and it's done." "And then?" I don't mean to ask it so plainly. It just comes out, small and hopeful, the way it always does when I let myself want too much out loud. He comes around the desk. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, cedar and something warmer underneath it, close enough that if either of us leaned even slightly— He doesn't. Not here. Not with the blinds still open a crack. "Emma." He says my name like it costs him something to keep it quiet. "The second Meridian closes, I'm done hiding this. Done hiding you. I'll tell the board, I'll tell my father, I don't care anymore who has an opinion about it." "You've said that before." I hate how it sounds — small, suspicious — and I watch something flicker across his face. Hurt, maybe. Or guilt. I can't tell which, and I hate that I can't tell. "I know." He takes my hand, turns it over, presses his mouth to my palm like an apology written in a language that doesn't need words. "This time I mean it. I need you to trust me a little longer." I could let that be enough. It's always been enough before. But something small and stubborn in my chest refuses to sit down quietly this time. "Then tell me a date," I say. "Not 'after Meridian.' An actual date. Circle it on a calendar. Give me something I can hold onto that isn't just a feeling." His hand goes still around mine. For half a second — less — I see something cross his face that isn't tenderness. Calculation, maybe. Or fear. It's gone before I can name it, folded back under that easy, certain warmth he wears like a second skin. "The board meets the fourteenth," he says finally. "I'll tell them then. And I'll tell my father before that, in person, so it doesn't blindside him in the room." The fourteenth. Eleven days from now. It's not nothing. It's a number, a shape, something I can actually count down toward instead of waiting on the word soon like I have for three years. "Okay," I say, and I mean it as a decision, not a surrender. I am choosing to believe him one more time, with an expiration date attached, because the alternative is walking away from something I've built my whole life around, and I'm not ready to do that yet. Not without proof he's lying. Not yet. "Okay," he echoes, and kisses my forehead like it's a seal on a contract neither of us has signed. "Dinner tonight. Nine o'clock, same place?" Something shutters behind his eyes. Quick. Almost too quick to catch. "I can't. Something came up — family thing. My father's insisting on some dinner with old business partners. I couldn't get out of it." "That's the third time this month." "I know." He kisses my forehead again, and it feels like an ending to the conversation rather than an answer. "I'll make it up to you. I promise." I let it go. Not because I don't notice — I notice everything, it's the entire reason this company runs on time — but because I've just spent my one demand for the day on a date on a calendar, and I don't have the stomach to spend the rest of it on a canceled dinner too. I tell myself it's business. I tell myself powerful men have powerful obligations, and mine is one of them, even if the world doesn't know it yet. The baby store is not on my way home. I go three blocks out of my way to pass it anyway, the way I have a dozen times over the past month, telling myself it's just a nice window to look at. The onesie is tucked in the corner of the display — pale yellow, absurdly small, embroidered with a single sleeping fox. I'm not pregnant. I'm not anywhere close to pregnant. But I stand there with my hand against the cold glass and let myself imagine it anyway: Adrian's laugh in a nursery, his tie loosened, a small hand wrapped around his finger. The fourteenth. Eleven days. I can survive eleven days of waiting when I've already survived years of it. I don't buy the onesie. Some superstitious part of me thinks that would be too much, too soon, tempting a fate I haven't earned yet. Instead I go inside and buy a small brass keychain, engraved in looping script with a single word: Home. It costs more than it should for four letters and a scrap of metal. I buy it anyway, drop it into my coat pocket, and let my fingers close around it the whole walk to the train. Someday. Not yet. But someday. My apartment is quiet in the particular way it always is on nights he cancels — too quiet, the kind of quiet that makes the refrigerator hum sound like a conversation. I heat up leftovers I don't really want and check my phone for the fourth time in ten minutes. No message yet. He's probably still at dinner. I picture him trapped at some mahogany table, exchanging pleasantries he doesn't care about, wishing he were here instead. The message finally comes — not from Adrian, but an email notification, elegant serif font glowing on my screen. A formal invitation, gold-embossed border, the kind his family's assistant sends for every major event. My heart does something stupid and hopeful. This is it, I think. He's finally doing it. He's finally telling people. I open it smiling. Adrian Voss & Camille Harrington request the honor of your presence at their Engagement Gala Tomorrow Evening, Eight O'Clock The Harrington Estate The words don't rearrange themselves no matter how many times I read them. My hands have gone cold around the phone. Camille Harrington. I know that name. Everyone on the executive floor knows that name — old money, older family, a merger dressed up as a marriage that the board has wanted for two years. The fourteenth, I think stupidly, uselessly. He said the fourteenth. This is tomorrow. This isn't the board meeting. This isn't the promise he made me eleven hours ago with his mouth against my palm. This has to be a mistake. A misdirected email. A cruel prank. I read it again. And again. My reflection stares back at me from the darkened window, pale, still holding the brass keychain in my other hand like it might anchor me to the floor. "No," I whisper, to no one, to the empty apartment, to the four gold letters glowing on the screen. "This has to be a mistake."