Chapter Three
991 Words
What The Body Keeps
Zara’s POV
"You threw up again."
It wasn't a question. Lily was standing in my kitchen doorway in her coat, keys still in her hand, looking at me the way only an older sister can — like she already knew the answer and was just giving me the chance to lie first.
"I'm fine," I said. "Bad takeout."
"Zara. That's three mornings in a row."
"Chicago has terrible Thai food. I keep forgetting."
She dropped her keys on the counter and sat down across from me. She didn't say anything else. She just waited. Lily had perfected the art of silent pressure over twenty-eight years of knowing me and I had never once successfully outlasted it.
I stared at my untouched coffee. "It's probably nothing."
"Go get a test."
"Lily—"
"Today. Right now. I'll drive."
I had spent the entire week telling myself it was stress. New job, difficult situation, body reacting to pressure the way bodies sometimes did. I had a hundred logical explanations lined up and I cycled through them every morning kneeling on my bathroom floor, waiting for the nausea to pass so I could get dressed and go to a building where I had to spend eight hours pretending a specific man did not exist.
Pretending was harder than I expected.
Not because Cole made it hard. He was flawless at it. In four days he had looked through me, around me, and past me with the practiced ease of a man who had simply decided I was invisible and informed his eyes accordingly. He ran meetings like a machine. He gave feedback that was precise and impersonal. He did not linger. He did not acknowledge. He was, in every professional sense, completely unbothered.
Which was fine. That was what I wanted. That was exactly what I had agreed to in that boardroom on Monday morning when I said crystal and meant it.
What I had not agreed to was the way my body went completely still every time he walked into a room. The way some stupid, traitorous part of me tracked him without permission — clocking when he arrived, when he left, when he was three feet away at the coffee station and the air between us felt like a held breath.
I hated it. I hated myself a little for it. And I hated that the only person I could talk to about any of it was currently driving me to a pharmacy in Wicker Park with the quiet, determined energy of someone on a mission.
The test took three minutes.
I sat on the edge of my bathtub and stared at the small white stick on the counter and watched the result appear with the specific slow certainty of something that cannot be taken back once it is seen.
Two lines.
I didn't move for a long time. I just sat there while the information rearranged everything — every plan, every boundary, every careful wall I had built around my life — and turned it into something I didn't recognize.
Lily knocked softly. "Zara."
I opened the door. She looked at my face and didn't need to see the test.
She crossed the small bathroom and put her arms around me and I let her. I pressed my face into her shoulder and breathed and did not cry because if I started I wasn't sure I would stop and I needed to think. I needed to be clear. I needed to figure out what came next before I let myself feel the full weight of what was happening.
"Okay," Lily said quietly. "Okay. We figure this out."
"There's nothing to figure out." My voice was steadier than I felt. "I'm keeping it. That was never a question."
Lily pulled back and looked at me. "And the father?"
I didn't answer.
"Zara. Who is the father?"
I walked back into the kitchen and sat down. I picked up my cold coffee and held it without drinking it. Lily followed and stood across from me and waited and I knew she was going to keep waiting until I told her the truth.
"My boss," I said.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
I made the decision that night. Clean, simple, and entirely logical. I would not tell Cole Mercer. I would work out my three month probationary period, save everything I could, find a new position at a different firm, and disappear from his orbit before anything became visible or complicated. He would never know. The baby would never lack for anything because I would make sure of it the same way I had made sure of everything my entire life — by working twice as hard as anyone expected and never asking anyone for help.
It was a good plan. It was a solid, sensible, Zara Ellis plan.
I had it fully constructed by midnight and felt almost calm by the time I got into bed.
My phone lit up at midnight thirty. Unknown number. I almost ignored it.
I answered it.
"Ms. Ellis." The voice was male. Older. Smooth in the particular way of people who had spent decades choosing their words very carefully. "I apologize for the hour. My name is Daniel Howe. I'm the CFO at Mercer Industries."
I sat up slowly. "How did you get this number?"
"I need you to meet me tomorrow morning. There's something you should know before it becomes something you can't manage." He paused. "It concerns your employment. And your medical insurance claim from this afternoon."
My stomach dropped.
"Mr. Howe—"
"The pharmacy transaction flagged on the company system, Ms. Ellis. It's a standard monitoring protocol for all new hires on the executive insurance plan." Another pause. Deliberate. Heavy. "I've already seen the claim category."
I couldn't speak.
"I think," he said carefully, "that we should talk before Mr. Mercer does."
- Writer
