And tempted.
“Would you even be able to give it up if that’s what he wanted?” she asks, her voice smaller now. “If it’s yours?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s thought that far ahead, either. It’s like he sees people based on how functional they are, not how they’d feel about things. He needs a body, and I’m a… body.”
Her lip curls slightly in irritation. “You’re a hell of a lot more than that.”
“I don’t feel like it,” I mutter, taking another sip of my latte.
“You told him to fuck off, right?”
I shrug. “Kind of? I walked out. I don’t know what that means for me in terms of my job. I don’t know—no.”
“No, what?”
I groan and scrub at my face again, trying to shake the bitter feeling or the wanting feeling or both, I’m not sure. “It’s insane. I get that. But he offered benefits. Payment. Security.”
She whistles, low and slow, leaning back from me to take it all in. “I mean, I’d hope he pays you. But you’re not doing it. That’s insane.”
We both fall into an awkward silence, our eyes locked, my cheeks a little too warm for the cold air.
“April.”
“I’m not?—”
“Oh my god, you’re considering it.”
“Shut up,” I mutter. “I just, you know, I could use the money, I could help Angela, I could ask for enough to pay off Ava’s medical costs, I could fix so manythings.”
She scoffs, but it’s light, not nearly as judgmental as I was expecting. “You’d need therapy.”
I snort. “I’d make him cover that too.”
“Good god almighty in heaven, I cannot believe you’re actually considering this,” she says, her lips tipping up at the corner like we’ve shifted from scary life stories to gossiping. “Let’s say, theoretically, that you agreed. You’d have to be clear with yourself. You can’t catch fucking feelings if Anthony isexpecting you not to marry him or have a relationship with him. You can’t romanticize this.”
“I’malreadyromanticizing it,” I groan, covering my face with my coffee cup to hide. “And he knows damn well how badly I want him to touch me, now, so it’s not like I can pretend that’s not the case.”
She shakes her head. “If you do it, you’ve got to do it for your sister and your niece. That’s it. Not because you want him to rip your stockings or whatever the hell else you rambled down the phone last night.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” I sigh. I try to focus on the heat coming from the coffee cup, the way it warms my hand, instead of the horror show of today. “I don’t know if I can fully separate it. He drives me insane, but he’s also… he’s too much. Intense. Controlled. Ridiculously hot. And wants me, of all people, to solve his business problem by being a walking incubator.”
“You’d have to stay detached. Just your body, nothing else. Don’t fuck him, do it at a clinic, all that jazz.”
I glance at her. “I’ll just end up being a rented womb with editing skills.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Maybe. I don’t know, babe, if you go down this road, you’re going to need all the help you can get. You’ll need to be ready to walk away from both of them, himandthe baby, when it’s done. Can you even do that?”
I turn my gaze to the trees, to the kids playing across the way on a chalk-drawn hopscotch course, my head buzzing at that. I hadn’t considered the end of it. “I don’t know.”
“You might have to. And that means you need to know exactly what you’re walking into. So maybe ask him.”
The idea of that, of asking him, oftalkingto him, sets me so on edge I can barely breathe.
How the hell am I supposed to do this? And what if I’ve already let myself go too far?
Chapter 6
Anthony
