She doesn't know him, Emily thought, watching Harrison finally notice her and unlock the car doors. She doesn't know the hunger in him. She doesn't know that he wants to be devoured, not nurtured.
That was why Emily had ended things with Michael weeks ago.
It wasn't a whim. It was a clearing of the deck.
She remembered Michael standing in the foyer, confused, holding a bouquet of apologies after she had been distant.
"Just tell me what I did wrong," he had begged. "We can fix this, Em."
"You didn't do anything," she had told him, cold and detached. "You're just... not him."
"Who is him?" Michael had asked.
She hadn't answered. She just kicked him out. And when he came back a few days later, banging on the door, asking her to rethink, she had threatened to get a restraining order. She cut the safety net. She burned the bridge.
Because by then, the basement trysts with Harrison had started. By then, she knew she had the real thing back.
She opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat, tossing the bags into the back. The air inside the car was stale and tense.
"You took forever," Harrison muttered, not looking at her. "I've been sitting here for forty minutes."
"I needed things, Harry," she said lightly, reaching over to touch his arm. He flinched, pulling away, but she didn't mind.
She knew Harrison was struggling. In the motel last night, when he said it was "just sex," when he said she was an "addiction," it stung. Of course it stung.
But she forgave him. He was scared. He was trying to cling to the morality that Sarah represented. He didn't realize yet that the addiction wasn't the problem—it was the cure.
He needs me, she told herself. He said it himself. I’m like air. You can't live without air.
She looked at her reflection in the side mirror. She looked tired, pale, but victorious.
Slowly, she placed her hand on her stomach, hidden under her blouse.
It was still flat. But she knew.
She had missed her period six weeks ago. Two tests, both positive, hidden inside a hollowed-out book in her room back at the estate.
She hadn't told him yet. She had been saving it. She wanted to wait for his birthday, or maybe Valentine's Day. She wanted to present it as the ultimate gift—a new life, a new start, a permanent bond that Sarah could never replicate. Sarah, with her five-year plans and her "we're not ready yet" speeches.
Emily had been ready immediately.
She rubbed her thumb over the fabric of her skirt, pressing against the secret growing inside her.
This changed everything.
He could scream at her. He could say it meant nothing. He could try to go back to Sarah.
But he couldn't leave his child.
Harrison was a good man. That was his core. He wasresponsible. He would never abandon his own flesh and blood.
A small, triumphant smile touched Emily’s lips as Harrison put the car in gear.
Sarah had the past. She had the wedding photos and the shared taxes.
But Emily had the future.
"Let's go, baby," she whispered, buckling her seatbelt. "We have a lot of planning to do.”
