She was supposed to be safe. Respectable. Easy.
But the woman who’d just fucked me in a dark corner of an art gallery wasn’t any of those things.
She was dangerous.
Just in a different way than Truth.
And now I had two women in my life who could destroy me.
One would carry my child.
One who’d just reminded me I was still a man with needs that had nothing to do with contracts or legacies or carefully constructed boundaries.
We walked back into the main gallery.
Someone handed Alexis a glass of champagne.
She took it, smiled, and made polite conversation with a woman in a red dress.
Like nothing had happened.
Like we hadn’t just fucked like animals thirty feet away.
I stood beside her, my hand on the small of her back, playing the role of the attentive date.
But my mind was already somewhere else.
Already calculating.
Already trying to figure out how to keep all the pieces from colliding.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
A text from Truth:Dr. Chen said everything looks good. Thank you again for sending her.
Simple. Grateful. Professional.
I stared at those words.
Felt Alexis’s warmth beside me.
Felt the ghost of what we’d just done still humming through my body.
And I knew—with brutal clarity—that I was fucked.
Not because I’d made a mistake.
But because I hadn’t.
Both of these women were exactly what I needed.
And I couldn’t have them both.
Chapter 10
TRUTH
