Exactly what I needed to keep my head clear and my boundaries intact.
Except my head wasn’t clear.
And my boundaries were already fucked.
I turned onto Magazine Street, heading toward the Garden District, and the guilt twisted deeper.
You’re not in a relationship with her. You don’t owe her anything beyond what you’ve already agreed to.
That was the truth.
The legal truth.
The rational truth.
But it didn’t feel true.
It felt like a lie I was telling myself because the alternative—admitting that I cared about Truth Renois in ways that had nothing to do with the baby she could carry—was too dangerous to acknowledge.
That wasn’t business.
That was something else entirely.
And I’d been fucking Alexis to convince myself otherwise.
You’re full of shit,a voice in my head quietly said.
I ignored it.
Turned up the volume on the true crime podcast playing through the speakers—some case about a man who’d killed his wife and tried to make it look like a robbery.
The narrator’s voice was calm, clinical, detached.
I envied that detachment.
I used to have it.
Before Truth walked into my office wearing a sundress and asked me if I wanted a child or an heir.
Before she looked at me with those eyes that didn’t flinch.
Before she became something I couldn’t stop thinking about.
The streets widened as I crossed into the Garden District.
Old money architecture. Manicured lawns. Oak trees dripping with Spanish moss.
This was my world.
Beautiful in a way that kept people at a distance.
I pulled onto my street and felt my phone buzz in the cupholder.
I glanced at it.
A text from Alexis:I have a surprise for you.
I didn’t respond.
