“The hell it’s not.” I leaned forward, my hands flat on the table. “As long as you’re carrying my baby, everything about you is my business. I don’t give a fuck about a contract when it comes to that. Until this is over, you belong to me.”
Her eyes flashed with fury. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“You signed a contract that says otherwise.”
“The contract says I’m carrying your child. It doesn’t say I’m your property.”
“You think I don’t know that?” My voice was rising, and I didn’t care. “You think I don’t know the difference? But you’re walking around smiling at your phone while some man is texting you, and you just had my child implanted in your body minutesago. So, yeah, Truth. I give a fuck about who’s making you smile like that.”
“You have a girlfriend,” she shot back, her voice shaking with anger. “You just introduced me as a colleague to the woman you’re fucking. So don’t you dare sit here and tell me I belong to you when you can’t even be honest about what I am to you.”
“What do you want me to say?” I demanded. “That you’re more than a surrogate? That this stopped being just business weeks ago? That I can’t stop thinking about you even when I’m with her?”
The words hung in the air between us, raw and dangerous.
Truth stared at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “You don’t get to do this,” she said finally, her voice breaking. “You don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to keep me at arm’s length and then get jealous when someone else makes me smile.”
“I’m not?—”
“Yes, you are.” She stood abruptly, grabbing her purse. “Take me home.”
“Truth—”
“Now, Amai. Take me home now.”
I threw cash on the table and followed her out of the restaurant, my jaw clenched so tight it hurt. The drive back to the Seventh Ward was silent and suffocating. Truth stared out the window, her arms crossed over her chest, her entire body radiating fury.
When I pulled up to Delphine’s house, she had the door open before I’d even put the car in park.
“Truth—”
She slammed the door so hard the entire car shook.
I sat in the driveway, watching her storm up the porch steps and disappear inside the house, and realized I’d just destroyed whatever fragile thing had been building between us.
All because I couldn’t handle seeing her smile at someone else’s text.
All because I’d tried to keep her in a box labeled “surrogate” when she’d already broken out of it weeks ago.
All because I was a coward who couldn’t admit that Truth Renois had become the most important person in my life, and I had no idea what to do about it.
Two weeks.
Fourteen days of silence that felt like drowning in slow motion.
I’d texted her three times the first week. Casual check-ins that got no response. The second week, I stopped pretending it was casual and just asked if she was okay. Nothing. Read receipts turned off. Complete radio silence.
My throat felt like it was closing every time I thought about it. About some other man being to Truth what I didn’t have the courage to be. About her smiling at her phone the way she had at the bistro—soft, warm, unguarded. About someone else making her laugh, making her feel safe, making her forget I existed.
The thought made me want to put my fist through something.
Instead, I stood in a Houston shipyard at midnight, watching Priest’s crew unload shipping containers under industrial floodlights that turned everything the color of old bruises.
“Manifest says forty-two units,” Priest said, appearing at my shoulder with a tablet. “All accounted for. No discrepancies.”
I nodded, my eyes tracking the movement of the forklifts. The air smelled like diesel fuel, salt water, and the particularkind of sweat that came from men doing illegal work in the Texas heat. Even at midnight, the humidity was oppressive.
“Quality check?” I asked.
