“I….” She hesitated. “I need the money. I’m not going to lie about that. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would change my life. It would get me out of my mama’s house, pay off my debt, give me a chance to start over after my divorce?—”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She stopped.
Stared at me.
“I asked why you’rehere,” I said. “In this room. With me. There are other ways to make money. Easier ways. Ways that don’t require you to carry a stranger’s child for nine months and then walk away like it never happened.”
The silence stretched again.
But this time, it was different.
This time, she wasn’t filling it with nervous words.
She was thinking.
“Because I’m good at hard things,” she finally said. “I’ve been doing hard things my whole life. And this….” She gestured vaguely between us. “This is hard. But it’s also honest. You’re not pretending this is something it’s not. You’re not asking me to lie to myself about what this is. You want a baby. I can give you that.And in exchange, you’re giving me a way out of a life I don’t want anymore. That’s fair. That’s honest. And I can do honest.”
Something in my chest cracked.
Not broke.
Just… cracked.
Like the first fracture in ice that’s been frozen solid for too long.
I sat back in my chair.
Studied her.
She was still nervous—I could see it in the way her fingers twisted together in her lap, the way her breathing was just a little too fast, the way her eyes kept darting to the door like she was calculating how quickly she could run if she needed to.
But she wasn’t breaking.
She was holding.
And that… that was dangerous.
Because I’d built my entire life on control. On walls. On keeping people at a distance so they couldn’t see the cracks, couldn’t find the weaknesses, couldn’t use them against me.
Truth Renois was sitting in my office in a sundress and cheap shoes, talking too much because she was nervous, and I could already feel the walls starting to crumble.
“You talk when you’re nervous,” I said.
It wasn’t a question.
She flushed. “Yeah. I know. I’m sorry?—”
“Don’t apologize.”
She stopped.
Looked at me.
“It’s a tell,” I said. “Everyone has one. Yours is talking. That’s useful information.”
“Useful for what?”
