Page 108 of Nine Months to Bear

She starts pacing. “I gave her everything. My notes, my research, all my brilliant ideas. I told her about my plan—how I wanted toopen my own clinic, do it my way. She smiled and told me it was so bold and brave.”

Her mouth twists. “Six months later,shelaunched it.Myclinic.Mywork. She stole the whole fucking thing.”

I stay quiet. She doesn’t look at me.

“When I confronted her, she laughed. Said I was naive. That friendship doesn’t mean shit when money’s on the table.”

Olivia stops pacing. Her eyes are bright now, angry and wet at the same time. “She was right, wasn’t she? Look at me. I had to start over from nothing while she built an empire on my bones.” Her voice drops. “She’s still doing it. Running the biggest clinic in Boston, circling the Mass General partnership like a vulture. Ready to swallow my practice whole. And I swore I’d never give anyone that much power over me again.”

Finally, she looks up. Her gaze snags on mine. “Until you.”

I nod in grim understanding. “You don’t trust me.”

“Of course I don’t fucking trust you.” Then, softer: “But I can’t seem to stay away from you, either.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s like…” She hesitates. Her fingers brush her arm, restless. “Like we recognize the same damage in each other. Different wounds, but… same ache.”

“We’re a hell of a pair,” I mutter. “Crime boss and fertility doctor. It’s a setup for a bad joke.”

“What’s the punchline?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Olivia smiles, and it transforms her entire face. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe some jokes don’t need punchlines.”

“Everything needs an ending, Olivia.”

“Does it?”

The yacht rocks gently beneath us, and I realize we’ve been standing here for minutes, just looking at each other.

She must realize it, too, because she half-turns away from me to look out the window again. But I despise the silence and the sadness in her eyes. I’m not done with this yet. Revealing scars. Showing each other where the knives went into our backs.

I consider what I want to know about her, what pieces of Olivia Aster I haven’t yet collected. There are dozens of questions, but one rises above the rest.

“Why fertility medicine? With your grades, your family connections, you could have done anything. Surgery like your mother, research, private practice. Why choose something so…?”

“Messy?”

“Emotional.”

“Because I know what it feels like to want something so desperately that you’d do anything to get it. The lengths people will go to create the families they dream of, the hope they carry even when the odds are impossible… Mostly, to not be alone.” She looks back at me. “And because I know the other side, too.”

“The other side?”

She shrugs one shoulder, pretending to be unbothered. “I was Plan B. The accident that stuck.”

I frown. “Your parents…?”

“They spent three years trying to conceive. Fertility treatments, specialists, the works. They’d given up completely when my mother got pregnant with me.” She shrugs again, but her mouth pulls tight. “I grew up knowing I was the consolation prize.”

“That’s not?—”

“True? Of course it is. They never said it outright, but children know. We always know.” I can see the old pain in her eyes. “So when I help a couple see their first viable embryo, or when I hand them a positive pregnancy test after years of trying, I’m giving them something I never had: a child who was loved and wanted from the very beginning.”

I feel that in my chest, like someone just jammed a scalpel between the ribs.