Page 179 of Nine Months to Bear

“Olivia—”

“Yes. Or. No.” She enunciates each word like she’s explaining something to a child. Or an idiot. “Did you write this? That’s all I want to know.”

I take a step toward her. She backs up immediately.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Stefan.” Her eyes are as cold as hell frozen over. “Don’t come near me; just answer the question. Yes or no.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’sexactlythat simple.” She flips to one of the pages. Her hand shakes but her voice stays steady as she reads. “‘Mother issues. Bleeding heart. Desperate enough to accept terms.’ You wrote this. Yes or no?”

I close my eyes. “Yes.”

She flinches like I hit her.

“But,” I start to say, “that was before?—”

“Before what? Before you fucked me? Before you got me pregnant? Or before you made me believe that you… that you...” She stops and presses her lips together hard.

“Before I knew you.” I risk another step forward. “Yes, there was a plan. I wrote those things. But I?—”

She laughs to cut me off, harsh and hurt. “Why buy the cow when she’s giving you the milk for free, right?”

“That’s not?—”

“The acquisition agreement is dated yesterday, Stefan. Fuckingyesterday!”

Fuck me. I forgot about updating the date on the revision. “That’s just a formality. The document was drafted weeks ago?—”

“Oh, so you’ve been planning this for weeks? That makes it so much better,” she drawls with venomous sarcasm.

“I haven’t been planning anything. Not anymore.” I move closer. She moves back, maintaining the distance between us like it’s a bomb-strewn no-man’s-land. “Things changed.”

“Stop.” She holds up a quivering hand and wrenches her eyes away. “Just stop. I can’t… I can’t listen to more lies.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You’ve been lying since the moment we met!” She gestures at the journal. “‘Sexual attraction obvious. Can be leveraged.’”Her eyes close as a wave of pain wracks her. “Is that what this morning was? Leverage?”

“You know it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know anything anymore.” She wraps her arms around herself again, like she needs the warmth. “I thought I knew you. I thought we were… I thought this was real.”

“Itisreal, Olivia.”

“Which part? The business acquisition or the baby trap?”

“You think I trapped you?”

“I think you’re a man who plans twenty moves ahead.” She meets my eyes finally, and the pain there guts me. “You saw a desperate woman with a failing business and mommy issues, and you thought you’d found the perfect way to get everything you wanted.”

I cross the remaining distance between us before she can retreat again. I don’t touch her—she looks like she might shatter if I do, or if not that, then stab me with the nearest pen—but I need her to hear this.

“The plan existed. Yes. But I haven’t thought about it in weeks. Not since?—”

Since that first night at your apartment. Since you signed the contract while coming apart on your kitchen counter. Since I realized I was fucked.

“Since I started falling for you.”