Page 38 of Nine Months to Bear

“So I’ve been told.” I step around him, heart jackhammering against my ribs. “His secretary has what he needs.”

Then I make the most dignified run for it I know how to do.

16

OLIVIA

Back in my car, my fingers tremble against the steering wheel. It takes me a long time to work up the courage to start up the engine and pull out.

I focus on slow, deep breaths as I drive back across town. If I think about expanding my lungs and exhaling the stress away, then I can’t freak out about the soap opera my life has become. I’m too busy turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. It’s a full-time job, really.

The space between my shoulder blades aches with tension as I finally, blessedly pull into my clinic parking lot. The morning sun casts long shadows across the concrete… and picks out the silhouette of a figure perched on the front steps.

At first, my heart soars into my throat.

Then I squint and see that the silhouette doesn’t have the shape I was expecting. It’s not him. Not nearly tall enough, big enough, broad enough, brutish enough.

Also, this is a girl. A young girl—barely drinking age, by the looks of it—with a denim jacket hanging off of her slim shoulders and a dog-eared textbook spread across her lap. Her towering messy bun threatens to collapse as she looks up. Dark tendrils frame a face still soft with youth.

The girl closes her book as I climb out of my car and shoves it into a ratty bookbag.

“Dr. Aster?” She springs up and offers her hand before thinking better of it and tucking it behind her back instead. “I’m Katelyn. I submitted an application last week? For the, uh… surrogate program?”

My stomach drops, acid churning. This must be what drug dealers who sell to high schoolers feel like. The guilt is horrible.

“The clinic doesn’t open for another hour.” I fumble with my keys. I’m suddenly desperate to put a door between myself and this girl’s hopeful eyes.

“Yeah, well…” Katelyn shrugs, following uninvited. “Figured early is on time, right? That’s what my mom always says.”

The clinic key sticks in the lock. Another problem I can’t afford to fix. I kick the bottom of the door to loosen whatever is going on inside. “Why don’t you come back when?—”

“My cousin became a surrogate for some tech bro and his supermodel wife last year.” Katelyn’s voice carries a calculated nonchalance that doesn’t match her tight grip on her backpack. “The woman didn’t want to lose work because of stretch marks and, y’know, whatever all comes with pregnancy.”

This girl doesn’t even know her bladder may never be the same. That she could die in delivery from complications. It’s not common, but it happens.

And for what? So Stefan Safonov can carry on his family lineage without any kinks in his dating life? Does Stefan evenhavea dating life? I decide I don’t want to know.

Katelyn carries on babbling, scuffing her shoe into a crack in the concrete. “She paid off her student loans. It’s pretty drastic, but seems smarter than stripping. One big deal and you’re set for life. Sort of.”

The door finally opens. I barge inside and flick on the lights. The fluorescents fill the silence with an audible hum, bathing everything in harsh, unforgiving light. “Katelyn, surrogacy isn’t a quick fix for debt. It’s a commitment. It’s?—”

“You approved my intake forms.” Katelyn pulls up an email on her phone and thrusts it forward so I can see. “See? Your office manager signed off yesterday.”

Camille.Of course. Rushing through applications to meet Stefan’s timeline, desperate to save our sinking clinic. The betrayal stings, even though I know I’m equally to blame.

“I’m not trying to beg here, but, well… okay, fine, I’m kind of begging.” Katelyn lets out a hollow laugh as she trails me into my office. “My mom doesn’t think I’ll ever finish nursing school. This would prove her wrong.”

I freeze in my tracks. I know plenty about the burning desire to prove mothers wrong.

“We require psychological evaluations,” I tell her. “Support systems. This isn’t a decision to make lightly.”

Katelyn’s laugh holds the cynicism of someone decades older. “No offense, Dr. Aster, but do you think I’d be here if I had better options?”

Her words mirror the ones I’ve swallowed all week. The ones I choked back this morning as I tucked that sterile cup in my purse, pretending this was just another savvy move to get me to the promised land. Just another compromise in a lifetime of them.

I have no other options. This is my only choice.

But when I look at Katelyn… Idosee options. I see hope. A whole future ahead she doesn’t even know exists yet.