Page 48 of Nine Months to Bear

So much for distractions.

I shrug like it’s no big deal. “You already know we met at the gala.”

“Yes, but now people are talking. And do you know why, Olivia? It’s because that photo suggests more than a casual introduction. The way he’s looking at you… Well.”

I study the image again. Stefan’s eyes burn into mine with an intensity that translates even in newsprint. My body remembers that look. It remembers even more vividly how it felt when it was followed by his mouth on my skin.

This changes things.

Yes.

I cross my legs and squeeze my thighs together. “It’s a dance, Mother. People tend to look at their dance partners.”

Not that she would know. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my mother dance. I truly think her joints might just crack and crumble into dust if she ever so much as attempted a foxtrot.

“People? Yes. Stefan Safonov? Never.” She leans forward, voice dropping conspiratorially. “Do you know how many society mothers have tried to introduce their daughters to that man? He doesn’t dance with anyone. Except you, apparently.”

I stab my avocado toast hard enough to chip the plate beneath it. “Maybe he felt sorry for me. It was a charity gala, after all.”

Her smile tightens, the warning sign I’ve feared since childhood. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Olivia. I raised you better.”

“Did you?” The question slips out before I can catch it.

I almost feel guilty. It doesn’t last long.

“Anyway,” I sigh before she can start in on a lecture, “I thought you wanted to catch up. How is work? You have the cardiac stem cell paper in pre-print, right? Is that?—”

“I raised you to recognize opportunity,” she interrupts, tapping the photo again. “And this is the sound of opportunity knocking. Karen Thompson was just telling me yesterday how impressed the board would be to have connections with someone of Safonov’s… influence.”

“So now, you want me to sleep my way into the Mass Gen partnership?”

“Don’t be crude,” she hisses under her breath, with a glance around to make sure no one overheard. “I’m suggesting you leverage every advantage available. Isn’t that what I taught you? What separates successful people from failures is recognizing which doors to walk through.”

“And which people to step on along the way, right?”

Her eyes thin out into slits. So cold, those eyes. They suck the life right out of me. “I’ve never understood your stance on this. You want success but reject the very tools that would secure it. If you’d just listened to me about joining the operating room instead of chasing this silly fertility clinic dream?—”

My mother’s familiar tirade fades into a distant hum, lost in the rush of blood in my ears.

I’ve heard it all before, anyway. She likes to claim whatever hope she had for me dried up when I opted out of becoming a surgeon,but really, it happened long before that. I’ve spent countless hours trying to pinpoint the moment that it all went wrong.

But there isn’t one.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been disappointing her. It’s only now, in the last couple days, that I’ve started to wonder if it’s my fault at all.

Maybe it started before I was born.

It’s not like my parents were deeply in love. They always seemed too smart for those kinds of powerful emotions. My childhood was a blur of sameness. Sunday brunches with my father reading medical journals while my mother networked on the phone. They slept in separate bedrooms by the time I was twelve.

Sure, they attended regularly scheduled appearances at hospital functions, and while they were there, they smiled and touched each other on the waist enough to convince people it was genuine affection. On some level, I do believe theylikedeach other. They worked well together—co-authors on research papers, professional partners in every sense.

But were they passionate? Never. Not once did I witness a lingering touch, a heated glance, a moment of spontaneous desire between them.

Yet here I am, tangled in something with Stefan that takes a lit match to the sterile example they set. You can’t bring what we have into a boardroom or a convention hall—the place would combust.

There’s no logic, no reason, no equal partnership here.

There’s only the feel of his desk grinding into my back as he fucks me into it, harder, harder.