Page 77 of The Billionaire's Paradise

CHAPTER 28

We’d beenon the island long enough that it no longer felt like a getaway—it felt like home. Mornings came with the sound of gulls and waves. The coffee was strong. The air was soft. And we started learning what it meant to live somewhere that smelled like gardenia and felt like a long exhale.

We slipped into new rhythms.

Cal started working from the lanai more.

I started writing less and nesting more.

Leilani’s appointments became the landmarks of our week—ultrasounds, check-ins, bloodwork. The embryo-to-fruit comparisons became a shared language. The baby was the size of a lime. Then a fig. Then a peach.

Tutu treated every milestone like a national holiday.

Kimo insisted the baby’s energy was “seriously aligned, bro.”

Even Mr. Banks had opinions—mostly about which lullabies doubled as wartime codes.

We all circled Leilani like moons around a gentle, radiant sun.

She glowed in that second-trimester way, which in her case meant she threw up less, napped more, and threatened bodilyharm to anyone who interrupted her snack schedule. She’d taken to sitting on our lanai in the afternoons with a bowl of cut mango and her feet in a bucket of warm water, receiving foot rubs from Kimo like she was some barefoot fertility goddess.

We went with her to her twenty-week appointment. I don’t know what I expected—maybe more graphs, maybe a polite nod from the universe—but the moment the doctor moved the probe across her belly and a little thump echoed through the speakers, I nearly broke in half.

“That,” the doctor said with a smile. “Was a kick.”

Cal and I both gasped.

Leilani winced. “I think the kid already knows karate?”

“Did you feel that?” I asked her, wide-eyed.

“I feeleverything,” she said. “This child is a full-body experience.”

I turned to Cal who was wiping a tear off his cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was doing the same.

Our baby kicked.

Our baby justkicked.

The next morning, Cal and I were in the middle of a very serious debate about crib color palettes—he wanted “sand and driftwood,” I wanted “sunset coral and whimsy”—when the doorbell rang.

“I’m not giving in on whimsy,” I called over my shoulder, heading for the door.

“I’m not giving in on driftwood,” he called back.

I opened the door.

And froze.

“Tilly?”

There she stood—bag over one shoulder, hair in a messy bun,a box of chocolate-covered macadamias in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other—looking suddenly older and taller like her fifteen-year-old frame was finally starting to catch up with her Mensa-sized brain.

“Surprise!” she announced, arms wide. “You weren’t going to make a major life transition without me, were you?”

“What—how—why—”

“I got in!” she said, breezing past me into the living room like she’d been living there rent-free for years. “University of Hawai?i at Manoa in Honolulu. Marine Biology. I start next week. I toyed with a law degree at Yale, then entertained the thought of philosophy and metaphysics at Princeton. Then suddenly I thought, wouldn’t a sea change be awesome! Honestly, there were so many choices in front of me I’m just glad I finally made a decision.” She held up the bouquet in one hand and the shiny box in the other. “The flowers are for you guys. The chocolates are for Angus. Don’t mix them up—we all know he bites.”