Chapter 5 - The Life We Wanted
A year after Victoria returned, I found Ethan sitting on the floor of our bathroom at two in the morning.
He had a pregnancy test in his hand.
Negative.
Again.
I stood in the doorway.
He looked up.
“I’m sorry.”
I hated those words.
I had said them too many times.
“I’m sorry.”
He rose immediately.
“No.”
My throat closed.
“I know you want children.”
“I want you.”
“Ethan—”
“No.”
He took my face in both hands.
“Listen carefully.”
Tears blurred him.
He continued.
“You have given me a home. You gave me laughter in a house that used to sound like a hotel. You gave me people who call me because they like me instead of because they need money. You taught me to leave work before midnight.”
“That may be your greatest sacrifice.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He smiled briefly, then kissed my forehead.
“If we have a child, I will be grateful every day. If we don’t, we will adopt. We will foster. We will fill every bedroom in this ridiculous apartment with children who need somewhere safe.”
My lips trembled.
“And if none of that happens?”
“Then it’s you and me.”
“That’s enough?”
His face changed.
“Claire.”
He looked almost offended.
“You are not the consolation prize for a life I wanted.”
My tears spilled.
“You are the life I wanted.”
Three months later, I took another test.
I left it on the bathroom counter because I had become too afraid to watch.
Ethan found it first.
I was downstairs arranging hydrangeas when I heard footsteps pounding through the apartment.
Ethan Whitmore never ran.
He appeared in the doorway, tie crooked, face white.
“Claire.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
He held up the test.
Two lines.
For several seconds, I could not understand what I was seeing.
Then I started crying.
Ethan crossed the room in three steps and lifted me.
“We’re having a baby.”
“Put me down.”
“We’re having a baby.”
“Ethan, put me down!”
He lowered me instantly.
Then crouched and pressed both hands against my still-flat stomach.
“Hello,” he whispered.
I laughed through tears.
“It cannot hear you.”
“It has excellent genetics. Of course it can.”
Pregnancy humbled Ethan.
A man who could negotiate nine-figure deals became powerless before heartburn.
He downloaded three parenting apps.
He interviewed pediatricians before I reached my second trimester.
He attempted to ban me from lifting watering cans.
I threatened to divorce him.
He bought lighter watering cans.
At twenty-six weeks, everything changed.
I woke before dawn with pain.
By the time Ethan drove us to the hospital, there was blood on my dress.
The doctor used words I barely understood.
Placental complication.
Premature labor.
Emergency.
Ethan held my hand so tightly I thought our bones might fuse.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” he whispered.
I had never seen him frightened.
Not during hostile takeovers.
Not during his father’s heart surgery.
Not when Victoria threatened a public scandal after the gala.
But now his face was stripped of everything except terror.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He pressed his forehead against mine.
“I can’t do this without you.”
“You won’t have to.”
Hours later, after pain and bright lights and voices telling me to push, I heard the smallest cry I had ever heard.
A daughter.
Four pounds, two ounces.
Furious at the world.
Perfect.
Ethan sobbed before I did.
He did not try to hide it.
“She’s here,” he kept saying. “Claire, she’s here.”
We named her Eleanor June Whitmore.
Ellie.
After Ethan’s grandmother and my mother.
When she finally came home from the neonatal unit, Ethan slept beside her bassinet on the floor for three nights because he did not trust himself to hear the monitor from our bed.
I found him there one morning, six-foot-two and folded beneath a baby blanket covered in yellow ducks.
I took a picture.
He later tried to buy my phone.
I refused.
Three years later, we had James.
Not planned.
Very loved.
Our house became noisy.
Then messier.
Then alive.
Ethan remained intimidating everywhere except home.
At home, Ellie painted his fingernails purple.
James used his tailored jackets as superhero capes.
Ethan learned to make pancakes shaped like flowers because Ellie insisted “Mommy deserves breakfast that looks like her job.”
He still ran Whitmore Capital.
I still ran Wild June.
We were still ourselves.
That became the thing I was proudest of.
May you like
Love had not swallowed either of us.
It had made room.
