Page 119 of Say My Name

“No.” The answer comes too quickly for her to take it back. She exhales and looks away. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Because living together implies this is something it isn’t.”

I hear the fear beneath her answer, and my irritation disappears.

Elena isn’t worried about what cohabitation would look like from the outside. Cliff doesn’t know. Our employees wouldn’t suspect. No one would see her waking up in my home or leaving her shampoo in my shower.

She would.

She would have to admit we are building something beyond a conception schedule.

I walk around the island, stopping before I get close enough to touch her. “Then forget living together.”

Her arms loosen, but her expression remains guarded.

I round the island but stop short of her. “Can I ask you for something smaller?”

“Define ‘smaller’ in a way that doesn’t involve a moving truck.”

“Can I see you outside the scheduled windows?”

She looks at me without speaking.

“We already do,” I continue. “You call me. I come over. You stay at my house even when the timing is wrong. I want us to stop pretending those nights need a clinical explanation.”

“It’s not pretending. It’s logistics.”

“You attach dates to them.”

“The dates matter.”

“They matter when we’re trying to make a baby. But was last Saturday about the calendar?”

Her attention drops to the counter. “I wanted you there.”

The admission disarms me completely. All my arguments, all my logic, fall away.

The quiet admission lands harder than the no she gave me a few minutes ago.

“Then tell me that. Text me when you want me, and I’ll do the same. No false dates, and no pretending we misread the calendar.”

“And if the timing actually matters?”

“We say so.”

She studies me long enough that I have to resist filling the silence for her.

“All right,” she says. “We stop falsifying the dates.”

“And we see each other when we want to.”

Elena exhales. “Yes.”

I hold out my hand. She looks at it, rolls her eyes, and places her palm against mine.

“We’re shaking on this?”