Zara’s pov
I practiced the sentence in the mirror that morning.
Ethan, I’m pregnant.
Just four words, and still I could not make myself say them out loud in a way that felt right.
I said the sentence to my reflection a dozen different ways before I gave up trying.
I tried it calm and steady, like a woman announcing a simple business decision.
I tried it soft, almost like a confession, the kind of thing you whisper because saying it too loud might make it too real too fast.
I tried it fast too, like ripping off a bandage, letting the words tumble out before I could stop myself.
None of them sounded right.
All of them sounded, in their own way, like the beginning of the end of something I was not ready to let end.
“You are going to tell him tonight,” I told my reflection, out loud, like saying it firmly enough might somehow make it true and easy.
“Over dinner. Stay calm. Just say it plainly.”
My reflection did not look convinced by any of it.
Honestly, neither was I.
Richard’s warning had been sitting heavy in my chest for two days now, and it only grew heavier with every hour that passed without me acting on it.
Protect yourself.
Tell Ethan.
Those were his words, and I had promised myself I would do it.
I had promised Richard too, with a small squeeze of his hand on the night his eyes finally closed on that unfinished name he never got to say.
And every day since then I found some new little reason to push the truth off to tomorrow.
Today, I told myself firmly, was the day tomorrow finally ran out of room to hide in.
Marta had the chef prepare something light for dinner that night, still fussing over me the same way she had been since my fainting spell three days before.
I found Ethan already seated at the table when I came downstairs, a glass of wine sitting untouched at his elbow, his attention deep in something on his tablet, wearing that focus he wore like a piece of armor.
“You’re up,” he said, setting the tablet aside the second he noticed me.
“How are you feeling tonight?”
“Better. Marta has been treating me like I might shatter into pieces.”
“Marta is not wrong to be careful with you.”
He gestured toward the seat across from him, and I sat down, my stomach twisting with a nervousness that had nothing to do with the nausea I had been fighting for weeks now.
“You look like you have something on your mind tonight.”
“Do I?”
“You have been staring at your napkin for a full minute instead of eating anything on your plate.” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
I glanced down at my hands.
He was right, I had folded and unfolded the corner of that linen napkin at least three times without even noticing.
“Just thinking about some things.”
“About what?”
“Nothing worth interrupting your evening for, really.”
“Try me anyway.” He set his fork down slowly, giving me his full attention in a way that made my little excuse harder to reach for.
“I have had a hard week already. I could use something other than spreadsheets to think about.”
“The gala,” I said instead, which was not entirely a lie, just not the whole truth I owed him.
“Cordelia has apparently been texting some of the other wives about me. Nothing kind, from what I hear.”
“I can talk to her about it, if you want.”
“Don’t. It will only make things worse. I can handle Cordelia on my own.” I picked halfheartedly at the appetizer in front of me, without much appetite.
“How was your day today?”
“Long, and a bit tiring. Priya is still digging into the Kestrel leak, and Marcus thinks he has narrowed the trust amendment access further, though he won’t tell me anything solid just yet. ” He rubbed slowly at his temple, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour.
“I keep feeling like the walls of this whole situation are closer than I can see.”
“That sounds exhausting to carry around.”
“It really is.” He looked at me then, truly looked, the kind of look he gave sometimes that made me feel like he was reading a page I never meant to leave open.
“You’re doing it again, you know.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring down at your food instead of eating it. And you have changed the subject twice already since you sat down.” A small, careful smile crossed his face, not accusing me of anything, just observing.
“What is really going on with you tonight, Zara?”
My pulse picked up its pace.
This was the moment, I could feel it arriving all at once.
“There is something I need to tell you,” I said, and the words came out steadier than I had expected.
“It has been sitting heavy on me for a while now, and I keep putting it off again and again, and I do not think I can keep doing that anymore.”
Ethan set down his own fork completely, giving me his full attention in a way he rarely gave to anything that was not a contract or a full blown crisis.
“Okay. I am listening.”
“It’s about…” My voice caught in my throat.
I pressed on anyway, forcing the sentence forward like wading through water that kept getting deeper.
Something shifted quietly in his expression, careful now, attentive, with no trace left of the guarded businessman who ran board meetings like tense negotiations.
“Okay. Go on.”
“There is a reason I have been so tired lately. And sick. And why I fainted, and why the doctor said it was only exhaustion, and that is… that is not the whole truth, Ethan.” My hands had started shaking a little under the table, and I gripped my napkin to try and still them.
“I should have told you weeks ago. I wanted to tell your father first, which sounds strange, I know, but he was the one who…”
My phone buzzed suddenly against the table, cutting straight through the sentence like a blade.
Noah’s name lit up the screen, three missed calls in the last ten minutes that I had not even noticed over the sound of my own heartbeat.
And something about the urgency of it, three calls in ten minutes from a brother who almost never called twice in a row, sent a cold rush of ice through my veins.
“You should get that call,” Ethan said, though something in his face had already gone tight, sensing the interruption for what it was even before I did.
“It can wait a little while.”
“Zara, three calls in ten minutes is not nothing at all. Please answer it.”
He was right, and some small part of me was almost grateful for the excuse, hating myself for feeling that relief even as it washed over me.
I answered on the fourth ring, and Noah’s voice came through tight and rushed, something about a mix up with his financial aid paperwork that needed sorting before some office closed in twenty minutes.
Nothing life threatening, nothing that could not have waited until morning if he had not panicked the way he panicked about everything lately.
By the time I finally hung up the phone, fifteen minutes had already passed, and the moment I had been building toward had quietly dissolved into logistics and reassurances and Marta calmly clearing away plates that had gone cold.
“Is everything okay?” Ethan asked me gently.
“It’s fine. Just Noah being a bit dramatic about paperwork again.” I tried hard to find my way back to the sentence I had been building, but it had scattered somewhere in the last fifteen minutes, and the courage that had carried me that far was already draining out of me like water slipping through open fingers.
“Sorry. What were we talking about again?”
“You were telling me something important.”
He watched me carefully, patient, waiting, the openness still sitting in his expression like he had left a door unlocked just for me.
“About the night we first met.”
I looked at his face and something inside me flinched backward instead of moving forward.
If I told him now, only half formed after the phone call about Noah, it would come out all wrong, tangled and messy, robbed of the quiet dignity I had wanted this confession to carry.
That was the excuse I gave myself, standing right at the edge of the truth for the second time in one meal and finding, once again, that I could not make myself take the jump.
“It’s nothing important, really,” I heard myself say.
“Just that I am glad I said yes. To the marriage, I mean. Even with everything that has happened since then.”
It was not exactly a lie, but it was not the truth I owed him either, and I watched something small flicker across his face before he quietly covered it up with a small smile of his own.
“I am glad too,” he said quietly, and reached across the table to cover my hand with his, and the simple warmth of it nearly undid every last ounce of the resolve I had left not to blurt the whole truth out right there, regardless of the timing.
We finished the rest of dinner on safer ground after that, careful conversation about nothing that mattered, and I excused myself early, claiming a tiredness that was not entirely invented, needing distance from that table before my nerve found its way back.
Ethan caught my wrist gently as I passed by his chair, not stopping me completely, just slowing me down for one more quiet moment.
“You wanted to tell me something?” he asked softly, and I looked at his face and simply said, “It’s nothing,” hating myself the whole entire way up the stairs.