Masuk(Natasha)"We need the relocation date in writing by month-end," the transition lead says. "Legal wants it locked before we announce."He's the third person from Doheny to call this week.They rotate, like a collections agency with better suits.I guess they’d stop if I actually gave them a straight answer."I understand.""So can we say the fifteenth?"My pen is hovering over the calendar. Right over the square. All I have to do is write a number in it."Let me review the exact wording first," I say. "I'll have my counsel look at it and get back to you Friday."A pause on his end. Long enough to mean something."Ms. Kelly, you've had the contract for two weeks.""Then it'll be a fast review. Friday."I hang up before he can answer, which I'd absolutely call unprofessional if someone else did it.Stalling.That's what I’m doing.I’ve been avoiding giving them a firm answer since first telling Chase.I'm not going to sit here and take it apart on a Tuesday afternoon.Some weeks you jus
(Sonia)Somebody's making a speech about the movie, and Liam's across the room looking unfairly good in tight jeans and a charcoal button-up shirt.He’s not wearing his denim jacket for once.He hasn’t had a haircut in a while and it’s falling into his eyes and curling over his collar.There’s something magnetic about his quiet confidence.He’s currently laughing at a grip's joke, and I've officially spent the entire wrap party watching one writer instead of networking.Sonia who has her face on the side of a bus.The girl who got famous from being in a trailer.Currently invisible in a corner, nursing warm champagne, staring at a man's hands with a frightening amount of longing.He catches me looking.Doesn't smile. Just holds my gaze for three full seconds, then turns his attention back to the grip.That's the game we've been playing since the writers' room.Since the line-reading before my callback.Since he picked me up at the airport, if I'm being completely honest, and I'm tryin
(Mason)"You ordered for me," Imani says, sitting down. "Bold. What if I hate oysters?""You don't. You expensed four dozen to the Brennan data room. Line item, page nine.""You read my expense reports?""I read everything from the deal that beat me. Know your enemy.""Enemy."She takes the champagne out of my hand mid-pour and finishes pouring it herself."You've sent me three term sheets and a fruit basket. Some enemy.""The fruit basket was a power move.""It had a pineapple wearing sunglasses, Mason.""Exactly. Confusing. You've thought about me every day since."She laughs. Not denying it.Whimsy is always a good bet. Chloe would have adored that pineapple.Dinner goes like the negotiation went during the Brennan deal.She's fast. I try to be faster, but she’s just letting me believe that for sport.She dismantles my Q3 strategy between courses, out of charity.She tells me my office is nearly a week behind on paperwork, and she figured it out from the other side of the negotiati
(Chloe)Natasha Kelly is sitting across from me in a booth, holding the drinks menu like it's written in a language she refuses to learn."What is a nervine?" she asks."It calms your nervous system. That one has skullcap, oat straw, and blue lotus. It's basically a hug for your vagus nerve.""That sounds vaguely sexual. I'm going to stick to wine.""That's also valid. I’ll have the prenatal version with chamomile and rose water instead of skullcap and blue lotus. That's a no while I'm growing a person." "The baby kicks, hard, like she agrees.She's been doing barrel rolls since seven, which Bryce says means a Sagittarius moon and my OB says means nothing, and honestly I hold both truths.I still can't believe I'm here.Natasha called me.I've done a gratitude journal entry about it already and the drinks hadn't even started.Her wine and my mocktail arrives, purple and beautiful. She eyes it."It looks radioactive.""It's the butterfly pea flower that gives it color. Do you want to
(Natasha)Dr. Hannah Myles has publications.Fourteen of them, indexed, peer-reviewed, and I know this because it's nine p.m. and I'm three pages deep into a medical database instead of sleeping.There's a conference photo.She's presenting something about valve repair, hair up, laser pointer in hand, looking like the kind of woman who saves lives before lunch and never once loses her keys.Lily's monitor hums on the nightstand as I close the laptop.This is ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous.Chase had a drink with the mother of his son.One drink, in her kitchen, fully clothed, about custody logistics and the impact of me moving.He told me about it himself, unprompted, the second Elijah went to bed."It was nice," he said. "First time we've talked like normal people."Nice.He said it was nice, and something in me pulled a fire alarm.Because here's what my brain served up at two a.m. that day and has been reheating since.I'm getting on a plane in five weeks.She's staying right her
(Hannah)The valve replacement runs forty minutes over because the man's arteries have opinions, and by the time I scrub out it's past two and I've eaten one granola bar since five a.m.Standard Tuesday.What's not standard is that I keep thinking about Chase Warren while elbow-deep in someone's chest cavity.Not like that.Like a puzzle.The man drank wine in my kitchen last night and talked about making compromises for the woman he loves.Made promises about our son and meant them.Twenty-year-old Chase would've handed the whole conversation to an assistant and gotten out of there so fast the breeze would have ruffled my hair.People don't change, is what I've believed my whole life.They just get more like themselves with each passing year.Apparently I've been wrong.With the right incentive people can change.Natasha Kelly seems to be exceptionally good at inspiring transformations.And she's leaving.Which is going to land on my son heavily.I’m jealous as hell of the rapport sh
(Natasha)I need to move.Despite my very best intentions, my anger has been growing exponentially since Nathanial left.Mom takes my place at the cot when I stand up.She doesn't ask where I'm going.She has the look of a woman who's been waiting for me to move for an hour and a half.The corridor
(Natasha)Lily is sleeping.The monitors are calmer than they were three hours ago.The numbers I've been staring at on the screen above her cot have stopped lurching and started behaving.Her color came back somewhere around five o'clock.Her cheek under my thumb feels warm again.She was so cold
(Nathanial)James catches me in the corridor with a folder under his arm and his mouth set tight.He seems to be having a hard time meeting my eyes.The reunion with my uncle is nowhere near as intense as meeting Nat.I barely remember him from my childhood.Just a vague feeling that he was always
(Gloria)I’ve been watching Nathanial across the desk for forty minutes.He hasn't noticed.He’s chewing on a capped ballpoint while he reads the document in his hand, a small furrow between his brows.He’s done that since he was twenty-five and it’s going to give him a stroke one day if he’s not c







