Nothing else there 22

Monday morning Lily sits in the backseat with her earbuds in, mouthing along to something I can’t hear, as Nick drives. I ride shotgun with a coffee I haven’t tasted because my hands are busy being nervous.

He pulls up to the school and Lily unbuckles before leaning forward between the seats to kiss my cheek. Then she looks at Nick.

“Bye, Uncle Nick,” she says casually, like she’s been saying it her whole life.

Then she gets out and jogs toward the entrance without looking back.

Nick watches her go, hands are still on the wheel. He doesn’t say anything about the ‘uncle’ and neither do I. But I see his fingers loosen on the leather, just slightly, like something he was holding let go.

“I’ve got a few hours at the office today — quarterly filings, some signatures. Come with me.” He glances at me, pulling back into traffic. “If you’re going to work with me, you should see what you’re getting into.”

I look out the window at the city doing its Monday thing. Taxis, crosswalks, people walking fast with coffee and somewhere to be. I used to be one of them.

“Fine,” I say. “But if I break the printer on day one, that’s on you.”

“We don’t have a printer on my floor.”

“Then I’m already ahead,” I say, and the joke lands lighter than I expected.

The Carraway Group building is glass and steel, the kind of quiet only money can buy. Nick holds the elevator and I step in and the mirrored walls throw my reflection back and I straighten my jacket without thinking.

“Relax,” he says with a smile.

“I am relaxed,” I say.

“You’ve buttoned your jacket three times since we left the car.”

I look down. He’s right. I button it again without thinking and he watches me do it and doesn’t say anything, which is somehow worse.

The doors open on the fourteenth floor — his office at the end of the hall, the conference room, the assistant’s desk outside his door. Empty and waiting.

“This is yours,” he says, leaning against his doorframe. “If you want it.”

I run my hand along the edge of the desk. There’s already a small plant in a ceramic pot with a hand-painted leaf on it. He definitely bought himself because no office plant comes in a pot like that.

“You bought me a plant,” I say, and my voice does something I wasn’t expecting — goes soft, almost cracking.

Because for me the plant is the same kind of gesture as the coffee and the milk and the purple bedframe.

“The desk looked empty, so…” he says.

I sit down and he watches me adjust the chair, angle the monitor. I catch him looking and he doesn’t look away, his eyes warm and so openly pleased that I have to turn back to the screen. “Stop staring at me.”

“I’m supervising.” He grins and comes closer to me.

The morning passes with Nick walking me through the systems and I pick it up faster than I expected. The muscles are rusty but they’re still there, the rhythm of organizing someone else’s chaos coming back like a language I forgot I spoke.

Twice he leans over my shoulder to point at something and his arm brushes mine that I feel like static.

When at eleven-thirty the elevator chimes, I hear heels on the marble — sharp and fast, the particular percussion of a woman who wants you to hear her coming. Camille rounds the corner in a white blouse and a skirt that costs more than my first apartment.

She stops mid-step when she sees me.

“Oh.” Her eyes move from my face to the desk to Nick’s temporary office open door where he disappeared ten minutes ago. “Now you’re working here? How… cute.”

“Starting today.”

“Mhmm.” She smiles and it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You know, Dom always said Nick had a thing for his assistants. I thought he was joking.” She tilts her head. “But here you are.”

“Must be a Carraway thing,” I say, keeping my voice level. “Dominic married his assistant too. Twice. How’s that working out for him?”

Her smile tightens and she leans her hip against my desk, crossing her arms. “I’m here for the quarterly signatures. Dom’s been swamped, you know, doctor’s appointments, planning.”

“We’re trying for a baby,” she says, dropping the words like a name. “Dom is very focused.”

She watches my face, reading me the way she always reads me.

“I’m sure you and Nick are on the same page about all that too.” Her eyes drop to my stomach and stay there. “You look different. Fuller maybe? Gained weight out of stress, honey?”

My hand moves to my stomach before I can stop it. I pull it back but not fast enough — I can see from her face that she caught it.

“Or maybe it’s not just the stress.” She waves her hand at last, as if dismissing it. “Anyway. I assume Nick told you about the will? Their father Benjamin’s little condition?”

The floor tilts. “What will?”

“You know, the inheritance-goes-to-whoever-produces-a-grandson-first will. That one. With the whole company to inherit.”

She picks something off her sleeve while I stare at her and the words rearrange themselves in my head. I can feel them settling into a shape I don’t want to look at.

Camille probably sees it right on my face.

“Oh.” Her hand goes to her mouth, her eyes widening, the performance flawless. “He didn’t tell you? Nick really didn’t… hmm.” She straightens. “I just assumed, since you two are married. That he would have mentioned something like that.”

She picks up the folder from the desk and taps it against her palm.

“Trust is so important in a marriage, isn’t it?” She turns toward the elevator. “I’ll let Dom know you said hi.”

Her heels click down the hallway and when the elevator chimes she’s gone.

I sit at the desk with my hands flat on the surface. The plant with the hand-painted leaf in front of me and the new monitor and the keyboard I just learned are becoming background noise.

The inheritance goes to whoever produces a grandson first.

I’m carrying twin boys. Dominic’s sons. And… Nick knew.

He knew when he proposed in that restaurant. He knew at the registry office. He knew every morning when he poured my coffee and put his hand on my knee and looked at me like I was the only person in the room.

And the two sentences — Dominic saying the Carraway name needs a son and Nick asking me to marry him — stack on top of each other. And for one terrible second they look the same.

No. He’s not Dominic. He’s nothing like Dominic. Right?

But he didn’t tell me.

My spiraling cut with Nick appearing in the doorway. “Lunch? There’s a place on the corner that does…” He stops and reads my face the way he reads everything, fast and quiet. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” I turn back to the screen. “I’m fine.”

He stands there and I can feel him in the doorway the way I always feel him.

The weight of his attention, the patience that usually makes me feel safe and right now makes me feel like something is being managed.

“Aria…”

“I said I’m fine, Nick.” My voice comes out flat and cold and I don’t fix it. “Not hungry.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Then he nods and goes back to his office, closing the door.

I stare at the plant. The hand-painted leaf. The careful gesture of a man who buys office plants for a woman he says he’s helping.

I push the thought down and I work through lunch and I answer emails and I don’t look at his closed door and I don’t think about the two boys inside me who are worth an entire company to every Carraway man alive.

I’m not ready to think about it yet.