Grace’s POV
Three in the morning finds me standing at the kitchen counter, eating pickles straight from the jar like some pregnancy cliché come to life.
The vinegar burns my throat in the most satisfying way, each bite temporarily quieting the constant nausea that's become my companion at eight weeks.
The house sleeps around me, Ryan upstairs in our bed where I left him two hours ago, Cole hopefully getting some rest in his room, and for these few minutes, I don't have to perform for anyone.
Then Cole appears in the doorway, bare-chested in pajama pants that hang low on his hips, his hair mussed from tossing and turning.
He watches me with an intensity that makes my pulse race even as I crunch through another pickle.
I’m trying to pretend this is normal, that having my husband's best friend, my baby's father, the man I confessed to loving, standing half-naked in our kitchen at 3 AM is just another Thursday night.
"Can't sleep?" I ask, though the answer is obvious from the shadows under his eyes.
"Can't sleep without you."
He moves closer with deliberate steps, closing the distance until his hands settle on my waist, thumbs stroking over the cotton of my shirt.
"You know that. Haven't been able to sleep properly since you started going back to his bed."
"Cole, we've talked about this…"
"No, we've danced around it. We've made excuses and delays and promises we both know are lies."
His grip tightens slightly, not painful but desperate.
"This is insane, Grace. You're carrying my child. We told each other 'I love you' in that motel room. We're sneaking around like guilty teenagers while Ryan sleeps upstairs."
"He knows we're together sometimes…" I protest weakly.
"He knows we fuck according to his schedule and his rules. He doesn't know I'm in love with you. He doesn't know you cry in my arms about having to sleep in his bed."
The pickle jar slips from my hand, and I barely catch it before it shatters. "Cole."
"We need to tell him." His voice carries desperate urgency that makes my stomach clench. "Before this goes any further. Before we're in so deep that the truth becomes impossible to speak."
"We're already in that deep," I whisper, but he continues as if I haven't spoken.
"I want to raise our baby together. Not this fractured arrangement where you split yourself between two beds, two men, two different versions of who you are. I want to wake up next to you every morning when you're sick."
He cups my face, forcing me to meet his eyes.
"I want to go to every doctor's appointment without having to pretend I'm just the supportive friend. I want to put my hand on your belly and feel our child move without looking over my shoulder to see if Ryan's watching."
I set down the pickles with trembling hands, my whole body shaking now.
"And say what exactly? Walk upstairs right now, wake him up, and say 'Sorry Ryan, we fell in love behind your back, we're leaving'? Is that what you want?"
"Yes. Exactly that. The truth."
"After everything he's done?"
My voice cracks, tears already burning my eyes.
"After he opened our marriage to help me when he couldn't? After he accepted your baby as his own without question? After he's been nothing but supportive and loving about this entire impossible situation?"
"He doesn't know the whole situation."
"He's seeing a therapist!"
The words burst out louder than intended, and we both freeze, listening for movement upstairs. When none comes, I continue more quietly but no less intensely.
"He's healing. He's working on himself. He kissed me goodbye this morning and said he's never been happier. Said our unconventional family is exactly what he needed to find himself again."
"Grace…"
"And he's your best friend. Your brother in everything but blood. You've known him longer than you've known me. He trusted you with his wife, with his marriage, with everything, and we—"
I press my hand over my mouth to muffle a sob. "We betrayed that trust."
"We fell in love," Cole says firmly. "That's not a betrayal."
"Isn't it? When we never told him it was a possibility? When we let him believe this was just physical?"
"So we lie forever?" His voice turns hard, frustrated. "We pretend this is working? You carry my child while he plans the nursery? We raise this baby in a house built on deception?"
"Not forever. Just... not now."
I cup Cole's face between my palms, thumbs stroking his cheekbones that are sharp with tension.
"Please. I'm begging you. The contract says if one person leaves, it all ends. If we tell him the truth, he'll invoke that rule immediately. You'll have to leave. Tonight. Within the hour probably."
"Then I leave." His jaw sets with determination. "We get our own place. Start fresh. Build our own family without the shadow of this arrangement hanging over us."
"Cole, please. I can't destroy him. Not when he's finally climbing out of the darkness that nearly swallowed him after the accident."
Tears spill down my cheeks freely now, and he catches them with his thumbs.
"He was suicidal, Cole. He told his therapist he thought about driving into a tree because he felt so worthless. Let him build a foundation that won't crumble. Then we'll figure out how to do this."
Cole's jaw works, muscles tensing and releasing as he processes my words. "How long?"
"I don't have a timeline. I don't have a plan. I just know that telling him now, when he's still fragile, when he's just starting to believe he has worth beyond his fertility... it would be cruel."
"Until the baby's born?" His voice turns bitter. "Until it's walking? Until it calls Ryan 'Dad' and I become Uncle Cole who lives in the guest room?"
"I don't know!" The words come out as a wail that I have to muffle against his chest. "I just know that right now we owe him better than abandoning him at his lowest point."
Cole's arms come around me, holding me while I cry into his bare chest, my tears sliding down his skin.
I feel the tension in his body, the frustration vibrating through him, but also the love that keeps him here despite everything.
"I hate this," he murmurs into my hair, and I feel wetness that tells me he's crying too.
"Soon," I promise, the lie burning my throat worse than pickle juice. "Just not tonight. Give me time to figure out how to do this right."
He holds me tighter, and I know he hears the lie as clearly as I taste it. Soon is a word that stretches into forever when you're too afraid to break the hearts of people you love.
But he nods against my hair anyway, because what choice does he have? What choice do any of us have?
"I love you," he whispers, the words a benediction and a curse.
"I love you too," I reply, and mean it with every cell in my body, even as I know that love isn't enough to solve this. Love might actually be the thing that destroys us all.