Page 231 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

“You did.”

“Was it good?”

She turns in my arms and looks at me, still flushed, hair a mess, eyes softer than anything else in the room. “It was terrible,” she says. “But it’s okay, there’s always room for improvement.”

Then she kisses me again, slower this time, and all useful thoughts flee my mind.

Epilogue

MAGGIE

By the time I meet Alester again, I’m three months pregnant and no longer even slightly interested in pretending any of this happened to some other version of me.

The nausea is better than it was. Not gone, but manageable. I’m showing just enough that I notice it when I dress, though most people probably still wouldn’t. My body feels less like an ambush now and more like a place I live again, even if it’s a stranger’s house half the time.

Dalton would say that’s progress.

Dalton says a lot of things in a doctor voice and then kisses me like he should be fined for false professionalism, so I’ve learned to take the useful parts and enjoy the rest.

Still, walking into Alester’s office makes something old and cold stir low in my stomach.

Not fear exactly. Memory.

The room is the same. The shelves, the heavy desk, the too-expensive quiet of a man who likes the world arranged around him. Petra is there when I arrive, of course, standing near the window with a folder in hand and the expression of someone who has already processed this meeting emotionally on everyone’s behalf and found it inefficient.

Alester is behind the desk. He stands when I enter.

That, more than anything, throws me. Not because it’s kind. Because it’s deliberate.

“Maggie,” he says.

“Alester.”

No one invites me to sit. I do it anyway.

Petra steps forward first, passes a file across the desk, and Alester places one hand on it before speaking.

“The agreement is terminated in full,” he says. “Effective immediately.”

I nod once.

He opens the file and turns it slightly so I can read the relevant section. Legal language, clean and final. No suspension. No conditions. No future clause waiting to rise from the dead.

Canceled. Properly this time.

I let out a breath before I can stop myself.

That doesn’t escape Alester’s attention, but he says nothing about it.

“There is also an amended financial release,” he says. “You will retain a portion of the compensation already paid.”

That makes me look up. I blink at him. “Why?”

It comes out more bluntly than I intend, but then, most things do with him now. I’m past the stage of polite confusion.

He answers without flinching. “Because you fulfilled a substantial part of the arrangement in good faith, and because there are costs you have already absorbed that should not become punitive.”

For a second I just stare at him.