Chapter 292 Yes

Chapter 292 Yes
Sage's POV

Thursday morning arrived the way they did when you had not slept well. Too early, too quiet, the light coming through the curtains at an angle that felt accusatory.

I had been awake since four.

Not anxiously. Not the spiraling kind of awake. Just awake, lying in the bed that was still too much space for one person, thinking about the appointment at ten tomorrow and the question that was attached to it.

Do I want him there?

I had been sitting with that question since the phone call the night before. I had gone to bed with it. I had woken up with it. I had made tea at four thirty in the morning and sat in the kitchen with it and looked at the document that was still on the table and the ring that was still on my hand and tried to come to a clean answer.

There was no clean answer.

The clean answer would have been yes, obviously, he is the father and it is his first appointment and he should be there, uncomplicated, easy. Three days ago that would have been the clean answer.

The other clean answer would have been no, not yet, I am not ready to be in a room with him, I need more time and more distance before I can sit next to him in a doctor's office.

What I had instead was neither of those things.

What I had was a man who had hurt me in a way that was real and specific and that was going to take time to fully work through. And also a man who had signed a legal document before biological certainty because he believed me. And also a man who had not pushed or pressured or used the appointment as leverage when I mentioned it. And also a man who was sleeping in a room at the back of his own clubhouse because I had told him to leave and he had respected that completely.

Diego knocked on the door at eight.

I let him in and made coffee and he sat at the kitchen table and looked at me and said nothing, which was exactly right.

"I'm going to tell him yes," I said, after a while.

Diego nodded.

"Not because I'm over it," I said. "I want to be clear about that. I am not over it. I am not ready to say everything is fine and pick up where we left off. This is going to take time and work and more conversations than I am currently capable of having." I looked at the table. "But he is the father and it is the first appointment and I want him there."

"Okay," Diego said.

"Is that weak?" I asked. "Tell me honestly."

"No," Diego said. "It's honest. There is a difference between forgiving someone and deciding what the right thing is regardless of the anger. You can be furious at him and still know he should be at the appointment."

"I am furious at him," I said.

"I know," Diego said. "You are going to be furious at him for a while. That is appropriate. That does not mean the anger has to make every decision."

I looked at the ring on my hand.

"He is not getting off easily," I said. "I want you to know that. Whatever happens after Friday, whatever reconciliation looks like, it does not look like I was wrong to be angry or that the question at the kitchen table was something small that was easy to move past. It was not small. It is going to take real work."

"I know," Diego said. "And I think he knows that too."

"He better," I said.

Diego drank his coffee and said nothing else. He was very good at not saying anything else when nothing else was needed.

At nine-thirty I picked up my phone.

Ryder answered before the first ring had finished. Which told me he had been sitting with his phone since the call last night, waiting, the way he waited for things, without moving, without making noise, just steady and present and available.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," he said.

"The appointment is tomorrow at ten," I said. "Millbrook Family Practice."

"Yes," he said carefully.

"I want you there," I said.

A silence.

Not a bad silence. The kind that came from something landing somewhere it needed to land and the person receiving it needing a moment to let it.

"Okay," he said. His voice was not the controlled version. It was the underneath-the-controlled version, the one that came out when something was too large for the usual management to fully contain.

"I want to be clear about what this means and what it doesn't mean," I said.

"Tell me," he said.

"It means I want the father of my child at the first appointment," I said. "It does not mean we are fixed. It does not mean I am ready to come home or for you to come home. It does not mean the conversation about what happened at that kitchen table is over. That conversation has barely started."

"I understand," he said.

"This is one step," I said. "One. We are taking one step."

"One step," he said. "That is everything."

"Don't," I said. "Don't be grateful in a way that makes me feel like I need to manage your feelings about it."

"Right," he said. "Sorry." A pause. "One step. Ten o'clock. I will be there."

"Okay," I said.

"Sage," he called my name.

"What?" I said.

"Thank you," he said. Just that. Just thank you, and then he waited.

I looked at the ring on my hand and out the window at the street and at the document still on the table.

"See you tomorrow," I said before hanging up.