Chapter 165 We took care of each other. That's all it was

Chapter 165 We took care of each other. That's all it was
Suzy looked at Lucinda for a long moment. The shyness that had been all over her face since she walked out of that office slowly gave way to something warmer and more honest underneath it.

Her mouth pulled into a real smile. "He's telling the truth. All of it." She took a small breath. "And I like him. I really do."

Something in Lucinda's chest settled right then. That was all she needed to hear. She wasn't looking for a perfect story or a clean explanation, just that. That look on Suzy's face right there.

"Then I'm happy for you," she said simply. "Both of you."

Suzy's smile widened and then softened into something more serious, her eyes dropping for a moment before coming back up. "Lucinda, I need you to know something."

Her voice came out quieter now, more careful. "If you hadn't brought me into your world, given me that job, trusted me, treated me like I mattered, I don't know where I would be right now. I genuinely don't."

Lucinda reached out and squeezed her hand. "And if you hadn't risked your life for me, I don't know where I would be either." She let that sit for a second. "We took care of each other. That's all it was."

Suzy nodded, blinking fast, clearly deciding she was not going to cry in a medical waiting room if she could help it.

The two of them shared a look that held everything that didn't need to be said out loud, the history, the hard parts, the unlikely friendship that had grown out of circumstances neither of them would have chosen.

Then Suzy straightened up, smoothed the front of her jacket, and walked back across the waiting room to where Jackson stood with his arms loosely folded, watching her the way a man watches someone he has already quietly decided is his.

Lucinda watched her go and felt the particular peace of someone whose people are all accounted for. Ashley was taken care of. Nancy was taken care of. And now Suzy, her quiet, brave, underestimated Suzy, had also stumbled into the arms of a man who checked on her with his eyes before he loosened his grip on her.

She turned back to Leonard with a full heart.

The appointment itself went smoothly. The doctor went through everything with the calm efficiency of someone who had delivered good news many times and still meant it every single time.

Measurements on track, growth healthy, both babies doing exactly what they were supposed to do.

At the end of the appointment the doctor leaned back in his chair and looked at both of them over the top of his glasses with the mild amusement of a man about to say something that was medically accurate and personally enjoyable to deliver.

"Mr. Roberts." He folded his hands on the desk. "Everything looks excellent. One piece of advice don't neglect intimacy with your wife. It genuinely helps prepare the body for labor. Keeps things moving along."

Leonard's entire face changed.

Not dramatically, he didn't whoop or grin like a teenager. It was more subtle than that.

The particular expression of a man who has just been handed something he would have wanted anyway and been told it is now also medically recommended.

He looked like someone had offered him his favorite meal and called it a prescription. "That," he said, with complete and total sincerity, "will not be a problem."

The doctor nodded, satisfied. Lucinda looked at the ceiling, knowing that Leonard meant every word.

From that appointment forward, Leonard treated the doctor's advice with the same seriousness he brought to everything else he decided mattered.

Every night, without exception, with a gentleness and attention that somehow managed to be both tender and intense at the same time, like he was trying to make up for every night he had wasted being the wrong version of himself.

The weeks that followed brought the three weddings, one after another, each one its own kind of beautiful.

Ashley's was elegant and emotional, the kind where half the room cried during the vows. Nancy's was warm and full of laughter, Dominic so visibly happy that even people who barely knew him felt it from across the room.

Suzy's was smaller, more private. Jackson wasn't a man who did things for an audience but what it lacked in scale it made up for in luxury and class.

Leonard made love to his wife the night of every single one.

As the pregnancy deepened, Lucinda's relationship with her own body became complicated in the way it does when you are carrying two lives and your center of gravity has relocated entirely without asking your opinion.

She stood in front of mirrors and didn't always love what she saw. The bump was large now, unavoidable, reshaping everything.

Some days she looked at herself and felt proud. Other days she felt heavy and uncomfortable and far away from the person she recognized.

Leonard noticed. He always noticed.

On those days he loved her more loudly. He would find her in whatever room she had drifted to and pull her back to him, his hands gentle on the body she was struggling to make peace with, telling her without using fancy words what he thought of her, because some words had started to feel too small for what he actually meant.

He didn't just find her attractive. He was amazed by her. By what her body was doing, by what she was carrying, by the fact that she got up every morning and kept going with the same quiet strength she had always had even when everything was harder than it should have been.

He made sure she knew it.

The morning it happened started like any other.