“Well, I’d want you to. Then you don’t have to pay rent, and I get to watch my baby grow.”

She scratched her cheek. “I was actually thinking about going home for a while.”

I raised my eyebrow. Home. I loved Greer. I loved Palm Beach. I felt eternally tied to this house. But just the thought of home made everything inside of me that had been so uptight relax. Why hadn’t I thought of this? I could go home. George, my boss and father-in-law, would understand. He would give me time off. I could work from North Carolina. He knew more than anyone that I had to do something to pull myself out of the murky puddle of depression I’d been living in. “Great,” I said, as if we’d been planning it for months. “I’ll get the back house repainted and ready to go, and we can live there.”

The back house was a supposedly hurricane-safe structure that sat about a half acre away from my parents’ house in a stand of trees. It had been on the property longer than the main house and had been home to many a wayward relative over the years. It also spent plenty of time empty and was the site of more ghost hunts than I could count.

Amelia looked confused. “Parker, I never mentioned us living together.”

Suddenly, the thought of not living with her seemed the impossible part. I was so close to something like happy about this picture forming in my head. “But, Lia, that’s the perk. Right? My baby gets to know my voice before it’s born. I get to see your belly grow and know about your cravings and see what a pregnancy is like. It’d be such a gift.” I paused, not wanting to seem desperate but not wanting to let it go. “Please.”

“We need a contract,” she said, sighing.

“We don’t need a contract.”

She looked me in the eye. “We need a contract,” she repeated. “I need to know what you expect from me, what the rules are. It would make this much less messy for both of us.”

“Kale,” I said. “Kale should be in the contract.”

“I eat kale. You can leave that out.”

“Exercise, then?”

She snorted. “Right. Like I’m going to let my body go to hell while I’m growing your child.”

“Money,” I said.

“I don’t want your money,” she said immediately, ridiculously, since she had no job.

“I don’t want you carrying the stress of a job while you’re pregnant with my baby.”

She nodded. “Kale and barre are expensive.” She paused. “I have to ask you something kind of… awkward.”

“More awkward than me watching you give birth?”

We both laughed.

“You know the story I’m writing about what people do with their frozen embryos?”

I felt guarded. I felt protective of Greer, of my baby. But Amelia continued.

“I’ve interviewed a couple who has donated their embryos to science, and I have a lead on a couple who might talk about why they decided to destroy them. But this angle is…” She paused. “This angle is extraordinary, Parker. I think it would be amazing to write about.”