Read Listed: Volume VI for Free Online Page B

throat.
    “She’s
been good for you.”
    Paul
nodded one more time before he walked away.
    ***
    When he got home, he
went to his home office immediately, sitting at the desk and staring at the
computer screen blindly.
    He
knew Emily was home, but he also knew she would ask him how things went. He
wasn’t sure what to tell her.
    She
found him there a few minutes later.
    She
propped herself up on the edge of his desk and looked down at him without
speaking.
    He
met her eyes. Saw understanding, sympathy, affection, love. And all of it was stronger
than the discomfort in his gut.
    After
a minute, he told her, “You were right.”
    He
watched as the realization  processed on her face.  “That’s a good thing,
right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He
loves you.”
    For
the first time in as long as he could remember, those words weren’t followed by
an instinctive internal resistance. He didn’t feel happy, satisfied, or at
peace, but at least he didn’t want to bite out an automatic objection.
    “Maybe,”
he replied. “He’ll never be a good father, though.”
    “I
never thought he would be, but it means something. Knowing it, I mean. Doesn’t
it?”
    “Yeah,”
he admitted. “It does.”
    That
was all they needed to say.
    ***
    For the next two weeks,
Paul went into the office every day. There wasn’t any sort of requirement for
him, as long as he got his work done, but now that things had settled down with
Emily, he thought it might be a good idea to be a more regular presence in the
corporate offices.
    To
his surprise, he actually liked it. Spending more time in the office allowed
him to get to know his coworkers better. At first, they’d seemed rather
suspicious, likely thinking he was entitled and useless, but they warmed up
pretty quickly as he went out of his way to be both accommodating and
efficient.
    After
the first week, he had a pretty good sense of what work life might be for him,
doing work he enjoyed, work he was good at, for the company his mother’s family
had built. He liked the idea of it.
    He
could spend his life doing this.
    He
got home late on Friday evening, and he found Emily in the kitchen. He wasn’t
sure how long she’d been fixing dinner, but every single counter surface was a
mess, and she appeared to have used every bowl and pan they possessed.
    “I
think I was too ambitious,” she told him with a grin.
    “What
is it?” He studied the bowls and pans, trying to puzzle out what meal they
added up into.
    “Portobello
Chicken Piccata. But we didn’t have all the ingredients, so I had to improvise
a bit.”
    He
laughed and wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressing his body into her
back as she pushed chicken breasts around in a pan.
    She
turned down the temperature on the eye and then turned around to wrap her arms
around him. “How was work?”
    “Good.”
    “Did
you get that report done? “
    “Yeah.
What did Dr. Franklin say?” She had a faint dusting of flour on her jaw so he
gently brushed it off.
    She
frowned up at him. “I told you in the text I sent. Everything is still fine.
The virus is gone, so you don’t have to stress about every check-up that way.”
    Paul
was pretty sure he was going to be anxious every time she went to the doctor,
for at least a decade or so, but he’d have to work on hiding it better so she
wouldn’t get annoyed by it. “I was just wondering if he said anything else.”
    “He
said he was going to publish on this virus, and it would be the best work of
his career.” After he laughed, she added, “He said I would probably be fertile
again soon, so he prescribed me birth control pills.”
    “Ah.
Good thinking.”
    They
smiled at each other for a minute, and he tried to process the relief, joy, and
awed gratitude. It made him feel kind of silly—like the kind of sap he’d never
been—but there was no other way to handle the miracle that had been given him.
    Emily
must feel the same way. She actually looked a little emotional, but