If I explained that trip to my parents in plain truth, I would have had to reveal too much. So I gave them the version they were prepared to hear.
“He’s on a consulting trip,” I said over speakerphone while folding tiny onesies in the nursery.
My mother made a sound that suggested both skepticism and boredom. “At eight months pregnant? How inconvenient.”
“It’s important.”
“Everything is important when people are trying to look important.”
I almost snapped back, but Ethan walked into the room just then carrying a stack of baby books and lifted one brow in silent question. I shook my head. Not worth it.
He set the books down, crossed the room, and took the phone gently from my hand.
“Mrs. Bennett,” he said, voice warm and maddeningly composed, “I promise Amelia won’t be alone. My team knows where I am, her doctors know how to reach me, and if anything changes, I’ll be on the first plane back.”
My mother paused, disarmed by politeness. “Well. I certainly hope so.”
He handed the phone back, kissed my temple, and went to zip the hospital bag for the third time that week.
After the call ended, I watched him move around the nursery with that efficient grace he carried everywhere, and a nervousness I had been trying to ignore tightened in my chest.
“You don’t have to go,” I said.
He turned. “I do.”
There was no ego in the answer. Just fact.
I knew the contract mattered. A major expansion. The West Coast emergency fleet launch. New hospital partnerships. Aircraft transfers. Medical transport coverage that would shorten response times for entire regions. He wasn’t chasing prestige; he was locking down infrastructure that would save lives.
Still, I was pregnant and swollen and irrational enough to hate reality for asking anything of us at all.
He came to sit beside me on the edge of the glider, one hand on my belly where our son shifted beneath the fabric of my dress.
“I’ve already moved meetings and cut the trip in half,” he said softly. “I’ll be back before you can miss me properly.”
“I already miss you properly.”
That made him smile. Then the smile faded and something more serious settled in his face. “Listen to me. If you feel off—really off—you call me first. I don’t care what time it is or what room I’m in.”
“I know.”
“And if for any reason you’re at your parents’ house, or anywhere, and you need help, you call me. Not after. Not when it becomes inconvenient. Immediately.”