Page 71 of Nine Months to Bear
I can’t make my father’s mistake. I won’t.
I swore a long time ago I’d never love like he did.
30
OLIVIA
I had extremely low expectations for this rent-by-the-hour conference room.
Even that might’ve been too optimistic.
This place is Satan’s asshole. It smells like stale coffee, black mold, and sweaty armpits. The next mop that comes in here will be the first.
I’m not the only one who’s unimpressed. The five potential investors sitting around the water-stained mahogany table are skeptical, bored, disgusted, or all of the above. They look like they’ve seen much, much better.
Not from the room.
Fromme.
Because I’m as much of a mess as our surroundings are. My voice cracks, I drop my notes, I fumble with the presentation remote. Finally, I get it to work and the screen behind me flickers to life. Everything in the room gets cast in a garishblue glow. It bounces off their Rolex watches and Warby Parker glasses.
My hands tremble, so I tuck them behind my back and start mentally counting breaths like I tell my anxious patients.
In, out. In, out.
My mother’s “good luck” text from twenty minutes ago flashes in my mind. Suddenly, she’s sending encouraging messages? Beingniceto me? Supportive?
It’s bizarre. She hasn’t done that since the day I was born. I want to count it as a win, but I know it has nothing to do with me.
Like everything else as of late, this is about Stefan.
I fight back a cringe as I remember how she’d stood frozen in my apartment door, stunned into silence for the first time in her life. And not because she’d caught her daughter in the middle of a half-clothed, morning-after routine.
No, it’s becausehewas there.
She took one look at Stefan and her eyes lit up. She didn’t care that his shirt was half-buttoned or that my hair was a disaster.
The only thing that mattered was that Stefan Safonov had deemed her daughter worthy of his attention.
I knew you’d find your way eventually, darling,she told me later.I always, always knew.
Yeah, well, that makes one of us, Mom.
“Gentlemen,” I begin, my voice coming out too squeaky. I clear my throat and try again, pitched lower this time. “Uh, I mean, gentlemen. Hello. Thank you for coming today.”
This is it. My last chance. If I can’t secure funding today, Aster Fertility Solutions will flatline—my dream buried under a mountain of debt and my mother’s disappointment.
It’s showtime, baby.
The man directly across from me—Donovan Benson, according to the business card he slid toward me in lieu of a greeting fifteen minutes ago—checks his watch and sighs.
“As you can see from these results,” I say, gesturing to the projection screen, “our approach prioritizes personalized care, and the outcomes justify it. We don’t process patients like they’re cars on an assembly line. Now, let’s talk about our future…”
My presentation is a blur. I practiced it countless times last night, until I knew it from memory. Thank God for that, because my body is on autopilot now.
I flip through screens, talking to the sea of faces without seeing one of them. I need this to be over, like, yesterday.
Halfway through, a throat clears. I look over to see Donovan ogling me.
