The negative test had not closed anything.

It had opened a new kind of attention.

Elena sat cross-legged on her bed in the late morning with her laptop open and three different period-tracking apps side by side on the screen. Victoria was at the office. Marcus was downstairs. The house was quiet enough that she could hear the low hum of the refrigerator through the floor. She had already logged the date of her last period, the exact days they had fucked without protection since the hotel, the morning she took the first test, and the negative result that had only made both of them more deliberate afterward.

She added...