The Soulmate Equation

SURPRISINGLY, THE WORLD didn’t stop turning when Jess cut off her mother.

Juno and Jess got up the next morning, and got ready in a sweet, easy rhythm. Juno seemed to know to be tender with her mom, and didn’t need to be reminded to get dressed or bring her dishes to the kitchen or brush her teeth.

She held Jess’s hand all the way to school.

“I was thinking we could go out to dinner tonight,” Jess said, “just me and you. Somewhere special.”

With an enthusiastic nod, Juno stretched, kissing Jess’s cheek, and then ran off to meet up with her friends.

Jess watched her until the bell rang and Juno disappeared into her classroom. After transferring the money, Jess had to remind herself that she was still better off than she’d been before all this craziness began. She had new clients, new visibility. She could rebuild.

She was much better off than she could have been, she knew. Plus, she had a pretty fucking awesome kid.

SIX DAYS LATER, Fizzy whined plaintively into her fancy headset: “This setup doesn’t feel the same.”

Jess looked at Fizzy’s glowering image over Zoom on her iPad. “Well, it’s the best you get. You said you didn’t want to go back.”

“I know, but… don’t you miss Daniel?”

“And good coffee and reliable Wi-Fi?” Jess replied. “Yes, of course I do.”

Other things Jess missed:

Her boyfriend.

Her good mood.

The ten thousand dollars that had been in her checking account a few days ago.

The possibility that her mother would change.

Fizzy growled again and disappeared from view as, Jess presumed, she left to make herself another cup of mediocre coffee.

Three things Fizzy reminded her of constantly now that they’d stopped going to Twiggs:

1. She hated drip coffee but was too lazy to get even a basic Nespresso.
2. Her Wi-Fi sucked.
3. The lack of people-watching killed her meet-cute mojo.

But even though Jess’s coffee was also less satisfying than a Twiggs flat white, and she had a hard time focusing on work at her dining table, she couldn’t find it in herself to go back to Twiggs and pretend like there weren’t a million memories imprinted on every scuffed surface. Twiggs was where she met River, where she first got the notification from DNADuo, where she saw him last, and—most importantly—where she absolutely did not want to risk running into him at 8:24 on a weekday morning.

Though to be totally frank, it might be harder if Jess found out that he wasn’t going to Twiggs at all anymore, either. That he’d erased every bit of their shared history completely.

And it wasn’t like Fizzy was genuinely pushing to go back. Rob had spread his gross cheater vibes all over their table before Fizzy doused him with ice water. God, Twiggs had been tainted by the ghosts of their carefree former selves. The ones who, two months before, happily ogled Americano, gossiped with impunity, hadn’t had their hearts broken. Jess missed those women.

But working from home wasn’t all bad. Jess was saving money and might even lose a few pounds without her daily intake of blueberry muffins. She could work at home with her screen door open, wearing a T-shirt and no pants because it was warm outside and no pants beat pants every time. She could be at Nana Jo’s side in twenty seconds (after putting on pants) if needed.

Jess and Fizzy pretended they were sitting at the table together; they’d tried to actually work together in person, but they’d ended up on the couch watching Netflix after about a half hour. Zoom was better for deadlines.

Her phone dinged on the table, and she glanced down at the Wells Fargo notification just as Fizzy returned.

Fizzy settled in her seat and adjusted her screen. “What’s that expression?”

“Probably my mom’s bank accepting the—” Jess paused, and bent to look closer. A chill ran through her. “Um, no. This is me reacting to ten thousand dollars being deposited into my account.”

“Tax refund?” Fizzy screwed her face up, not understanding.

Had Jamie refused the money? Jess tapped open the app and felt her heart drop. “Oh. It’s a GeneticAlly payment.”

Fizzy went quiet on the other side of the screen, eyes wide. “Yikes.” And then her brow cleared. “But… convenient timing?”

Looking up at her, Jess winced. “I can’t keep this.”

“The hell you can’t,” Fizzy responded. “You kept up your end of the deal.”

Jess knew Fizzy was right, but she wasn’t sure it mattered. At least to her. “I wonder if River knows that the company is still paying me?”

“Maybe that detail got lost in the scandal,” Fizzy mumbled, blowing on her hot coffee.

“How awkward would that conversation be?” she asked. “ ‘I realize you’re ghosting me but I just wanted to send one more note to thank you for continuing to pay me to be your girlfriend. It’s nice to be just heartbroken, instead of heartbroken and broke.’ ”

What could her best friend say to that? So, the heartbroken to the heartbroken said only, “I’m sorry, honey.”

Jess nearly startled out of her chair when a sharp knock rapped on the screen door, jarringly loud, followed by a deep, smoke-scraped voice. “Hey-ho, Jess.”

“Oh my God,” she hissed. “UPS is here for a pickup, and I don’t have any pants on.”

Fizzy reached for her notebook, quietly whispering as she jotted down: “UPS guy… no… pants.” Jess yanked her shirt as far down her thighs as it would go, grabbed the shipping envelope from the table, and shuffled to the door.

Pat—midfifties now, kind eyes, and deep wrinkles from years of sun exposure—was the same delivery guy they’d had for nearly a decade. He averted his gaze as soon as he registered the way Jess was hiding her lower half behind the door, and Jess handed him the envelope with signed contracts for Kenneth Marshall. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Let’s pretend this never happened.”

“Deal.” He turned and made his way down the path to the gate.

“Maybe being away from Twiggs isn’t so bad for my writing mojo,” Fizzy said when Jess returned to the table. “That might be the best start to a story I’ve had in a couple weeks. Maybe I’ll finally be able to write something other than sex scenes that transition into aggressive and intentional penile injury.”

“Please don’t write a romance starring me and UPS Pat.”

“Do you know that penises can be fractured and strangled?” Fizzy paused. “But don’t Google it.”

“Fizzy, I swear to Go—”

If possible, Jess startled even harder when the second knock came. Did I forget to tape the label on? Defeated, she called out, “Pat, hold on, I need to go put on pants.”

A low, quiet voice resonated down her spine. “Who’s Pat?”

Jess’s eyes went wide, and she turned to gape at Fizzy on the screen.

“What?” Fizz whispered, angling as if she could see through her screen to the door, moving so close that her nose and mouth loomed. “Who is it?”

“River!” Jess whisper-yelled.

Fizzy leaned back and made a shooing motion with her hand, whispering, “Go!”

“What do I say?” Jess hissed.

“Make him do the talking!” She shadowboxed in her chair and forgot to whisper the rest: “Fuck him! Tell him I said so!”

River cleared his throat and offered a dry “Hi, Fizzy” through the screen door.

“Oh, great.” Growling at her, Jess stood, stomped over to the door, and jerked it open.

River stared at her face and then dropped his eyes before immediately looking back up. A hot blush crawled up his neck. Right. Pants. And as they stood facing each other, River made a valiant effort to not let his eyes drop below her shoulders again.

Or… maybe it wasn’t valiant. Maybe it wasn’t hard at all. Maybe for him, turning off feelings was like flicking the switch off at the end of an experiment.

Score over ninety: interest on.

Score unknown: interest off.

“Hi,” Jess said. Well, even if he could shut off his feelings, the same was certainly not true for her. If anything, her love for River had somehow solidified into a brick in her chest: If she wasn’t truly in love with him, then why did she cry herself to sleep every night? Why was he the first person she’d wanted to hold when she finally got home from dropping Jamie off the other night?

But at the sight of him—how Jess could immediately tell he’d gotten a haircut recently, how he was still the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, even with the dark circles under his eyes, and how being this close to him still made a cord of longing pull tight from her throat to her stomach—the sadness melted away and she was angry. More than angry, Jess was livid. It had been eight days. Eight days of complete silence from someone who’d told her he hadn’t felt like he’d been home in forever until he met her. Who’d kissed her like he needed her to breathe. Who said “I love you” out of the blue and didn’t try to take it back. And then he left.

“What are you doing here?”

His jaw clenched and he closed his eyes, swallowing with effort. “Do you… want to go put on pants?”

Jess stared at him, mute with shock. This was the first thing he said to her? Go get dressed? Honestly, being confronted with the uppity, asshole version of River made it so much easier to dial down the love and crank up the hate.

“No.” Jess waited for him to look at her face again and then put a hand on her hip, deliberately ignoring when her shirt rose up. “What are you doing here?”

River exhaled shakily, blinking to the side and then looking back to her. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Her first instinct was to tell him that she did mind. She minded very much, in fact, because having him in her space would remind her that he’d started treating it like his space, too. She’d thrown out the deodorant he’d left in her bathroom, the socks she’d fished out of the laundry basket, the oat milk he’d kept in her fridge. But she knew they needed to have this conversation. They had to break up, officially.

Stepping to the side, Jess let him in and then turned and stalked down the hall, calling out, “Stay there.”

When she returned, she had pants on, but her mood, if anything, had darkened. Walking past Juno’s room was like pouring lemon juice on a cut. River hadn’t just vanished from Jess’s life; he’d vanished from her kid’s, too. Her little girl who’d never been left before had lost two people in a week. Would it be hitting below the belt to tell him that Juno had asked to see River no fewer than four times? Jess berated herself for telling Juno about their relationship at all.

Jess found him perched on the edge of the couch cushion, hands pinned between his knees. He looked up at her and seemed to relax the smallest bit, shoulders slumping.

“Why are you here, River?”

“I was hoping we could talk.” He said it like it was obvious, but was he kidding?

Her jaw dropped. “What do you think I was trying to do when I called you last week? When I texted? You never replied.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Oh?” she said in quiet shock. “I was here totally losing my mind thinking we were over. I was heartsick, River. Am I supposed to feel better hearing that you didn’t call because you weren’t ready to have a relatively simple conversation?”

“Jess, come on. You said it was a lot to digest, too. I was neck-deep in data. And when you didn’t call again, I—I wasn’t sure whether you needed space.”

“Do not make me the bad guy here.” She immediately pointed her finger at him. “I get that this threw you—”

His eyes flashed as he cut in. “Do you?”

“Of course I do. It threw me, too!”

“It isn’t the same,” he said, voice sharp.

“Maybe not, but you had no right to dump me the way you did.”

“What?” His eyes went wide. “I didn’t dump you.”

“Reality check: When someone goes completely silent for eight days, it isn’t because they’re off planning an elaborate grand gesture.” Crossing her arms, Jess leaned against the wall. “And you know that, River. I realize that I’m easy to leave, but I was hoping you were better than that.”

He looked like he’d been punched. “You aren’t ‘easy to leave.’ None of this has been about my feelings for you. I was a total fucking wreck about work, worrying we would have to disclose the tampering, worrying my entire company would go under.”

Jess looked away, clenching her jaw while she struggled not to cry. Was she being unfair? His entire world had come apart, but she could only focus on all the shrapnel he left in her. “I understand that, but it doesn’t make my feelings any less valid,” she said, careful to keep her voice from trembling, “I had a really shitty week. I needed you. Even if you were going through it, too, I needed you. And you don’t get to do that, you know? Just vanish? Remember this for the next time, with the next woman. If you say feelings like ‘love,’ you owe her more than what you gave me this week.”

He stared at her in confusion for a few long moments before bending and putting his head in his hands. “I know it doesn’t change anything,” he said quietly, “but I felt shattered.” He didn’t move for several long moments. “I was totally humiliated, Jess. Yes, it’s just data, but it was the cruelest thing they could have done. People I’ve known and trusted for nearly fifteen years took advantage of my genuine belief in this technology. They manipulated me personally and the project I’ve spent my entire adult life on—because they knew that if I got that score, I would do everything in my power to explore the personal implication of it.” River looked up at her, and Jess saw that his eyes were red-rimmed. “I got crushed as a scientist and duped as a man. I felt like the entire world was”—he coughed—“laughing at me.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Jess reminded him. “We were already so much more than a number on a piece of paper. And if you’d come to me, you would have had someone in your corner, ready to fight anyone who hurt you. Ready to fight for you.”

“I didn’t even know how to understand it in my own mind. I—I—” He struggled to find the words, sitting up and looking at her in earnest. “I didn’t leave my office for days. I pored through every line of data from every Gold or higher pairing we’ve had. Sanjeev and I reran samples twenty-four hours a day to make sure the company wasn’t going to have to fold.”

“You still could have called.”

He opened his mouth to defend himself and then exhaled, tilting his face to the ceiling before meeting her eyes. “I could have. I should have. I’m sorry, Jess. Time just flies for me when I’m like this. But I’ve only been home to shower and change.”

She couldn’t help but let her gaze rise, studying his new haircut.

He shook his head, understanding immediately. “I got a haircut just before coming to see you.”

“So you could look handsome for our breakup?”

Abruptly, River stood. “Is that what you think this is?”

Jess let out a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, what?”

“We’re breaking up?” he asked, voice tight.

“What are the other options?” She pretended to check her watch. “I mean, it’s a little late for our standing sex date, and it’s been a weird week, but why not, for old times’—”

“Jess,” he rasped, “stop it.”

She crossed the room and got right up in his face. “You stop it. Why are you even here? I get that you needed space. But I fell in love with you. Juno fell in love with you.” He reacted like he’d taken a shove to the stomach, and Jess pushed on. “Do you know what that means?” She pressed her fingertips to her chest, mortified when her throat started to burn. “I opened my life to you. I gave you the power to gut me if you disappeared, and you knew that, and you did it anyway. I understand that you were struggling, too. But just a word—a text—and I would have waited.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I wish I’d handled it differently. I fucked up.”

“You did.”

“I’m sorry.” He bowed his head. “I didn’t know how you’d feel once you weren’t obligated to be with me.”

That pulled her up short. “River, I never felt obligated to be with you. Not the way that we were together by the end.”

He took a step closer, growling, “Stop calling it the end.”

“I don’t understand what you think is happening here! You don’t get to drop off the face of the earth for a week and then act confused.”

“Do you remember what you said to me the last time we saw each other?” he asked, closing the distance between them. “You said, ‘Statistics can’t tell us what will happen, they can only tell us what might happen.’ And you were right. A Diamond Match is so rare that two random people are ten thousand times more likely to find their soulmate with a Base Match than they are to ever score above a ninety with someone else.”

“I could have told you that,” Jess said quietly, adding with a reluctant smile, “And I bet you didn’t even use the right analysis to calculate it.”

He laughed dryly. “I guess I needed to see it for myself.”

Jess couldn’t help but give him an exasperated look.

Tentatively, he smiled. But it ebbed away in the face of her stony silence. “Do you really want to break up?”

Jess had no idea what to say to that. She hadn’t expected to be given the option. She’d thought it was a done deal. “I didn’t, but, I mean—”

“It’s a yes or no,” he said, but gently, reaching forward to take her hand. “And for me the answer is a no. I love you. I love Juno. I needed to get my head on straight, but once I did, the first person I wanted to talk to was you.”

“About a week ago,” Jess said, “my mom called. She was drunk at a friend’s house in Vista. I had to drive up to get her on a school night, walk into a house full of fucked-up people with my seven-year-old, and give my mother ten thousand dollars so she could avoid being arrested for stealing a huge amount of merchandise.”

River paled. “What?”

“I told her that if I gave her the money, she was never to contact me or Juno again. When I came home to get my head on straight, the first person I wanted to talk to was you. But I didn’t have that option.”

To his credit, River didn’t wince or frown or tense his jaw defensively. He just swallowed, nodded once, and absorbed it. “I should have been here. I hate that I wasn’t.”

“How do I know you’ll be here the next time?” she asked. “I get that this was terrible for you. I can absolutely imagine how you don’t even look up when you’re in a work panic. But I really, truly wanted to be the person you turned to during all of this. And you said it yourself to me once: Bad things happen all the time. That’s life. So, if something huge happens at work, and you don’t know how to process it, do I have to worry that you’re going to retreat into yourself and not speak to me for eight days?”

“No. I’m going to work on that. I promise.”

Jess stared up at him. Dark eyes, thick lashes, full mouth. That smooth neck she fantasized about licking and biting her way down to the world’s most perfectly muscled collarbones. Inside that cranium was a genius-level brain, and—when he let himself out of the lab for a breath—River Peña had the emotional depth of a man who’d already lived an entire lifetime. He talked stats with her, and the little heart that watched stories with his abuela still beat in his chest. He loves me, and he loves my kid.

“I don’t want to break up, either,” Jess admitted.

He bowed his head, exhaling slowly. “Oh my God. I really wasn’t sure which way that was going to go.” Reaching forward, he cupped the back of her neck and gently guided her forward, into his arms. “Holy shit, about your mom. I… this is a bigger conversation, I know.”

“Later,” Jess said, pulling back and resting her hand on his chest. “Is the company going under?”

He shook his head. “In the end, they only fabricated our score. Everything else reproduced within the standard margin of error.”

The next question Jess had rose shakily to the surface. “Did you ever run our samples together?”

“I did.” Reaching into his blazer pocket, he pulled out a small sealed envelope. “For you.”

A potent mixture of dread and excitement streaked through her. “Do you know what the answer is?”

He shrugged, smiling.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Nodding once, River admitted, “I do. I didn’t trust anyone else to run it, but I worried someone would, eventually, out of curiosity.”

Chewing on her lip, she fought the internal battle. Should she look? Should she not? Voice tight, Jess told him, “I don’t care what our score is. I never have.”

He laughed. “So don’t look.”

“Do you care what our score is?”

River slowly shook his head. “No.”

“It’s easy for you to say that because you’ve seen it.” She paused. “Does that mean it’s bad?”

Again he shook his head. “No.”

“Is it something wild? Like the ninety-eight was actually right?” He paused, chewed his lip, and then slowly shook his head a third time. Jess blew out a frustrated breath. “Do you feel better about it now?”

“Jess,” he said gently, “all you have to do is open the envelope to know.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “I don’t want to. I understand that you needed to see the data, but I hate that you needed to see it to choose me.”

He quickly reacted, shooting an arm around her waist. “I don’t. I’m telling you; this score doesn’t matter to me. I love you because I love you, whether or not I’m supposed to.”

Jess squinted up at him, picking these words apart. “Okay, I’m going to assume that we’re a Base Match.”

He nodded, satisfied, and put the envelope away. “Sounds good.”

“Are we?”

River grinned, saying, “No,” and she growled.

His expression softened, and he glanced at her mouth and then back up to her eyes. “Do you want me to tell you or not?”

“Not. You know what we statisticians say: all models are wrong, but some are useful.” He laughed. “I don’t want to know the score, River.”

“I won’t ever offer again.” He stepped forward and wrapped his other arm around her waist. “Can I do this?”

Jess nodded, looking up at him through her lashes. It felt so good to have him this close. When she closed her eyes, she was able to focus on the desire thrumming through her blood like a drug. They had hours before Juno came home.

She reached forward and ran her hand up his chest, along his neck, and traced his lower lip with her thumb. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I missed you.”

“I’ve been here the whole time.” She gently pinched his chin.

“I’m feeling incredibly clingy.” River bent and rested his lips over hers. “I love you.”

Emotion welled up in her throat, and Jess wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you, too.”

“FYI,” a disembodied voice said from the iPad, “if you think I haven’t written down every word of this, you’re both high.”

WITH A SMIRK, River turned and walked over to the iPad, ending the Zoom meeting with a quick tap of a finger. When he looked back at Jess, his smile immediately took on a ravenous edge. “Guess I wasn’t the only one who forgot she was there.”

Jess’s “Sorry” dissolved between them as River stalked over to her, gaze darkening; adrenaline poured warm and insistent into her bloodstream. Sliding his arms around her waist, he leaned in to kiss her neck. “What is it with us and audiences?”

“I don’t know, but I sure am glad we don’t have one now.” She closed her eyes, focused on the sweet, tiny kisses he dropped on her skin, from her collarbone up to her jaw.

Bending and reaching around to the back of her thighs, River lifted her, wrapping her legs around his waist to carry her down the hall. “This okay?”

“If by ‘this’ you mean makeup sex with no child in the house, then yes. It is very okay.”

As he walked, their kisses took on the kind of aching, bruised-lip intensity that told Jess, even more than his words had, how much he missed her. But when he set her down on the bed, and braced over her in that hungry way of his, he lifted a gentle hand to coax a few strands of her hair out of her face and said, “We never really talked about it—it was so unimportant at the time—but I haven’t really been in a relationship since we founded GeneticAlly.”

Jess pushed back into the pillow, staring up at him. “Seriously?”

River nodded. “Work was everything,” he said carefully. “I just wasn’t emotionally engaged anywhere else. Until you. So, I know it isn’t an excuse, but now I know to be aware of it if we have another work crisis.” He paused, reconsidering. “When we have another work crisis. I slipped back into that mode so fast, everything else fell away. Until this morning, I thought it had only been two or three days since we spoke.”

Jess had to take a beat to absorb this. “Why didn’t you tell me that the second you walked in the door?”

“I wanted your forgiveness before I defended myself.”

She reached up, bringing a hand around his neck and drawing him down to her. His kiss started slow, his lips absorbing her relieved exhale, but then he opened to taste her.

The flirtatious tease reminded Jess so much of what it had felt like to make love to him, how he could be commanding and sweet in an almost impossible balance. Her hands turned greedy, moving up under his clothes, pushing them off. She wanted his skin right up against hers, smooth and warm with friction. They got there quickly, bare together in a stretch of afternoon sunlight streaking across her bed. River reached with a long arm for her bedside table, and then kneeled in front of her, tearing the condom wrapper with his teeth.

Jess trailed her fingers up over her own stomach, biting her lip as she looked. “I really enjoy watching you do that.”

He grinned down at his hands. “Yeah?” And then he shifted, bracing a palm near her head, and bent, kissing her. “I think I prefer watching you do it.”

His smile lingered—playful and seductive—and that familiar, charged pulse echoed in her like a second heartbeat. With enduring focus, River moved, teasing at first, staring transfixed at the look of bliss on her face. He watched her fall and then, exhaling a breath of disbelief, turned his face to the ceiling and followed her into pleasure.

He stayed over her for a long time, arms caging her protectively, his face pressed to her neck. Once they’d both caught their breath, he dealt with the condom and then returned exactly where he’d been. Jess had never had this before: someone who was, without question, hers. She held him with her arms banded around his waist and legs draped lazily around his thighs, wordlessly falling back in love.

WHICH MEANT THAT they woke up like this a good while later, stiff and hot and groaning. River rolled away, falling onto his back and reaching up to cup the back of his stiff neck. Beside him, Jess attempted to straighten her legs, whimpering.

“I don’t want to sound paranoid,” she said, “but I swear someone must’ve hit us with a Benadryl dart from my doorway. We literally just passed out.”

He laughed. “I haven’t napped like that since I was in kindergarten.” Rolling to face her, he pulled her close again, with sweet, sleepy eyes. “I think our bodies needed our brains to shut down for a few minutes.”

“I think you’re right.” Jess kissed him, unable to close her eyes. She thought she’d felt secure in this before, but the love they’d just made cemented something different between them. With the tip of her finger, she traced the shape of his jaw, his mouth, and then a thought occurred to her. “Can I ask you something about the company, or do you want to stay in the bubble a little longer?”

“I plan to live in this bubble with you, so ask anything you want. It won’t harsh my Jess buzz.”

She grinned, but then it faded. “What’s happening with your executive team?”

“David and Brandon are gone. The board fired them the same day I saw you at Twiggs. Tiffany, too.”

Jess gasped. “She knew?”

“I think she sort of had to,” River said, and reached up to rub his eyes. “The only ones left from the original team are me, Lisa, and Sanjeev.” When he pulled his hand away, he gazed at her, unguarded, and Jess caught a glimpse of just how exhausted he was. “We brought on a geneticist from UCSD and the head of chemistry from Genentech to sit on the interim board. I’ve been promoted to CEO. Sanjeev will step up as CSO. We’re bringing on a new head of marketing, who’ll hopefully start in the next week.”

“Are you going to have to make some sort of official announcement?”

“Yeah, tomorrow. We’re just waiting on Amalia to confirm the CMO package we’ve offered, and then the new executive slate will go up on our site.”

She shook her head. “No, I meant an announcement about the results.”

“The results?” His brows pulled together in confusion.

“Just—” Jess faltered, hoping this wasn’t insensitive or intrusive. “I mean, what about the U-T, and the Today show, and the People issue comes out Friday, right?”

River looked back and forth between her eyes for a second, and then said quietly, “We had to include it in the IPO audit, but otherwise, no. We’re not making a statement on that.”

“Is that…” Again, she hated the possibility that this would insult him. “Is that legal? I mean—”

“Jess.”

“—the original score affected your valuation and—”

He leaned in, kissed her slowly, and then pulled back. “GeneticAlly isn’t going to release a statement.”

Unease ballooned in her chest, making her feel like a boat on rocky water. Was he speaking in legalese? “Okay,” she said, frowning.

He studied her reaction and chewed his lip, smiling. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” she said, blinking up to his eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking. That I’m being unethical or evasive. I’m not. You just have to trust me.”

“I do, it’s just—”

He quieted her with another kiss, a longer one, deep and searching with his hand cupping her jaw and his torso rising back over hers. “Listen, I don’t know how to answer this question any other way, so I’m just going to kiss you until you stop asking.”

“I’m saying, because I love you and I don’t want your company to—”

“Jess.” He kissed her again. A loud, definitive smooch. “You’ve told me you don’t want to know our results.” He stared at her intently. “So, you have to let this one go.”

In shock, she watched him push up and climb out of bed, smirking over his shoulder at her before walking to the bathroom. She heard the water running, and the entire time Jess stared unfocused at the doorway he’d just stepped through. They weren’t going to release a statement. River didn’t seem to think they would need to. Did that mean…?

Her heart had somehow transformed into a bird inside her.

River returned and reached near the foot of the bed for his boxers, pulling them on. Jess had a million questions but couldn’t ask any of them.

Well, maybe one more. She frowned as he stepped into his pants. “Are you… going in to work?”

He buckled his belt and, before reaching for his shirt, bent over to kiss her again. “No. I’m not going in to work.” Straightening, he went silent for a second, and then said, “But do you think it would be okay if I got Juno from school?”

Jess bolted upright, diving for her phone. Shit. They had two minutes to make the seven-minute walk.

“I mean,” he clarified, “I want to go get her.”

“I know. Just let me—” She stood, reaching for her clothes.

“Jess.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, he eased her back onto the bed. “I’m saying I want to get her. Let me help you.” And then he ran his hands through his hair and took a deep, steadying breath. “If that’s okay. I’ve got to fix things with both of my girls today.”