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  "Thank you, Huds. I appreciate your cooperation," she parroted my earlier words.

  Considering the betrayal and secrets and dishonesty that ran through the Werner and Pierce lives, I figured it was only appropriate to parrot her back. "Any time. We’re family now. Practically.”

  If only it didn't feel like that was exactly what Celia had always wanted.

  3

  Alayna

  The first words out of Gwen's mouth when she stepped into the foyer of the penthouse were, "I'm sorry."

  I didn't have to ask why she was apologizing. The reason was obvious. It was her day off, and she'd come over to brainstorm some ideas with me. I hadn’t expected that she would be coming with a baby carrier on one arm and a toddler slung over her other hip.

  The look on her face said she hadn't expected to be bringing her children either.

  Working mom life was full of these surprises, I’d learned.

  "No worries," I said, shifting Holden to my other arm so I could reach for Theo, her squirming three-year-old. "Maya?" I called out to the nanny on duty. "Could you—?"

  Before I'd finished the sentence, Maya had peeked her head out of the nursery, her own arms empty. "Oh my goodness. Coming." She hurried toward us. "Brett’s just gone down for her nap."

  "And Holden is out too, if you want to put him down, and then come back for these two?" I handed my baby over, careful not to wake him.

  "Sure thing." She trundled off with my baby in hand.

  "I'm sorry," Gwen repeated, setting the carrier on the floor and bending down so she could take Braden out. "JC was going to watch all of them. Since we both have Mondays off, we don't have the nanny, but then Jake got sick, so JC had to take him to the doctor, and here I am, schlepping kids over to your house." She paused, smiling as she gazed downwards. "Hey, look at that. Braden's asleep too."

  "I'll put the carrier in the nursery then," Maya said, having quietly returned for a fresh batch of children. "Theo, you want to come help me put together some of Mina’s puzzles? She's at day camp right now, but I'm sure she won't mind."

  I winked at the caretaker as she lifted the baby carrier and escorted the little boy down the hall.

  Then I turned back to Gwen. "We have so many babies," I groaned. "How did this happen?"

  "I keep asking myself the same thing," Gwen said with a grin. "But they’re so cute."

  My mind drifted back to the morning sex in the shower. I was on birth control again, and hadn't gotten pregnant easily either of the times I'd carried to full term. But twice Gwen had gotten pregnant while on some form of birth control. Sometimes just being around her I felt fertile.

  "We could've rescheduled, you know," I said, walking with her into the living room. "Today wasn't urgent." I didn't bother offering her anything to eat or drink before plopping down on the couch. We were so comfortable around each other now, I knew she'd help herself if she wanted anything. Besides, having kids meant snacks were easily within reach anywhere in the apartment.

  "I know it's not urgent, but I need your advice, and I didn’t want to talk about this by text.” She sank down on the opposite end of the couch. "And I definitely didn’t want to talk about this by phone in case Hudson was around."

  I’d been eager for her to come over so we could dive into our project, but now I was one hundred percent sidetracked. “Geez, way to pique my curiosity. Hit me. The doctor is in.”

  “Okay.” She clapped her hands together and put them up to her mouth. “Okay,” she said again from behind them.

  She was nervous about telling me. Gwen didn’t get nervous about telling me anything.

  “Oh, fuck, you’re not pregnant, are you?” I’d be nervous about telling me that too.

  “No! God, no. I’m still breastfeeding Braden.” Although with her history, that wasn’t necessarily a deterrent.

  “Then what is it?” I sat forward, knee bouncing with anticipation.

  “Remember how last year Mirabelle told us she’d heard about these sex parties around town? The anonymous, masquerade, private kink parties that required exclusive invites because most of the guests were elite upper class, important people? Famous people? People that don’t want their kinks in the gossip columns?”

  “Yes, but you know half of what she hears from her clients is bullshit rumors.”

  “Right, right.” She nodded in agreement, probably remembering the unlikely story passed down from Hudson’s sister regarding a prominent figure at the White House and two very famous adult film stars. “But. This time, the rumor isn’t so much a rumor anymore. JC got an invite.”

  “What.” It was more of a dumbfounded statement than a question.

  “Yep. Exactly what I said.” She put her hands in her lap and started rubbing them up and down her legs where they were bare below her romper. “This guy who sometimes co-invests in projects with JC got us the invitation. Honestly, I think he has a thing for my husband—maybe for both of us? And is probably hoping for a threesome, which JC said no way to already. Not that I asked! He doesn’t share, and neither do I, but you don’t have to have sex if you go to one of these things.”

  “You mean, you could just go and...watch?”

  “Yeah. Just watch. Like a live porno.” Her face flushed as though she were thinking about it. Or maybe she was simply embarrassed.

  I tried to imagine it too—strangers cozying up to one another while I looked on—and sure enough, I felt my body warm. “That’s hot.” Her face relaxed as though she’d been nervous to hear my response.

  “So hot. JC thinks so too.”

  Now I tried to imagine Hudson with me at a party like that. He’d never last as a voyeur for more than a couple of minutes. And he’d never expose too much of me to anyone else. He’d either find a corner and a smooth, obscure way to get under my skirt or he’d be pulling me out of the room before the stars of the show made it to anything good.

  Maybe sex parties weren’t for us. We had enough passion on our own. Didn’t we?

  But from Gwen’s stories, my friend and her husband were into more adventurous fornication. It made me wonder if Hudson and I were in a rut.

  “Are you going to go?” I asked, hoping like mad she would so she could report back.

  “I don’t know! That’s why I need your advice!”

  “Let’s talk it through.” Usually it was Gwen who was the rational one, but I’d learned a trick or two from her over the years. “Pros and cons. Pros—go.”

  “It would be fun, an experience, spice up our love life—not that it needs it.” She easily rattled off the advantages without even having to think, suggesting she’d already thought a lot about this. “Could learn some new tricks. Make me feel young. Could meet new people.”

  “Those are great. What are the cons?”

  “I hate people. Why would I want to meet more of them?”

  I laughed out loud.

  Her expression grew serious. “What if JC was attracted to another woman? All those hot naked girls in front of him?”

  “He’s always dealt with business around naked women, and he’s only ever had eyes for you.”

  “I’ve popped three babies out. I have a scar from my c-section. Two words: stretch marks.”

  “Pfft. You know how devoted that man is to you.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  She was quiet a moment, and so I asked the question I should have asked first, “Do you want to go to a kinky sex party?”

  I could tell from her eyes that the answer was yes. But she mulled it over for a few minutes then threw herself back across the couch arm. “This is stupid, isn’t it? I shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea.”

  I frowned. “Why the hell not?”

  “I’m a respectable woman. I’m a mother of three. I should be responsible.”

  “That’s right, you are a respectable woman.” I almost had to hold myself back, I felt so strongly about this. “And because you respect yourself, you should give yourself what you want. You should do something for yourself—and your husband. Something that isn’t at all about your identity as a mother. Is that really all you exist for now? To feed and clothe and protect and shuttle around these little humans? Yes, they’re important, but if you start acting like the only part of yourself that you’re obliged to is your motherly side, you’re not going to be any good for them. You need to be a complete person, whole and entire, and, by damn, that means going to a sex party and watching other people kink it up if that’s what fills your cup.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and smiled at me. “Thank you. I knew that, but I needed to hear it.”

  I shrugged with one shoulder like it was no big deal. “And I need you to go to a party and tell me all the details after.”

  “I’m still getting up the nerve, but, for sure, if I go, I’ll tell you everything.” She sat up. “Is that why this project is so important to you? So you’ll be whole and entire?”

  I thought about it. Was my work that important to me, or was it that I desperately wanted to be seen outside of my role as a family woman? “Maybe? It drives me. Good or bad, I can’t ignore it.”

  “Well, I think it’s good. And that’s the other reason I needed to see you today—I have news.”

  My heart started pounding with excitement. "Tell me!"

  "Okay. So. I got definite confirmation that Lee Chong is looking to sell all three floors of the space adjacent to The Sky Launch."

  My mouth and eyes went wide, and the sound that came out of me bordered on a squeal. This was exactly what we needed.

  "He doesn't want to actually sell until January though," Gwen said, cautioning me. "For tax reasons or whatever. But he’s willing to do an under-the-table negotiation before that, and let work begin. Maybe do a rent-to-own kind of a thing."

  If she still had more to say, I wasn't listening now. I was definitely squeaking. "Oh my God, oh my God! He's really willing to do this? You think he’d really sell to us? We could really expand The Sky Launch?"

  "It sounds like it's a pretty good possibility!"

  "Holy crapola." I ran my hand through my hair, letting myself acknowledge that I was one step closer to putting my big project into action. "Wait, how do you know this? Did he tell you? Have you spoken to him directly?"

  She shook her head. "Liesl. Apparently she's banging his kid."

  "Lee Chong has a son?" I didn't know anything about my neighbor. The man owned the property but he'd rented it out for restaurants and event space. It wasn’t like he'd ever actually been on the premises.

  "No, but he has a daughter," Gwen smiled suggestively.

  "Man, Leisl sure has a lot of fun. Did we have that much fun when we were single?" Good for her. Not that I was jealous. But I did miss working the club with her so I could hear her stories.

  "I couldn't tell you. It was too long ago now." We sighed, wistfully remembering our younger days. Then she said, "So tell me what you're thinking you want to do with the place. I've been itching to see your plans."

  "I’ve got them right here." I pulled my laptop off the coffee table and flipped open the screen. The drawings I had were already queued up, along with a secret Pinterest board full of different clubs I'd used for inspiration. "It's obviously not very accurate, and it’s just in the beginning stages, since we don't have floor plans or specs or anything. But this is what I'm thinking."

  I spent the next hour showing her how I wanted to open up a restaurant next door, continuing the DJ theme. The Sky Launch had gotten too crowded with both food service and dancing, and the two needed to be separated. The bubble rooms still remained a high level interest, though, so I imagined a similar design in the new space. Then, for the third floor, a café/bar with a small selection of vinyl records on sale. A more classic, casual vibe, as opposed to the ultra-modern spaces beneath.

  "This is all incredible, Laynie. Hudson is going to go bananas for it. Why don't you want to tell him yet?"

  I shut my laptop with a sigh and leaned back into the sofa. "Because we both agreed I wasn't going back to work until the twins were at least eighteen months old. And they're not even a year yet."

  She shrugged like it was no big deal. "So you changed your mind. He'll understand."

  "Not if he doesn't think I'm well enough to go back to work."

  The easy air around us grew heavier as I broached the subject of my illness.

  "You mean, because of what happened after the twins were born?" she asked carefully.

  "You can say it, you know. Because I went crazy." If there was one thing I’d learned in all my years of mental illness, it was that pussyfooting around it didn't make it go away. In fact, it usually did the opposite, as though denying my problems made them even more eager to be noticed.

  Gwen crossed her arms and frowned at me. "No, I'm not going to say you went crazy. You had a change of hormones that occurred from being pregnant and then not being pregnant. Which was exacerbated by having twins. A lot of women deal with postpartum depression and OCD. It doesn't make you crazy."

  She sounded like my therapist, Dr. Joy. "Crazy thoughts. Not a crazy person."

  "Fine," I smiled begrudgingly. "I was being melodramatic. But sometimes it brings levity to the situation. You sound like you've done your homework. Researching up on it." I felt sort of guilty, not having invited Gwen to any of my counseling sessions. My therapist always encouraged me to bring loved ones if needed, to help them understand exactly what I was facing.

  But while I knew she was there for me, and I had believed in being head-on with my issues, it was still sometimes hard to imagine my friend seeing me at my worst. It had been enough for me that she knew the basics.

  "I wanted to understand," she said, nonchalantly. "And you aren't really sharing. You want to talk about it now? What it was like?"

  No, I didn't want to talk about it.

  And I did at the same time.

  In some ways, talking about it confirmed it was over, a thing of the past, not something I was currently living through anymore. Unless I was wrong. Unless Celia was triggering me again.

  I rolled my neck from one side to the other, suddenly aware of how tense my shoulders were. "I guess it was like most of the other times when I got crazy—" I corrected myself. "When I obsessed over someone. Except this time I was fixated on the twins. I worried if they were eating enough. If they were clean enough. I washed their clothes so many times that some onesies fell apart after they'd only worn them a couple of times. Their bottles never seemed clean enough, and I'd buy new ones, and put them in the sterilizer, and then be convinced that the sterilizer wasn't working, and then I'd order a new sterilizer. I don't even know how many sterilizers we bought. Poor Maya, I yelled at her to scrub everything ‘better.’ Disinfect everything ‘better.’ Do everything ‘better.’ I’m lucky she still wants to work for me."

  I didn't mention the intrusive thoughts, constant worries that I would hurt them somehow, accidentally. That I'd maybe choke them with my breast while I was nursing. That I'd maybe slip and drop them while I was carrying them. That I might accidentally smother them with their blanket. Those thoughts were nonstop, like movies that played over and over in my head, on the screen even when other people were talking to me, even while performing other tasks, even when I smiled and pretended everything was fine.

  Same face, different person underneath. The other Alayna.

  "Every mother has a certain amount of those feelings," Gwen said, in that thin voice that indicated she didn't quite know what else to say. I couldn’t blame her. This was exactly why I hadn’t invited her to counseling. I didn’t love the way people looked at me when they knew how my mind worked.

  "Right. They do. It's natural, to an extent. But normally, our brains will have the thought, decide it's an incorrect thought, and dispose of it. My brain got stuck there." Fixated to the point of exhaustion. "The breaking point was when I showed up at Hudson's office with both twins strapped to me, my hair a mess, no makeup. No bra. Leaking milk through my T-shirt. Hysterical because I was suddenly convinced that the penthouse wasn't safe enough. And we needed to move. Right. Then."

  Hudson had seen it then. If he'd been too exhausted himself to not notice before or if he'd been in denial, I wasn't sure, but as soon as it clicked, he acted immediately. He canceled his entire day and arranged for a therapist to meet me in the loft.

  He canceled his entire month, actually. He’d done everything for me. He was everything for me.

  "So now, I have medication and therapy, and a second nanny, and it’s like none of that ever happened. I'm much, much better." I was much better.

  Why didn't I sound more confident when I said it?

  Because I worried my fixation had merely changed course.

  "You look better, too. And you're obviously thinking pretty clearly to be able to come up with this amazing plan for The Sky Launch." She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees. "Maybe working has been good for you. Maybe the time off was more of a detriment than a help."

  "I agree. With all the help around here, I've been bored out of my mind." We both laughed, because it was sort of funny. That any woman with two kids under one could be bored out of her mind. Only another mother could understand the exhaustion of chasing children all day, and the simultaneous tedium of not being intellectually challenged.

  "Then Hudson is going to totally understand, Laynie. You just need to tell him. Tell him what you're thinking. Come back to work officially."

  I did feel horrible keeping it from my husband, especially when we'd promised no more secrets between us. It was additionally terrible to make Gwen part of the cover-up when her family had dinner with ours every Thursday night. Forcing her to keep my secret was an awful friend move.

  And Hudson would support me. He'd always supported me in my work.

  If I was truly well.

  And there was the sticking point.

  "What are you not telling me?" Gwen could read me like a book.

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