“Eighteen,” was the first thing Kate said to Alex when she stepped out of the room the next morning.

“What?”

“That’s how many hours you slept,” Kate said. “I’ve hosted your couch-surfing butt between world travels before, and you have never stayed asleep for longer than eight hours.”

“I’m getting old,” Alex said drily.

“No, I’m getting old,” Kate said, pressing a hand to her back. “You…you’re something else. You ever gonna tell me what happened out there?”

“What’s to tell?” Alex shrugged. “He wanted a prison guard, and I’m a nanny.”

“Uh-huh,” Kate said, her voice dripping with disbelief. “If that was all it was, you would have been out of bed bright and early, bouncing all over the want ads from every corner of the globe, looking for your next adventure.”

“Maybe I’m tired of adventure,” Alex snapped.

“Okay, now I know there’s something wrong. Come on. Coffee. Kitchen. Now.”

Alex groaned but followed obediently, dodging kids and toys as she went. Kate deftly took a sharpie out of her four-year-old’s hand with her left, and scooped an errant marble out of a baby’s mouth with her right on the way to the kitchen.

“Do you want to talk while we handle them?” Alex asked. “I mean, you turn your back for one minute with these guys, and—”

“And nothing,” Kate interrupted. “Make your coffee; I’ll be right back.”

Alex watched curiously as Kate walked back into the living room. She scooped up each of her kids and plopped them inside a hexagonal fence, then switched the TV on. Any objections from the kids were immediately smothered by the bright sounds of cartoon intro music.

“There,” Kate sighed as she sat down heavily, dragging a coffee cup toward herself. “The poor woman’s nanny.”

Alex grinned and shook her head. She watched Kate wince and adjust herself in her chair, and suddenly realized.

“Oh my God.”

“What?” Kate asked defensively.

“You’re pregnant again!”

“Took you long enough to notice,” Kate said, sticking her tongue out. “You are preoccupied with this firing, jeez.”

Alex brushed off her judgment with a wave of her hand.

“So, when did this happen?”

“Oh, sometime around the two days you were in Abyamar,” Kate said with a wicked twinkle in her green eyes. She tossed her hair back and grinned.

“Oh! So my pep talk worked,” Alex teased.

“It sure did. I tell you, I don’t even notice that my entire life exists in three square miles when I’m brewing up a baby.”

“Ah, purpose. The cabin fever loophole.” Alex smiled sadly into her coffee as Kate chuckled.

“Hold on a second!” Kate suddenly glared at her. “You’re trying to derail this whole conversation!”

“To be fair, a new niece or nephew is much bigger news than me getting fired.”

“Not around here, it isn’t,” Kate said, gesturing at the brood in the living room. “Mine is an annual event, yours is…not. What were you, seventeen the last time?”

“Sixteen,” Alex said morosely.

“So every, what, twelve years? Yeah, we’re talking about your thing.”

Alex sighed, but there was no way around it and she knew it. Kate would just keep hounding her until she spilled the beans. If she were honest with herself, Alex actually appreciated her interest; she was still reeling from the pain of utter rejection in the wake of her mistake.

But she was far from ready to talk about it. She compromised, sticking to the points which sketched a picture complete enough to satisfy Kate, but brief enough that she wouldn’t break her own heart all over again.

“All right,” she sighed. “So I was hired to take care of this beautiful little girl. She’s bright and funny and creative, and was in desperate need of a best friend.”

“Best friend?” Kate asked, raising a brow.

“Yeah, keep that skepticism,” Alex said bitterly. “I didn’t. Which is why I’m here, I guess.”

“What…you know what, no. Continue.” Kate settled back with her coffee, resting a hand on the gentle swell of her belly.

Alex waved a hand and went on with her story.

“So, anyway, I come to find out that this kid hasn’t played with kids her own age—or any kids, for that matter—in three years. Her dad eventually tells me that she’s his illegitimate daughter, and if his family—well, part of his family—finds out about her, that he’ll be disowned, and it’ll destroy their way of life.”

Kate radiated skepticism and doubt, but Alex hurried on before she could say anything.

“Anyway, eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore, and neither could she. She wasn’t allowed to leave the palace, Kate.”

“Palace? Oh, wow, you did get yourself into something, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed. She paused for a long time, wrestling with her responsibility. “It was in my contract,” she said quietly. “Right there, in black and white. Never take the kid out of the house. I signed it. I understood it.”

“And then you disregarded it,” Kate finished as she rose from the table. Miah, the oldest, was complaining about being trapped in the playpen. Alex followed Kate into the living room, where she opened the pen and the back door, letting her four preschoolers scatter as they pleased.

“And that’s why you did it,” Kate said, gesturing to her tumbling brood. “Because kids can’t grow in a cage, and you know that.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed. “But it doesn’t change anything. Or, I guess, it changes everything. Because now I’m here and he’s there, and everybody’s worst fears have come true just because I couldn’t bear to tell her ‘no’ one more time.”

“Which is completely reasonable, unlike your employer,” Kate said pointedly.

Alex chuckled, but the sound was strained and unnatural in her ears. Kate gazed at her sympathetically.

“You really felt for the girl,” she observed.

Alex nodded. “She’s amazing,” she said, thinking about Zaiman as well.

Kate squeezed her in a warm embrace, and Alex deflated against her.

“She’ll be okay,” Kate promised her. “I swear, Alex, I don’t know how you do it over and over again. I think the heartache would kill me.”

Alex thought it might, this time.

Getting her heartbreak over Amia off of her chest helped some, but not nearly enough. Kate noticed, and kept prying in between chasing her kids around, but Alex just couldn’t bear to talk about him.

That didn’t stop her from dreaming about him, though. His tender kiss, his deep, emotional eyes, his hands around her waist. She missed the movie nights and the conversations, even the disagreements. She missed watching him play with Amia and the gentle way he taught her things. She missed…oh, she missed everything.

She cried herself to sleep for the first week, and could barely force herself to look for jobs. Her ample savings carried her through, and her stellar references were enough to earn her any job she chose, assuming she left Zaiman’s name off of her resume.

It was easy enough to do so. She hadn’t been there long enough to make a significant dent in her work history. She marked it as a long vacation, and cried over the accuracy of that statement. She couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a vacation than with Amia and Zaiman and Bassam.

Somehow, in just a few short months, they had become like family to her. The hurt was deep, sucking at her soul like quicksand, and she couldn’t seem to rise to the surface.

One afternoon, when she returned from a walk to clear and refocus her head, Kate immediately pulled her aside.

“Mom and Dad are back from Vegas,” she told her. “I’m having them and Kyle over for dinner. Are you going to be mopey the whole time? Because if Mom’s trying to wrestle your woes out, I’ll never have the chance to tell them my news.”

“Which news?” Alex asked.

“My annual news,” Kate huffed, exasperated. “Just because it’s number five doesn’t mean it’s any less important.”

“Okay, okay, hormonal,” Alex teased. “I’ll be happy, cross my heart.”

But the cross she sketched over her chest didn’t seal the pact, because her heart had taken up a permanent residence in her toes. She did her best to smile at her parents and brother, and to engage in conversation, but it was clear to everyone that she just wasn’t herself.

She managed to hold them off until dessert, when Kate stood to make her announcement.

“We,” she said, smiling across the table at her husband, “have an announcement to make.”

“Your sister’s pregnant,” Alex’s father interjected.

“I am not,” Alex declared, sticking her tongue out at him.

“Dad,” Kate whined, looking as if she would burst into tears at any moment.

“Sorry, darling,” their dad said, winking at Alex.

“Anyway,” Kate continued, irritated. “We are expecting another baby. It’s a girl, and she’s due in October.”

“Yay, a new niece!” Kyle exclaimed. “Alex, when are you gonna get in on that action?”

“Pretty sure the source is spoken for,” Alex said wryly, gesturing at Charlie, who turned bright red.

“Right,” Kyle said, as if that problem had only just occurred to him. “So, we need to find you your own man. My boy Jason down at the gas station is single. Owns his own trailer and everything.”

“Gee, thanks,” Alex said, rolling her eyes. “But I’ll pass.”

“Snob,” Kyle sniffed.

“Scrub,” she shot back.

“Kids,” their mother groaned. “I really thought the bickering would stop when they grew up, I really did.”

“You’re making a big assumption there, sweetheart,” Alex’s dad said with a twinkle in his eye. “You assume that just because they’re old enough to vote, it means they’re all grown up.”

“He makes a good point,” Kyle said with a smirk. “I mean, look at us—Kate is still easy—”

“Hey! I’m married!”

“—Alex is still moody,” he continued. “And I still spend half my life playing video games.”

“That’s different,” their mother sighed. “It’s your job.”

“It’s Kate’s job to be easy; that doesn’t mean—”

This was the last straw for Kate. To her kids’ endless amusement and Alex’s mortification, Kate launched a bowl of mashed potatoes right at Kyle’s head. It landed squarely on top of his carrot-orange curls, making a glorious splat as the potatoes dripped over his face.

“Call me easy one more time,” Kate growled.

“Truce,” Kyle said as he wiped potatoes from his eyes. “Truce. Ow. I think you gave me a concussion.”

“Well, you deserve it.”

Once the mess had been cleaned up and Kate and Kyle had made amends, Kate and Charlie disappeared to put the kids to bed. Suddenly, Alex was in the spotlight, and she knew what was coming.

“Alex, something’s wrong,” her mother declared. “You’re upset. What happened?”

“I had a promising job; I lost the promising job,” Alex said quickly, hoping to nip the conversation in the bud.

“You lost a job? You mean you left the job, right? Difference of opinion or whatever?” Kyle asked, his eyes wide.

“No,” she sighed. “I didn’t leave it, I lost it, and it’s kind of killing my mojo, and I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”

“Sweetheart, everybody loses a job once in a while,” their dad said kindly. “It doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job; it just means that you weren’t a good fit, is all. Sometimes personalities just clash, and your career is ninety-five percent personalities and five percent snot-rags.”

Alex cracked a genuine smile at that, and squeezed her dad’s hand gratefully.

“Hm,” her mother said, squinting suspiciously at her in exactly the way that Kate did. “I don’t buy it.”

“Then put it back on the shelf so someone else can buy it,” Alex sighed. “I’m done talking about it, I’m done thinking about it, and tomorrow, I’m done feeling bad about it.”

“Oh?” her mother said, raising a brow. “Have you finally decided to be an adult?”

“Yes,” Alex exploded, her misery flash-boiling to fury. “Tomorrow, I’m going to get a nice fancy place with a nice long lease and I’m going to get a nice steady job with a 401k and insurance and all those nifty little adult things, and I’ll grow roots like a potato and meet a nice boring boy and have a bunch of babies, okay?”

Panic rose in her voice with every syllable, and she finally had to bite her tongue to make it stop.

“Well, all right. If that’s the way you feel, I’ll just stop asking,” her mother sniffed.

“Thank you,” Alex said sincerely. “Anybody want coffee?”

Though much of her outburst was hyperbolic, Alex truly intended on forcing herself to move on the next day. She had appointments set with three different apartment buildings, and was determined to keep each of them.

The next morning, she rose early and dressed professionally, changing out of tired old sweats for the first time since she’d come back home. She walked and took the bus to her appointments, desperately needing a break from Kate’s well-intentioned hovering.

The first apartment was extremely cheap and flexible, and less than a mile from Kate’s house. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the day, she decided. It was very bare-bones, and viewing the apartment left her more depressed than before.

The second was a little bit nicer, but the building rules were as long as her arm, and the management insisted on quarterly inspections. Though she didn’t intend on trashing the place or living like a wild college kid, she was uncomfortable with that level of scrutiny.

The third and final apartment was perfect from the moment she laid eyes on it. Curved archways between sunny, breezy rooms reminded her of home—Al-Jerrain, she corrected herself forcefully—and the balcony overlooked a beautiful garden.

She stood on the balcony for a long time, recalling every moment that she had spent with Zaiman on his various balconies, discussing everything from the vital to the mundane.

“We have other views if this one doesn’t suit you,” the apartment manager said finally, sounding impatient.

“Oh! No, this will do fine,” Alex said, tearing herself away. “I’ll take an application.”