The silence after the door shut was a physical thing, thick and cold in the marble foyer. Robin stared at the closed door, his chest heaving. He turned to April, his face pale, his famous eyes wide with a panic she’d never seen before. “We need to fix this,” he said, the words a desperate rasp.

April didn’t look at him. She smoothed the wrinkled silk of her dress over her stomach, a slow, deliberate motion. Her panties were still damp, a cold, intimate humiliation clinging to her skin. “Fix it,” she repeated, her voice flat. “You mean lie.”

“It’s not a lie!” Robin ran a hand through his hair, his movements jerky. “The baby is mine. Ours. Conceived after. We need to prove it.”

“With a court-ordered test.” April finally met his gaze. Her eyes were dry, clear. The earlier tears were gone, burned away by Paula’s clinical intrusion. “Which we will take. And it will be fine.”

Robin flinched at her calm. He needed her panic to match his, needed the shared chaos to feel like a team. Her stillness felt like a verdict. “You don’t understand. Paula’s lawyers… they’ll pick apart the timeline. They’ll make it look sordid. They’ll say I got you pregnant while I was still married, to reduce her settlement. It’s not about the truth, it’s about what they can make a judge believe.”

“Then we tell the truth.” April walked past him, her bare feet silent on the cold floor. She picked up her discarded heels from where they’d been kicked aside in their frantic coupling against the wall. “We met in Miami. The divorce was filed. We have the date. We have the hotel receipt. We have the truth.”

“You think that matters?” His laugh was sharp, brittle. “I’m Robin Thicke. Nothing is just a date or a receipt. Everything is a story. And the story they’ll sell is that I’m a cheating bastard who knocked up a teenager to stick it to my ex-wife.”

April slipped her shoes on, the simple act feeling like armor. She turned to face him. “So what do you want to do, Robin? Hide me? Pay someone off? What’s the fix?”

He looked at her, really looked, and saw the girl from the club was gone. In her place stood this young woman, pregnant with his child, asking a question he had no clean answer for. The hollowness from his victory over her weeks ago yawned wider inside him. “I want to protect you,” he said, but the words sounded weak, even to him.

“From the truth?” She shook her head. “No. We take the test. We give them their proof. And then we’re done with this.”

The ‘done with this’ hung between them. Did she mean the paternity issue, or did she mean them? Robin couldn’t ask. The panic was receding, replaced by a cold, sinking dread. He nodded, a short, sharp jerk of his chin. “Okay. Okay. We’ll do it your way.”

The test was arranged with a sterile efficiency that felt like a violation. A neutral clinic. A technician with gloved hands and no eye contact. Robin sat in the waiting room, leg jiggling, while April was taken back. He watched her go, her posture straight, one hand resting lightly on the small curve of her belly. She didn’t look back.

Weeks passed in a tense, suspended animation. The legal machinery ground on. Robin’s lawyers were cautiously optimistic; the conception date, backed by evidence, fell clearly after Paula had filed. Robin clung to that optimism like a life raft, calling April daily with updates that were really just pleas for reassurance. Her responses were brief. Yes. Okay. I see.

Then the official letter arrived. Robin tore it open in his kitchen, his hands trembling. Paternity confirmed. Robin Thicke is listed as the biological father. No impact on the Patton settlement. Case closed.

He let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for a month. A laugh, genuine and relieved, burst from him. He called April immediately. “It’s over,” he said, the words giddy. “We’re clear. It’s all okay.”

There was a pause on the line. Then her voice was softer than he’d heard it in weeks. “Okay.”

“Come over,” he said, the old charm seeping back into his tone, warm and inviting. “Let’s… I don’t know. Order stupid food. Watch a bad movie. Just be… okay.”

Another pause. Longer. He could hear her breathing. “Okay,” she said again.

When she arrived, she was smiling. A real, tentative smile that touched her eyes. It felt like the sun coming out after a long storm. They didn’t order food. They didn’t put on a movie. They stood in his living room, and he reached for her hand. She let him take it. He pulled her gently against him, and she came, her forehead resting against his shoulder. He breathed in the scent of her hair. For the first time in months, the world felt still. It felt like a beginning.

They were careful with each other that night. Not with the desperate, performative passion of before, but with a quiet tenderness that was new. He kissed her slowly, his hands cradling her face. She sighed into his mouth, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. He led her to the bedroom, and they made love in the dark, a slow, deep reclamation. Afterward, she fell asleep with her head on his chest, her hand once again resting on her stomach. He lay awake, watching the moonlight trace the curve of her cheek, and let himself believe in the okay.

He drove her home the next morning, his hand on her knee. She was quiet, but it was a peaceful quiet. He walked her to her apartment door. “I’ll call you later,” he said, brushing a kiss against her temple.

She nodded, that soft smile returning. “Drive safe.”

He was halfway home when his phone rang. An unknown number. He answered, still riding the fragile high of the morning. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was female, crisp, unfamiliar. “Mr. Thicke? This is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We have an April Sterling here. You’re listed as her emergency contact. She’s been in an accident.”