Page 87 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
I look up at him. “Why?”
“Because you were not supposed to be in it,” he says. “Because I wanted one part of my life that was separate from it.” He pauses. “Because from approximately the third week of your employment, I understood that you were someone I needed to keep away from this world, and I was not ready to examine why.”
I look at him.
He looks back at me.
“Roman,” I say carefully. “What are you telling me?”
He stands up.
He crosses the room and sits beside me on the couch, close, and turns toward me, looking at my face the way he looked at the ultrasound screen, without the control he usually keeps over his eyes.
“I’m telling you that the arrangement we made is not what this is anymore,” he says. “For me. I don’t know when it changed. Somewhere between the masquerade and the penthouse, and every morning in between. I’m telling you that I am in love with you and I have been for longer than I’ve been willing to say it, and I’m saying it now because you almost didn’t come home, and I’m done keeping it inside.”
I look at him.
He looks back at me, and he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t take it back, and his eyes are doing what they did in the hospital room, open in a way I have only seen a handful of times, a man who has put down the thing he has been carrying and is standing in front of me without it.
I think about two years of sitting outside his office. Two years of burying something in professionalism and discipline, and the daily practice of wanting something I told myself I could not have.
I reach up, and I put my hand against his jaw.
He goes still the way he went still the first time I did this, that one second of complete stillness, and then he turns his head slightly and his eyes drop to my mouth, and I lean in and close the distance, and I kiss him.
Not the way he has kissed me before. Not urgent, not careful. Just present, just the two of us in this room with everything finally said, his hand coming up to the side of my face, warm, steady. I close my eyes, and I kiss my husband, and outside the windows the city does its indifferent evening thing, and in here it is just this.
His other hand finds my waist and pulls me closer, and I go, and the kiss deepens, and I think, very briefly, that I have been wanting to do this since long before I ever allowed myself to admit it.
Then I stop thinking entirely.
38
ROMAN
She is kissingme and I’m not managing anything.
This is unusual. I manage everything. Every room, every conversation, every silence that carries weight. I have been managing things since I was sixteen years old in a lobby on 48th Street and I have never once stopped long enough to notice I was doing it until right now, sitting on this couch with Elena’s hand against my jaw and her mouth against mine and the city outside doing whatever it does, and I’m not managing a single thing.
I pull her closer.
She comes without hesitation, her hand sliding from my jaw to the back of my neck. I feel the warmth of her against me and I think about eleven mornings of chamomile and a room in New Jersey and a man who told meit’s doneand all the months before all of that. I think about a masquerade ball and a woman who gave me a name that was not quite her name and sat outside my office for two years with something I didn’t see because I wasn’t looking for it.
I wasn’t looking for it.
I pull back just far enough to look at her face.
Her eyes open. Dark, close, looking at me with the full attention she brings to everything that matters to her. I look back at her and I say, “Come with me.”
She nods and I stand up and take her hand and we walk down the corridor together and the penthouse holds us both in its quiet and neither of us says anything because nothing needs to be said.
I lead her down the corridor and into my bedroom. She notices it is my room. I see the small flicker in her eyes, but she says nothing, and neither do I. I take her hand and guide her through to the en-suite bathroom.
The shower is large, tiled in dark stone. I turn the water on and adjust the temperature until it is warm but not hot. Steam begins to rise as I step back to her.
I undress her slowly. My fingers find the hem of her shirt and lift it upward. She raises her arms and lets me pull it off. I unhook her bra and slide the straps down her shoulders.
Her breasts spill free, fuller now, heavier with the pregnancy. I run my palms over them lightly, feeling their warmth and weight. Then I kneel and ease her pants and underwear down her legs. When she steps out of them, I rise again and look at the gentle swell of her belly, the soft curve that carries our twins. I brush my thumb across it once, slowly.
