Page 42 of Babies for the Boss
But I have the floor, and I will use it. “My mother was forced to marry my father.”
His brow drops immediately. “What?”
“They ran away together. She was fifteen. He was twenty-four, and he didn’t know how old she was—she’d lied to him, because she was desperate to escape her home life.” I look at the surface of the desk rather than at his face, because what I am about to say is easier to say to a neutral surface. “Her father caught up with them three days after they left. He was a terrible man. The kind of terrible that lives inside the walls of a house and poisons everything in it slowly, the kind that nobody outside ever sees clearly enough to fight. No one was coming to help her, so she did it herself.”
“How did she manage it?”
“My mother would have done anything to get out of that house. She did do anything. She found the first man who showed her any real kindness, and she held on with both hands, and she ran.”
I stop for a moment. Outside the window, the city continues its indifferent gray business, and I am briefly grateful for it, for something that doesn’t require anything from me.
“She didn’t want to marry him,” I continue. “She wanted out. Those are two different things, and she was fifteen years old and didn’t have the language to explain the difference, and even if she had, her father had a gun and a fury that had been building for years and a daughter who had shamed him, which was the only part of the situation he was capable of seeing.”
Pavel’s frown deepens. “He forced them at gunpoint to marry?”
I nod once. “In a courthouse, with her father standing behind them, and my father not fully understanding what he was standing in the middle of because he was twenty-four andterrified of the man who swore he’d shoot him if he didn’t marry his daughter.”
Pavel has not moved. He’s watching me with an attention so complete it has its own weight.
“And then they were married,” I say, “and my grandfather went home, and my parents were left with each other, and my father—he wasn’t a bad man in the conventional sense. He wasn’t cruel or violent or any of the things her father was. But he had been lied to about something fundamental, and he had been forced into something he hadn’t chosen, and he never fully forgave either of those things. Not her, not himself, not the the baby who came within the first year.”
“He blamed you?” Pavel’s voice tumbles to a low growl.
I shrug. I’m mostly over it these days. No sense on dwelling. “Me, Mom, my grandparents, anyone but himself. And that trend carried through the rest of his life. Everything was someone else’s fault. My mother had escaped one household and walked directly into another one where she was tolerated rather than wanted.”
Pavel takes a deep breath, letting his thick shoulders fall. “That… that will not be your fate.”
“No, it won’t.” I finally look up at him. “They were forced together. Stayed together. Quietly, consistently, thoroughly miserable.”
The office is very quiet.
“I will not walk through a door because I’ve been pushed,” I tell him. “Not by a pregnancy, not by twins, not by any of it. If I ever say yes to you—if—it will be because I chose it freely, on a daywhen there is no external pressure shaping my answer. Because I want to, not because I’m supposed to. Not because it makes logistical sense or because you’ve decided the situation requires it.”
Pavel is quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that isn’t emptiness but density, that means he is taking in something that has rearranged the furniture of his understanding. “She was a child.”
“She was. A terrorized, terrified child who did the only thing she could think to do. My father never saw that because, to him, she was the trickster woman who brought shame to his name.”
“Because he couldn’t bring himself to accept that he had bedded a child.”
I gulp to keep myself from vomiting. “Yes.”
Something shifts in his expression then. He looks at me like I am something he’s holding very carefully in both hands, and he’s terrified of dropping it. “I’m not your grandfather.”
“I know that.”
“And I’m not asking because of the children. Or not only because of the children. Or—” He stops, and something almost uncomfortable crosses his face, which is remarkable on a man whose face is professionally uncomfortable to read. “I’m saying this badly.”
“You are,” I agree. “You’re saying it like a man who just got news that rearranged his entire world in thirty seconds and responded by proposing, which is a very you response, and I understand the impulse, and the answer is still no.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he steps closer to where I’m standing, and he doesn’t reach for me or try to close the distance in any way that would constitute pressure. He simply stands close and looks at my face with that careful, complete attention. “Tell me what you need from me right now.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly, and I breathe through it for a moment before I answer. It’s not what I expected to hear, and now that we’re connected through the twins, I imagine a lifetime of unexpected things from Pavel, and I suspect none of them are accurate. If I can figure out what to expect, then they’re not unexpected, are they?
I force myself back into the present to answer him, but a lingering part of my mind still wonders what’s in store for us. “I need you to not propose to me again until the twins are old enough that they have nothing to do with your reasons. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not walking out of this office and out of your life because of one badly timed proposal. Does that work for you?”
“I do want you,” he says firmly. “That is not in question.”
“I know.” I hold his gaze. “So wait. Let it not be about this. Let it be about that instead.”
