Page 25 of Belong to Me
Not a question. I can see it in the tension along his forearms and the tightness around his mouth and the particular quality ofstillness he carries, which isn’t the stillness of composure but the stillness of a man who is holding himself together with his hands on his knees.
His jaw tightens. “Yes. You’re pregnant with my child.”
I don’t cry. I’ve done my crying. I cried on a bus from Nice and I cried in my childhood bedroom and I cried in a grocery store parking lot, and I’m finished with crying in front of men who break me.
“How long have you known?”
He looks at his hands. It’s the first time I’ve seen him unable to meet my eyes, and the inability does something to me that I push away.
“I’ve had someone checking on you. Not surveillance—” He stops. Tries again. “Making sure you’re safe. That you had what you needed. The report came three days ago. I was on a plane within the hour.”
Three days. He has known for three days that I’m carrying his child and he flew across an ocean and is sitting in a plastic chair in Cork and his hands are on his knees and his eyes are bloodshot and he hasn’t shaved. I file all of this and I don’t let it mean what it wants to mean.
“I don’t want your money,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“I don’t want your penthouse.”
“I know.”
“I want my baby to have a father. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you.”
Something crosses his face. Pain, or gratitude, or the particular ache of a man who is being given less than he wants and more than he deserves. He nods.
“Whatever you need,” he tells me. “However you want this to work. I’ll agree to everything.”
I believe him. That’s the terrible part. For the first time since I met him, I believe every word coming out of his mouth, and the believing is worse than the doubt because the doubt protected me and the belief leaves me open and I can’t afford to be open. Not with him. Not again.
“I’ll come back to Monaco,” I say. “On my terms.”
“Your terms.”
“My own space. My own door. My own life. You don’t get to decide how close we are. You don’t get to charm your way past boundaries I set. If I say stop, it stops. If I say leave, you leave.”
“Yes.”
“Promise me.”
His eyes come to mine. Grey and wrecked and unshielded and true, and I’ve never seen this version of him, the version without performance, without charm, without the half-lift or the full smile or any of the architecture he’s built between himself and the world. This is just Anton. Just the man underneath.
“I promise,” he says.
THE WHIRLWIND.
That’s the only word for it. Within days I’m back in Monaco. Within weeks I’m living in a unit two floors below his penthouse in a building on the coast road, and the unit has my own front door and my own kitchen and my own bedroom with a lock I’ve tested twice, and the view from my window is the harbour and the yachts and the same Mediterranean that was burning past his car window the first time he drove me somewhere, and I stand at my window and I press my hand against the glass and I don’t let myself think about what floor he’s on.
The doctor’s appointments begin. He drives me. He doesn’t speak in the car unless I speak first. He opens my door and he doesn’t touch me when I get out and he sits in the waiting room with his hands on his knees and when the doctor calls us in together he listens to every word and he takes notes on his phone and he asks questions about nutrition and exercise and prenatal supplements with the focus of a man who has never done anything halfway in his life.
He brings me ginger tea for the nausea.
Not in person. I find it outside my door in the morning. A thermos, stainless steel, warm to the touch. The first morning I open my door and see it, I stand in the hallway a long moment holding the thermos and staring at it and my eyes burn and I carry it inside and I drink it and the ginger settles my stomach and I hate him for knowing what I need before I ask.
Prenatal vitamins appear in my kitchen. I don’t buy them. They’re on the counter one afternoon when I come home from a walk, the right brand, the right dosage, the ones the doctor recommended by name in the appointment he took notes during. He has a key to my unit, the building management gavehim one as the owner, and he used it to leave vitamins on my counter and nothing else. No note. No flowers. No apology tucked inside a gesture. Just vitamins.
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t charm. For the first time since I’ve known him, he just shows up. And it’s killing me.
Because every morning the ginger tea is there. Every appointment he is in the waiting room. Every evening I hear his footsteps two floors above me, a faint rhythm through the ceiling, and I know the rhythm the way I know my own pulse and I press my hand against the wall above my bed where the plaster vibrates with his pacing and I don’t let myself want what I want.
