Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Chapter ****10
Chapter 10
DAISY
The ceiling is white. The lights are fluorescent. The smell is antiseptic and industrial soap and the particular staleness of recirculated air, and I’m lying on my back in a hospital bed in Cork, Idaho, and the man sitting in the chair beside me is Anton Almazov.
I’m not surprised.
I should be. I should be asking how he found me, how he got here, why he’s sitting in a plastic chair in a hospital in a town he’s never heard of in a state he once asked me to describe over dinner. But I’m not surprised because I have spent two months carrying the weight of him inside me, not just the pregnancy, though that too, but the weight of his absence, which turns out to be heavier than his presence ever was, and some part of me has been waiting for this chair and this man and this fluorescent ceiling since the parking lot asphalt met my cheek.
He’s sitting very still. His hands are on his knees. He’s wearing clothes I’ve never seen, dark jeans, a grey pullover, no suit, no tie, no Ace Royale armour, and he hasn’t shaved and his eyes are bloodshot and he’s the most beautiful thing in this ugly room and I hate that he is.
“You know, don’t you.”
Not a question. I can see it in the tension along his forearms and the tightness around his mouth and the particular quality of stillness 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.