Page 102 of Release Me

There’s the wobbly lip again. It makes me want to go to her, but I can’t because I know as soon as I touch her, I’ll be on my knees, begging her to want this as badly as I do.

“That’s not an answer, Sebastian.”

“I can’t give you an answer, Nadia. What I want doesn’t matter because it’s your body, so it has to be your choice.”

As much as I hate it, that’s the truth. There is no us in this conversation, just her. What she wants. What she needs. What she chooses. I’ll still love her. I know that. I’ll still love her with everything in me, but I’ll also be holding my breath until the day when she’s ready for us to do this again. Hopefully, that day will come soon.

I’m staring at her hand on her stomach again, and when she moves it, my gaze snaps to her face. Self-consciousness skitters across her features. “But what if I make the wrong choice?”

“That’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is! We’ve just started dating, Sebastian. We’re still learning each other. There’s so much you don’t know about me, so much I don’t know about you. Things I might need to know if I decided to have this baby, things I might need to know if I didn’t.”

My heart lurches, and every beat is a mix of revolt and pain at being forced to face a reality I don’t want to consider. Nadia watches me, waiting for my response, and I school my features into a carefully blank mask before I reply.

“You know that I love you, and that I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect you.”

“Of course, I know that, Sebastian.” She’s pacing again. Her long legs covering more ground than usual because she’s agitated and moving fast. “But what about the little things?”

“What little things?” I push to my feet and try not to crumble under the wave of emotion crashing down on me. Nadia’s posture is reluctantly open as I approach. To my complete relief, she let’s me take her hands. “Ask me anything, precious. I’ll answer. I don’t have any secrets from you.”

“It’s not about secrets, Seb. It’s about the simplest things like when your birthday?—”

“March 29th,” I interject, ready to share, to give her anything she wants, anything she needs to make this work. “My birthday is March 29th. Yours is February 22nd. My favorite color is black, and yours is somewhere between yellow and cream, and your comfort shows are all some form of copaganda. You cry when Publix commercials come on?—”

“Because why do they have to do all of that to sell groceries?” she asks, playfully exasperated for just a moment.

“We know the things that matter, Nadia, and what we don’t know we’ll learn. We have time to learn.” It’s as close to a persuasive statement as I’ll allow myself to get because I won’t force her hand. Nadia’s lips quirk, which causes a dangerous bubble of hope to inflate in my chest.

“Those are all things you know about me. We’re talking about the things I don’t know about you.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, where you live. We’re going to have a baby, and I’ve never even been to your place. To any of your places.”

We’re going to have a baby.

My heart alternates between pounding a million miles a minute and ceasing to beat altogether when those words grace my ears, bouncing off of every part of my skull, igniting the fire of maybe burning in my chest only for it to be extinguished moments later when I process the end of her sentence.

Any hope I had for a positive outcome for this situation disappears the moment I realize I’m going to have to tell her the truth. I don’t know how long I thought I’d be able to hide this from her, but I didn’t expect to be revealing information I’m certain is going to make her upset on the heels of such important news.

Pulling in a deep breath for strength, I take one of her hands in mine. “We can go to my place now if you’d like.”

Nadia gawks at me, and if I wasn’t so fucking scared of how this whole situation is going to turn out I would be laughing at seeing her with her mouth hanging open like her jaw has come completely unhinged.

“I’m not leaving this building until we figure this out.”

“You don’t have to leave the building, precious,” I say. “You don’t even have to leave this floor.”

“Sebastian, please stop joking. You’re here all the time, but this isn’t your actual home. I’m talking about the place with the address that’s listed on your license, the place where all your mail is sent, the default place in your food delivery app…”

When Nadia is in an anxiety spiral that’s manifesting itself verbally, her body tends to go on autopilot. Which means that the moment I start pulling her toward the front door, she follows without a bit of resistance. As she’s listing out all the things that qualify a dwelling as someone’s home, I lead her out of her unit and down the hall to the one I moved into the day after she signed her lease. I’m fishing the key out of my pocket when she finally tunes in to what’s happening around her.

“Why are we here?” she asks, but I can tell by the tension coating her words that she already knows the answer.

“You said you wanted to see my place,” I respond, sliding the key into the lock.

“You don’t live here.” She drops my hand, taking a step back. “Sebastian, tell me you don’t live here.”

---