Page 39 of Keep

I was almost sick with confusion. This was as close to idle chatter as Vasile had ever gotten, and it had me even more off balance.

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t easy for me. I know we didn’t plan it, but I want to keep it.”

There. I’d said it, and I’d deal with the consequences.

“Of course we’ll keep it. What else would we do…?” He trailed off and gripped the wheel tighter and looked at me, pure malice in his eyes.

Then he pulled off the road and parked, expression calm, but the rage that poured off him was palpable.

“Where do you think we’re going, Fawn?” he asked. The low, firm tenor of his voice, the precision with which he spoke only heightened my fear.

“To the doctor. To…”

“To what?” he asked flatly.

“To get rid of it,” I said, my voice trembling with the fear that had begun to spring up.

He gripped the wheel tighter and muttered a low oath.

“You think I’m going to take you to kill my baby?”

When he asked like that, used that voice, those words, I saw the stupidity of it. He would kill everything, anyone, before he would harm his own, and I wanted to curse myself for even entertaining the idea he would make me get rid of it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sounding frail, pathetic. “I just thought…”

“That I was a monster. That I would force you to…”

He trailed off, and I worried he might rip the wheel right off the car, he gripped it so tight.

“I am, you know?”

“What?”

“A monster. A very bad man. Maybe that’s why you can’t believe me. Don’t trust me.”

His words pierced right to my very core, and shame overtook the fear.

“It’s just that you didn’t seem happy,” I said.

“I wasn’t,” he confessed.

“So you see?—”

“But then I thought about it, thought about my son, a tiny little baby with your eyes. I was happier than I’ve ever been.”

He looked at me then and I saw the truth of it in his eyes, felt the fear and shame displaced by love, hope for our new family.

As he turned back to the road, he put his hand on my knee again. I reached out and entwined my fingers with his.

“It might be a girl,” I said.

He just squeezed my hand and lifted the corner of his mouth in a smile.

TWENTY-TWO

Vasile

Five Months Later

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