Page 78 of Pregnant Virgin of the Bratva
He doesn’t react, not at first. Then he leans down, lips brushing my forehead with a whisper of contact.
“I don’t care about being kind,” he says. “I care about keeping you alive.”
***
Most nights now, he lies beside me.
He doesn’t say much. He doesn’t ask if I’m sleeping or if I need anything—not unless I wince or sigh or shift too much beneath the blankets, but he’s there, every night, without fail. Like gravity. Like a shadow at rest.
His arm usually stretches over the bed, resting just above my belly. Never fully touching. Just there. A loose guard. A quiet barrier between me and anything that might try to reach me while I’m vulnerable.
I wonder if he even sleeps at all.
Once, in the blur between dreams and wakefulness, I stir in the dark and find him watching me.
He’s not hovering, not intense. Just watching. His expression is unreadable in the low light—half cast in silver moonlight, half lost in shadow—but I can tell he’s been awake for a while. His hand moves without sound, brushing a few strands of hair from my forehead.
He tucks the blanket around my shoulders just a little tighter and murmurs, “Go back to sleep.”
So I do, because I trust him now. That’s the most terrifying part.
There’s still distance between us, though.
He touches me more often now—my wrist when I pass him something, my back as I ease into a chair, the briefest brush of fingers when he steadies me down a step. He doesn’t flinch like he used to. He doesn’t act like his own hands are weapons anymore.
There’s a space between us that neither of us knows how to cross.
It’s not a wall. Not exactly.
It’s more like a question neither of us has figured out how to ask.
Is this real?
Is this us?
Or is it just survival, repackaged in warmth and care and long, wordless nights?
I don’t know how to ask.
I don’t think he knows how to answer, but sometimes—sometimes—I catch the shape of something deeper in the quiet.
Like when he brushes my hair back before I sit up. His fingers linger just a second too long at the curve of my neck, like he’s memorizing the feel of it. Like he doesn’t want to let go.
Or when he rests his forehead against mine for just a heartbeat in passing, his breath steady and warm between us. We’re close, closer than he’s ever let anyone be.
Then it’s gone, like it didn’t happen.
***
Tuesday morning, the nurse leaves early.
It’s one of my better mornings. No sharp twinges or sudden tightness, just the usual weight in my hips and the quiet, pulsing ache of something growing inside me.
Kion walks in with tea, as he always does. Instead of setting it down and leaving, he pauses.
“Window or fire today?” he asks.
I blink. “What?”
