Page 31 of Forgotten Vows
“You are staying right here and talking.”
She rolled her eyes, then narrowed them. “Oh, I have to explain myself whereas you don’t?”
I opened my mouth but she shook her head and glared at me. “Never mind. No explanation is necessary. You cheated. End of story.”
“That’s not true. And I will explain, but not until you tell me everything.”
“Everything?” She narrowed her eyes. “Including how I had to handle the aftermath of you just walking away and?—”
“Talk.” I pushed her wrists down to jar her back into submission. “I will explain. But I’m not the one who’s been hiding a child for seven years. You’ve got more to answer for than I do. Sotalk.”
She licked the seam of her lips, a tell for her hesitation. But she wasn’t planning to hold out and not say anything. After a deep breath, pushing her breasts up and making me stupidly distracted and wishing that she were naked and not still mostly clothed, she stared right back at me.
“The day before you didn’t show up at my apartment, I realized I was pregnant. It surprised me because I was still weaning off the birth control I had been on. But I was pregnant. I planned to tell you that day. But you never showed. So I called. I stopped by your place. I left voicemails. You called me back once, but it must have been an accidental call because it was just the background noise of you with Serena. I saw the tabloids and news. I saw the pictures of you with her.”
Her throat flexed with a swallow as she stared at me. Blinking a few times was all the pause she seemed to need. “So, I knew it was over. I read the stories about all your dates, all thathappened when you were supposed to have been with me that summer?—”
“For fuck’s sake, Iwaswith you all that summer. I barely left your side.”
“I thought you wanted me to talk.”
I pressed my lips together and bottled in a groan.
“I knew I was on my own. My father was due to visit me since I was overstaying for the break between semesters, and it goes without saying that he was mad to have discovered I was with you at all.”
I recalled those days. The worry that Konstantin or Luka would order us apart.
“He wasn’t happy with me, and I knew that if he realized I was pregnant, he would be madder. So, I ran. I was planning to runwithyou, stupidly assuming you loved me and that you’d want to be a father to our child. I trusted you. I thought you’d love me enough to want to run from your family as well, but that was where I made my first mistake.”
“First mistake?” I replied wryly.
“Yeah, my second one was letting you kiss me in this room.”
I narrowed my eyes, daring her to really tell me that she hadn’t wanted it.
“I ran and hid. Then I had Lev and I’ve spent every day since his birth living under cover, using aliases, moving often, and trying my hardest to stay off the radar of anyone from any family.”
I shook my head. “Then why did I find medical records that said you’d lost a pregnancy?”
She went stiff, staring at me and lying so still that she resembled a ticking bomb ready to explode. “YouknewI was pregnant? Andstillleft?” She shook her head. “No. No. Fuck this. What? I didn’t tell you. You left me before I could tell you,and I didn’t have any appointments before I packed a few things and ran.”
“I—”
Well, fuck.
With her watching me so closely, I regretted letting it slip that I’d looked her up. Now she was using this partial fact against me, implying that I’d been aware that I’d knocked her up and still walked away.
“No.”
“Answerme, Ivan. What the hell are you saying? How do you know about those records? Or that I was pregnant at all?” She squirmed to get up, but I didn’t let her move.
“I wondered if you could be pregnant when I left. I wondered it only because your birth control was supposed to be due and we never held back from making love.”
“Fucking,” she clarified. “Because you clearly never loved me if you were with that woman all along.”
“I wasn’t. But that’s another story.” I sighed, hating to admit my vulnerability in missing her. “It was on my mind, though, that you might have been pregnant. So I hired someone to track you down. I had to know you were all right.”
She huffed a sarcastic laugh.
