Page 34 of Nine Months to Love
I put my hand on her leg and drag it up to her thigh, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her clothes. She freezes in place.
“Our child is going to need you. God knows I can’t give the kid normalcy. But you can. Everything about you is generous and warm and loving. You make people feel special and heard and important. You’re the mother every child needs. Can’t blame me for grabbing you the second I realized that.”
“Stefan...”
I don’t let her finish. My mouth covers hers, swallowing whatever she was about to say.
It’s been too long since I last kissed her. Her lips tremble beneath mine, soft and uncertain. I can taste salt—tears maybe, or just her. My fingers move against her neck, feeling her pulse race under my touch as the kiss deepens from soft to heated, from tentative to demanding.
As my fingers climb higher up her thigh, I feel the wall slam back up.
She wrenches away from me, breaking the kiss with a gasp that echoes in the small room.
“No!” She won’t look at me. “You can’t just kiss me and expect everything to go back to normal. I can’t pretend you didn’t lie to me about everything.”
She pushes herself off the exam table. As she does, she accidentally disconnects the sonogram machine, the plug yanking from the wall.
The sound of our child’s heartbeat disappears, taking the last bit of magic with it. The room feels too quiet now. Achingly cold.
“I should have told you about my plans for the company,” I whisper. “But I didn’t because I’d decided not to go through with it.”
She pushes her hair back from her face, and I notice her hands are shaking. “Then why were those documents in your desk?”
“I was ending those plans.”
“Meaning you hadn’t actually made the decision yet. I found out and that’s what made you abandon it.”
“Christ, Olivia, those plans were in motion before.”
“How do you expect me to trust you?” Her voice cracks. “Your story changes constantly. But I think the only time you were honest with me was in the beginning. When you told me you didn’t want a relationship or marriage.”
I drag a hand through my hair, forcing myself to stay patient even though I want to grab her and shake some sense into her. “I was being honest. But things change. People change. Maybe you changed me.”
She presses a hand to her chest. “That’s a beautiful thought... but it’s never true, is it? It’s just something women tell themselves to justify being with a man they know will never change.”
This doesn’t feel like foreplay anymore. This feels like pouring gasoline on a fire, watching it whoosh up in flames that’ll burn us both.
“What are you trying to say, Olivia?”
The redness is back in her face, tension in every muscle. Her hands are shaking harder now. Her eyes keep darting around the room like she’s searching for an answer in the motivational posters and medical diagrams on the walls.
Even as she tells me what she wants, I know she’s not sure herself. I can see it in the way she’s holding herself, brittle and ready to break.
“I want us to go back to our original arrangement. Co-parents. Nothing more. From here on out, we’re not a couple. In fact, I’m starting to realize we never were.”
The ultrasound machine sits there unplugged, useless. Dr. Kostas’s notes are scattered on the counter. The smell of that gel is still in the air, clinical and sharp and inhuman.
And Olivia is walking away from me, her hand already on the door handle.
13
STEFAN
But I don’t let her get that far.
I catch her wrist before her fingers close around the door handle. “Let me get this straight—you’re breaking up with me?”
Her eyes flash, pure fire and endless brimstone, but I notice she doesn’t pull away from my grip. That tells me everything I need to know about what she really wants versus what she’s saying.
