He comes home late, but he comes home.
That’s the thing. He always comes home. To me. To this. To whatever the fuck we are. Dinner is quiet but not uncomfortable. Pasta with mushrooms. I don’t know who cooked it—there’s a woman who comes in twice a week, silent and efficient, leaving meals in the refrigerator before disappearing again. We eat on the couch with our thighs touching, while the November wind scratches at the glass.
Afterward, I show him my numbers. He sits with me tucked under his arm, his chin resting on top of my head as he reviews my spreadsheet on his tablet. One hand splays across my stomach, thumb tracing idle circles. He hasn’t stopped touching me there since the test. Like he’s etching a map on my skin
“You’re underpricing again,” he says, voice rumbling through his chest into my back. “In this zip code, women will pay for the illusion of effortlessness. They want to look like they woke up expensive. Add forty percent.”
“You’re a criminal mastermind and a salon pricing expert?”
“I know what people will pay for their vanity.” He adds a column, adjusts my formulas with fingers that are long, elegant, and scarred at the knuckles. I don’t ask. I never ask. “And you need a bigger cash float. Six months of operating expenses, not three. The first winter will be slow.”
“You sound like you want me to succeed.”
He sets the tablet aside. Turns my chin up so I have to look at him. His eyes soften, and I hate him a little for it.
“I want you to be untouchable,” he says. “I want you to have so much that no one can ever take anything from you again. Not even me.”
You're already taking from me…
He draws me down into the cushions. We don’t fuck tonight. He just holds me, one hand spread wide over my still-flat stomach, and tells me about a building he’s acquiring in the Seaport, about zoning laws and payoffs and the way concrete sets in December. Like I’m his partner or his wife.
Like I’m staying.
The OB’s office is in a high-rise medical building on Longwood Avenue, all glass and blond wood and the particular sterility of old money. Mikhail walks beside me with a hand at the small of my back, a sweater pulled over his holster. He looks almost civilian. Almost.
But his gaze scans every exit. Every face in the waiting room. We don’t have to wait. Mikhail Kutuzov does not wait. The receptionist barely looks at me before she’s ushering us through frosted glass doors into an exam room that smells like antiseptic and new beginnings.
Dr. Lennox is efficient and warm. She enters with a tablet and a smile so practiced it could sell waterfront property.
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Kutuzov—”
Mikhail goes statue-still beside me. The words clot in my throat. We’ve never discussed what we are. I’m not his wife, or his girlfriend. I’m a signature on a contract next to his.
“Partner,” I blurt out.
Dr. Lennox blinks, her smile faltering into polite confusion. I try again, the word feeling wrong in my mouth, wrong for what he is, wrong for what I want him to be.
“We’re not… he’s not my husband. I’m just—" The truth burns its way out. “I’m just the surrogate.”
Silence.
Dr. Lennox recovers with professional speed. “Of course,” she says smoothly. “And which agency facilitated the match? I’ll need their records for my files.”
Mikhail speaks in his flattest voice. “There is no agency.”
Dr. Lennox looks between us. The age gap. The way his hand is glued to my back. “I see. So the insemination was performed at a clinic?”
“No,” I say. My face is hot enough to melt bone. “It was… the old-fashioned way.”
Oh, God. The look on her face.
“Oh,” Dr. Lennox says delicately. “I… see.”
The exam continues. She asks about my last menstrual cycle, about symptoms, and family medical history. I answer in a stranger’s voice. Mikhail doesn’t leave my side. His hand finds mine on the exam table, his grip crushing tight.
Then the ultrasound. The gel is cold against my lower belly. I flinch. Mikhail’s free hand comes up to cradle my shoulder, his thumb pressing into the muscle there, grounding me.
Dr. Lennox presses the wand against my skin, and the screen flickers to life. Gray static. Shadows. Blobs, I don’t know howto read. Then—a flicker. A tiny pulsing bean no bigger than a peanut.
