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And yes, I still know that it’s scientifically impossible for those flutters to be her. But I’m a mom-to-be, I’m allowed my quirks.
So every day she wakes up at the sight of him, all happy and cheerful. Excited.
I, on the other hand, have tried to stay unaffected.
I have tried my best to deny the rush, the warmth, the goosebumps from invading my skin. I try to deny that my breaths scatter at the sight of him.
In fact, all I’ve done in the past weeks, aside from being sick and tired, is deny and remember.
Remember what he did.
How he used me and lied to me. How he made me fall in love with him only to cast me aside when it suited him.
I have tried to hold on to it, to the past and his crimes.
To the hands that broke my heart.
But these days when I see those very hands, I remember them holding my hair back, making me tea, rubbing my spine as he soothes me while being tired himself. Because of his work all day and my sickness all night. I remember them driving me to and from school.
I remember them bringing groceries, underlining things in the pregnancy books even though he thinks that books can go fuck themselves, noting down things when Dr. May talks about handling ballet and pregnancy, fixing a leaking tap in the bathroom so it doesn’t get worse later.
These days whenever I see his hands, I get tired. A different type of tired and exhausted.
The kind where holding on to the past has become increasingly difficult.
The loud sound of the car door shutting breaks my thoughts. That and Tempest’s squeals as she jumps up from the couch and runs to the front door, throwing it open.
Even though my ballerina heart is spinning in my chest at his arrival, I slowly rise from the couch and approach the door.
The winter sky has darkened early but it doesn’t matter.
It never does when it comes to him.
He burns so brightly that the night can’t hide him.
Wearing a white dress shirt that’s wrinkled after his day in the office and hair that’s long and messy, he glows as he emerges from his Mustang. Tempest is right there when he does and like two years ago at the party that changed my life forever, I see him envelop her in a big hug.
I see him chuckle at her as he asks her how her ride in was and if she was speeding. And what has she been doing to her car. Because it looks like shit and he’s going to take a look at it later, see if it needs a tune-up.
When Tempest answers all of his questions and asks some of her own, he looks up.
And I have to hold on to the edge of the door at the impact of his gaze on me.
His dark, dark possessive gaze.
Like he’s looking at something that belongs to him.
I mean, technically the hoodie that I’m wearing, white and creamy and cozy, does belong to him, yes. Not to mention, the baby inside my body.
The body that has grown and swelled — only slightly but still — in the past weeks.
And all of it has happened under his wolf eyes.
And so this dark possession has only grown over the past weeks.
Before it made my skin coarse with goosebumps, but now it burns me.
It makes me curl my extremities and part my lips.
Now it makes me, actually makes me, put a hand on my belly. Not that it’s a hardship; I love touching my belly, but still.
The moment I do, he lets Tempest go and his animal eyes fall on my expanded abdomen. He stares at it for a few beats as if checking that my — our — baby girl is all safe inside of me. As if he can confirm this just by looking at me like that.
Then he lifts up his eyes and moves toward me.
With every step he takes toward me, he does his thing.
Checking to make sure that I’m okay, that nothing bad has happened to me while I was safely ensconced in this cozy house, spending a relaxed day with his sister.
His steps echo as he climbs the porch steps and I dig my fingers into my belly.
When he reaches me, he dips his face and I crane my neck up.
“Hi,” I say, doing my thing, glancing at the tired lines around his eyes, his mouth.
The sharpness of his cheekbones, his jaw, the creases on his forehead.
As if that place where he works chisels him down, brings out his blade-like edges, and I hate that.
I absolutely hate it.
“You okay?” he asks instead of greeting me back.
“Yeah. You? You look tired. Was it a hard day?”
“I’m fine.” He dismisses my concern over him and it bugs me even more but I keep my mouth shut for now. “You throw up at all?”
