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Adas drives through the night, holding my hand as we both sit in silence. I’m glowing from the inside out, realizing that my life with Adas hasn’t been a cruel trick. He’s my saving grace.
We don’t speak at all for the entire fifty-minute drive. We don’t need to. All I want to do is take in this new gratitude for my life, something I would have never known to feel if I hadn’t rediscovered the prison that was my old life.
When we arrive back at the house, I walk through the front door slowly and with purpose just so that I might never take it for granted ever again. The house, my ability to walk, the beautiful wood floors under my feet that I can feel with full clarity.
“How do you feel? Do you need some water?” Adas asks me as we step into the kitchen.
I’m tempted to get onto the floor and examine the speckled surface of each tile. Everything in this house, every texture and topography, feels like a gift. I know I would drive Adas absolutely insane if I stopped to run my fingers over every square inch of the house, so I show just a little bit of restraint.
The house will always be here for me to feel and explore, and I couldn’t have asked for a better afterlife.
Then I remember.
After all of the fleeing, chaos, and terror of the past twenty-four hours, I’ve completely forgotten that I’m pregnant. Now that I know that I have no other life but Adas, I feel compelled to confess this secret to him.
But how?
If I’m going to stay with him, then I need to accept him as my true life partner and the father of my child. I don’t want to present it to him like it’s a problem that needs fixing. I need him to know that I’m excited about this new beginning, and I want him to be too.
“Adas, can we go to our room for a moment?” I ask, feeling the effervescence of excitement and anxiety bubbling in my chest.
Of course, he would never deny me a trip to the bedroom, especially after he’s been absolved of one of the most absurd crimes he’s ever committed. After all we’ve been through, I can’t imagine the weight off his shoulders that he feels knowing that I’m here of my own volition, that I’ve chosen to be his instead of convinced.
He follows me to the bedroom, and I can feel him grazing his hand along my ass as we get closer.
I close the door behind us, and immediately, he turns around and begins to kiss me deeply and passionately.
As much as I love his touch, his kisses, I need to tell him about the pregnancy or I’ll explode.
“Adas, I need to tell you something. Come on, sit on the bed with me,” I say, slowly pulling away from him and stepping over to the bed.
He glances at me suspiciously. “Are you about to tell me that you have a long-lost husband somewhere that you didn’t remember until now?” he asks, half-jokingly.
It’s clear that the part of him that isn’t joking is extremely concerned, so I smile warmly as an assurance to the contrary.
“No, it’s nothing like that. Just sit down next to me. Please?”
He approaches slowly, sitting right next to me and putting his hand on my thigh. Even during an important discussion, he can’t stand not to be touching me. This is something I love about him, and I know that I’ll grow to love it even more.
“Adas, I don’t know how else to say this, but I’m pregnant with your baby. I realize now that I’ve never felt more fulfilled than I feel as your future wife and mother of your child,” I say, feeling the pressure of my secret released from within me.
At first, he’s completely speechless.
It isn’t the kind of speechless that would concern me, but I wait desperately for his response.
“How long have you known?” he asks, his tone heavy with questions.
I hesitate at first. Now that I know his motivations, telling him that I’ve known for weeks would feel like a betrayal. I didn’t trust him enough to tell him before, and I feel like that would crush him now.
“I found out in Mexico. I knew something wasn’t right, and we had been having a lot of sex before then, so I took a chance and found out I was pregnant. Being in the heat without much food or water scared me, but so did my suspicion that you weren’t who you said you were,” I reply, feeling the guilt like a hot stone in my belly.
He pauses for a moment. “How did you manage to do that without me finding out?” he asks, more bemused than anything.
“Do you remember that time I went out with Erik and Gregory, and they came back drunk off their faces?”
He has a moment of clarity but is still somewhat confused.
“How did you manage to take it? I thought I had someone on your ass twenty-four hours a day if it wasn’t me.”
