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“And I’m not just talking about the status of your virginity.”
My heart skips a beat.
Drops it.
Right to the bottom of my belly.
Because I know what he’s talking about. I know that he can sense it.
That I’m hiding something from him.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Then, “Given our history.”
At this, I don’t even think my heart’s ever going to pick up the lost beats.
I don’t think my heart’s ever going to start beating again.
I clutch at my dress, trying to play innocent. “I’m… I don’t —”
“Either you tell me the truth or I’m walking out of here.”
“Y-you’ll… You’ll seriously walk out of here even when I’ve told you what I want from you?”
His nostrils flare. “Because closure isn’t the only thing that you want from me.”
Yeah, that’s not the only thing that I want from him.
As I’ve said before, in order to get closure and finally move on, I need revenge. I need to punish him. And telling him how I’m going to get revenge wasn’t the plan.
Actually none of this was the plan at all. I wasn’t supposed to kiss him tonight. I wasn’t supposed to get him upstairs in the first place. I just wanted to talk. I just wanted to tell him what I wanted from him – only to the extent that he needed to know – and lay out the ground rules like, yes, a business meeting. This whole condom/no condom thing wasn’t supposed to come up at all.
At least not tonight when I’m so frazzled.
I had a plan on how to handle it when we did, you know, do the deed. In about a week.
During my ovulation window.
God, why.
Why does he have to be so perceptive? Why can’t he just let things go?
And I know he means it. He absolutely means to walk out of here if I don’t tell him the truth.
If I don’t tell him everything.
So I guess I have to, don’t I?
Dread settles in my belly.
It’s cold and hard.
And sharp.
Like him.
A thorn.
As I say, “Yes. Closure isn’t the only thing that I want from you. I want… something else too.”
He takes a deep breath, not only straining his chest with it, but also flexing his shoulders and his biceps. “And what is it that you want?”
I want to close my eyes, needing to hide.
But I also find that I can’t.
Because I also need this connection with him and that need is stronger.
That need is the strongest of all, isn’t it?
To be connected to him. To somehow have a piece of him, to keep, to cherish, to nurture and to love, so I can breathe. So I can move on and live my life.
I don’t know why – especially after everything that he’s done to me – but it is what it is.
And instead of fighting it like I’ve been doing so far, I’m going to embrace it and use it to get free.
“A baby,” I whisper on an exhale.
“A baby.”
I can’t help but press a hand on my empty belly. “Yes.”
His gaze still zeroes in on it. “My baby.”
"Yours.”
“Mine.”
At this, I do have to close my eyes.
Because I didn’t think he could sound this possessive. This territorial.
And I know how territorial he can sound.
Especially when he says that word: mine.
When I open my eyes, I still find him staring at my belly, and words come out of me like a river. “The reason why I was so eager that night, why I went along with it, begging for it, begging for you, wasn’t only because I was in love with you. It was also because…”
His eyes are pinned to me now, staring into my eyes, looking unfathomable as I say, “I have a secret. Well, it’s not so much a secret, because a lot of people know about it or knew about it but… You didn’t know. Because I never told you. And…”
God, enough rambling.
I lick my lips. “I’ve always wanted one. A baby.”
No reaction from him.
At all.
He still keeps looking at me, staring with bottomless eyes and a cool face. A body that seems larger than the wall he’s standing against. Larger than this room, my apartment, this building.
Maybe even the whole world, I don’t know.
All I know is that he feels powerful in this moment.
He feels like he could crush everything that I ever wanted with one stomp of his foot. One snap of his fingers.
And he can, can’t he?
He’s done it before.
He can do it again.
But still, I have to keep going. “A husband. A family. A loving family. A loyal husband. Not that I’m asking any of those things from you. I want you to know that. That’s not what this is about. I don’t want to make a family with you or anything. And I’m sure you don’t want to make one with me. We’re not… right for each other. But you can give me a baby. And I want that. Although I realize how archaic it must sound to you, how unambitious and uninspired or whatever. I mean, girls want to rule the world, you know? They want to be queens and CEOs and whatnot and that’s okay. All the more power to them. But I’m not like that. I never was.
