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I swallow down a groan as his voice fades again.
The man shipped us away for three months. The least he can do is speak up!
Suddenly, Nina cries out, making me jolt.
“You must be hungry. I’m sorry.” He warms a bottle for her, singing softly under his breath the entire time. “You don’t have to worry anymore,” he assures her as she eats, safe in his arms. “I won’t send you away again. I’ll make this work, my girl. I promise you that.”
Promises.As beautiful as they are, they’re wasted on my five-month-old. She doesn’t know any better, looking up into the reassuring face of her father. She trusts him.
I’mthe one who doesn’t buy a word. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t breathed a word of apology to me.
I’m only his wife, after all. Why should he bother with a conversation?
Rage swells inside of me until tears burn in the corners of my eyes. I war with myself—get up, say something; stay down, stay quiet—but the decision isn’t made until Arsen settles Nina in her crib and turns back to me.
Our eyes meet. “Did I wake you?”
“You’re a dick, you know that?”
He arches one brow. “I’ll take her to the nursery next time.”
“I don’t care about you waking me up,” I snap. “You’re a dick because you’ll apologize to a baby, but you won’t apologize to me.”
He sighs. “I’ve tried?—”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve explained. You’ve justified. But you haven’t once told me you’re sorry.”
He drifts closer to my bedside. “Three months ago, I had a different take on our situation.”
“And now, you regret it?”
His gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “Intensely.”
“How lovely that you regret it now that it’s too damn late.”
A sliver of moonlight slashes across his face. He looks exhausted. “I’m sorry for robbing you of your last few months with your mother, Laila. It was wrong of me.”
I lurch out of bed and stride to the far corner of the room. He follows me, his hands in his pockets like he isn’t sure what to do with them.
“Y’know, I thought I’d feel better, but I don’t,” I whisper. “I knew you made a mistake the second you sent us away. You should have, too.”
“We can come back from this, Laila.”
“I don’t want to. Life with you hurts too much, Arsen.” He flinches, and I feel a sadistic sense of satisfaction in that. “The contract I sent you—I’m standing by it. I want you to sign.”
His eyes harden. Anger so palpable it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end washes over his face. “I’m not signing a fucking thing.”
“You promised me a divorce once.”
“I also promised that you would have no involvement in Nina’s life past delivering her,” he spits. “Things change.”
“They certainly do. As in, I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”
The words hurt, but they aren’t entirely untrue. When I look at him, I see the months I lost with my mother. The time Nina lost with her grandmother. I see what he and I could have had, hovering somewhere just out of reach.
It’s painful.
“You’re still deep in mourning,” he reasons. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
