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“By making me shop for the child I’ll have to leave behind?” she spits, grabbing the comforter where I tossed it on the floor and spreading it on the bed. “No thanks.”
Leave. The word settles like an anchor around my neck. Just hearing her say it sounds wrong.
“What are you—? You aren’t going anywhere.”
“You’re a cold man, Arsen, but you’re not cruel,” she says so softly I almost can’t hear her. “But it’s cruel to make me believe I have a place in this child’s life when I don’t.”
“Says who?”
“Says the contract I signed!” She whips around, tears on her cheeks and her hands plastered over her bump. “I should’ve known. I should’ve— You said what you needed to say to get me to marry you, and I understand it, even if I hate it.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
She shakes her head. I don’t even think she’s listening to me. “Don’t stand here now and act like we’re going to be some happy family when you know we aren’t.”
I arch back, heat rushing to my face. “You don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you,” she whispers. “I believe you when you say you always have a plan and you’ll never be trapped again. When we get divorced, you’re going to do what you need to do to get out clean, and I can’t even be mad at you because I agreed to all of it.”
The resignation in her voice breaks my black, icy heart. “This baby is yours. I wasn’t lying to you when I said you get to be in her life,roza.”
“Oh, yeah? What happens when you divorce me and I have to move out?—”
“You’re not moving out,” I growl, surprised by my own conviction.
Her lips part, her eyes going wide. “It’ll be hard to live together after we’re divorced.”
I haven’t really thought about it. Not in a long while. There was a time when the idea of divorce sounded like music to my ears, but now…
“Then we won’t get divorced.” I close the distance between us and reach for her hands. “I want you to stay here with me, Laila. I want you to be a mother to our daughter. I want you to… to be my wife.”
“But your… your escape plan…” she breathes. “You said you don’t like to feel trapped.”
Truths I haven’t admitted even to myself rise to the surface.
“I don’t, but—” I curl my hand around her jaw, tilting her face to mine. “I haven’t felt trapped with you since the day we met.”
41
LAILA
“You don’t need to do this.” Mom squirms in the salon chair, refusing to look in the mirror. “You should be resting.”
“I promised you a trip to the salon and that’s what you’re gonna get, so help me God.” I snip an uneven strand of hair from the back. “Even if it’s to a salon where the hairdresser is too pregnant to bend over and you leave looking worse than you arrived.”
“That’s impossible,” she mutters.
Mom has never been vain. She’s always been too sturdy for that—too busy raising me and carrying our family on her shoulders to worry about the aesthetics of it all. But my heart still breaks to hear how low her confidence has sunk.
As if cancer hasn’t stolen enough from her.
I bend as far as I can—which, to be clear, is not far—and spin her chair around so I can look her in the eyes. “You’re beautiful, Ma, and if you even think about arguing, I’ll dye your hair blue. I have that kind of power.”
She can’t help but smile. “Blue could be fun. It’s not like it matters, anyway. No one is going to see me.”
I turn her chair back to the mirror. “Ihave to look at you, and blue isn’t your color. And I don’t think Arsen built a salon in his house for you to start experimenting.”
“Arsen did this?”
