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I doubt he is, either.
I’m prepared to tuck tail and pretend this moment never happened when Arsen asks, “When are you planning on telling her the truth?”
“About the accident?” I frown. “She was there, so she knows?—”
His eyes drop to my stomach and there’s a sharp edge to his voice. “I’m not adopting your baby, Laila. She is my daughter. I won’t pretend otherwise.”
A surprised laugh huffs out of me before I realize he’s serious. “I can’t tell her the truth about—” I gesture wildly between us, looking and failing to find a word to encapsulate this tangled web we’ve woven. “…this.”
“You can. You just don’t want to.”
Leave it to Arsen to boil this complicated mess down into a pithy little soundbite. He may be off donating cancer wings to hospitals, but the full spectrum of human emotions is still a bit beyond his reach. I’m going to have to spell this one out for him.
“You think Ilikelying to my mother?” I hiss. “You think any of this is easy for me? If I tell her part of the truth, then I have to tell her all of it.”
He nods like that’s all perfectly reasonable. “You should. She deserves to hear it.”
“Do you really think it would help my terminally-ill mother to know that I sold my body, not to mention my child? She’d never look at me the same way again. She wouldn’t be able to?—”
“Pause.” He places his hand over mine. I freeze, eyes darting to him warily. “Take a breath.”
But I can’t breathe. My chest is tight—the truth forcing its way out of me whether I want it to or not.
So I drop my face to hide it from him, because dammit, when he looks at me like that, I feel like I’m completely untethered from reality. “I can’t tell her the truth, Arsen. She’ll be ashamed of me.”
“Or maybe not,” he counters. “We’re married now. I made a mostly honest woman out of you.”
He’s trying to make a joke, but nothing about this feels light. It’s heavy. In just a few months, I’ll be an orphananda divorceeanda deadbeat mom, watching my child’s life from the outside.
“This is just temporary.”
Instead of denying it, he shrugs. “Maybe your mother doesn’t need to know that part.”
“So much for not lying to her.”
He stands up. “I understand wanting to protect her. But you’ll never regret being honest with her. Trust me.”
“Are you speaking from experience? It’s hard to imagine you being fully honest with anyone.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m speaking from regret.”
Oh.
“I’m not willing to let anyone think that the baby in your belly is anything but mine,” he informs me, turning to leave. “The choice is yours, but the options are this: You tell her or I will.”
Mom is clutching her pillow like she’s trying to strangle the stuffing right out of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was pretending it was me. “So, let me get this straight: Arsen isn’t adopting the baby?”
I prepared myself to repeat this story more times than I’d like—especially since I didn’t even want to do it once—but I’ve explained it three times now, and my mom is still staring at me with wide eyes and waxy skin.
I can’t tell if it’s because she’s sick or because of my unexpected truth bomb. Probably a little bit of both.
“No. I mean, yes, he is going to raise the baby like his own, but only because—” I grimace, eyes on the ceiling because the truth really doesn’t get easier. “—it’s his baby. He’s going to be the dad because he is the dad. Like, biologically.”
“But it wasn’t a one-night stand?”
My face flames. It should be illegal to have this kind of conversation with your mother. Maybe I should’ve refused and let Arsen tell her the truth. It might’ve been less traumatic for us all.
“Define ‘one-night stand.’” I groan. “Actually, don’t. But it’s complicated. It was only one night, but that was part of the deal.”
