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He returned to his chair, wearing his hoodie with a cheesy grin that meant a fine piece of ass was guaranteed for the night. At the same time, the package in question continued the sessionby firing off more questions, listing things like cake, number of visitors expected, preferred styles and designs, and any vendors in mind.
Arlo, who had been quiet throughout the conversation, working on his laptop behind us, finally voiced out, and his comment was hurled straight at me.
“We can’t do anything without knowing her favorite color first. That would usually help when making further decisions.”
Fucking great.
It turned out my lawyer also had a fair share of knowledge when it came to dealing with women. But what irked me was not the sudden display of expertise but rather the pin-drop silence that followed immediately after his suggestion.
Mysilence. Because I’d lived in the same house with the woman for months and didn’t know her fucking favorite color.
“Lilac.”
All eyes turned to my left, where Anatoly sat, disregarding our curiosity with a casual shrug. “That’s her favorite color.”
A burning feeling, with stings like jealousy, spread through me when I realized he knew something I didn’t. It didn’t make sense, but I felt he had entered a private space, leaving me out of something important.
“And how the fuck do you even know that?”
If my sharp retort fazed him, he didn’t so much as flinch. “Back in Moscow. One day, I heard her tell Anna that lilac was such an underrated color, and it made the world a much more beautiful place.”
Before I could interrogate him further, I remembered the withering lilac bouquet she’d held on our wedding day with tears in her eyes, and it made sense. Anna must have gotten them for her.
Whatever happened now was like a wake-up call. The veil lifted from my eyes, enabling me to see parallels between mydistance from Freya and the rift my absence had caused. I tried to ignore the nagging feeling inside, but I couldn’t, and it ate deep, leaving me feeling disconnected and uncertain about a lot of things.
But most importantly, how to bridge the gap.
Chapter 26 – Freya
I woke up to the smell of clean bedsheets under me, a floral-scented comforter wrapped and tangled between my legs, and a smoothened empty space beside me.
I was not sure what it was, maybe an inkling or feeling orsomething, but I ran my palm down his side of the bed. Not one crease. Almost like he was never there.Excepthe was. When he came in late last night, kicked off his shoes, and went into the bathroom for a cold shower, I knew. When he silently crept into the right side of the bed, shirtless, wearing just briefs, and pulled me to his broad chest, forming into a spoon, I knew.
His grunt-like sleepy groans had drifted into my ears, and I wrestled with the temptation to open my eyes and watch him sleep. A conflict tore through me that I’d successfully subdued. But he always made it easy every morning, rising up and early and disappearing before I got the chance to steal a glimpse of him. I should have been used to it by now, his constant absence and the emptiness that not only resided in the bedroom but every other corner of the house.
Yawning, I stretched my arms above my head, careful not to overdo it. My eyes dropped past the peak of my perky nipples pushing through my thinMOM-TO-BEplain cropped white T-shirt to the smooth, shiny tummy bump peeking through. A lazy smile grew on my lips, and I rubbed the spot just below my belly button.
“Good morning, Mommy’s little angel,” I mumbled under my breath. “Trust you had a good sleep.”
I’d read in an article somewhere online about underrated things expecting mothers could do before childbirth, and having conversations with their babies was one of them. I’d gotten hooked on that tip and had been consistent now forseven months. It was truly the most exhilarating feeling ever, knowing my precious little thing heard me despite being snugly suspended in buoyant fluid and kept entertained by the soft beating of my heart that was so full of love for the tiny creature.
“Mommy loves you, baby. And Daddy, too.” I always almost forgot to add that part because it was still hard to wrap my head around the impossible possibility that my baby’s father could love anyone other than himself. “But she has to get this behind of hers off this bed and get on to attending to duties. You know, like eating breakfast for two, having a warm bath, and maybe finally having time to read Tommy Orange’sWandering Stars. It’s been on that shelf for weeks now because Mommy has been preoccupied with preparing for your arrival.”
Grinning, and still reeling from the head-swirling therapeutic effect I got after every chat session, as I liked to call it, with my baby, I twisted gently and picked up my phone from the nightstand beside the bed frame. The smile on my lips waned, and my brows furrowed.
Three missed calls, all from my mother.
Before wondering why she would call three times so early in the morning, I flitted a glance to the top left of my screen, where the digital clock glared at me, white and bold.
“Nine? What knocked me out?”
Oh, I knew what had. Kicking my feet off the bed, I rubbed the faint ache at the small of my back, reliving last night and rewinding past the period when Egor had returned home, stopping at the exact moment when I decided to spoil myself with a healthy treat. Brussels sprouts, carrots, baby potatoes, green beans, cauliflower. Just name it. I had every freaking vegetable at my fingertips for my disposal. And dispose of them, Iproperlydid.
Back to the matter at hand, I flicked another glance to my mother’s missed calls gleaming red on the white background ofthe call log, and it jogged back memories. The first one was the night on that pavement when Egor surprised me by giving my phone back, granting me access to the people who mattered to me the most, and the second one was when I finally summoned the courage to call my mother. Someone might have asked why I needed to summon courage for such an easy task, to dial the number of the woman I’d wanted to talk to,cryto, from the first day I’d been kidnapped. But it wasn’t such an easy task when that woman did not get an invite to your wedding and found out you were months pregnant with her grandchild.
So, I told her the only thing I could: a lie.
Like Ruby and John, my mom thought I was in Paris for some work-related thing. So, I only delivered a buttered and slightly over-coated version to them about finding a sudden connection with a dashing man in the city of love and that we traveled to Vegas and got married in the heat of things—a ploy to keep them off my backs about not getting an exclusive invite.
