Page 143 of Taken By My Grumpy Pakhan

I stood there with an apple in my hand, caught off guard by how plainly he’d said it.

“Kazimir, we talked about this.”

“I know what we talked about,” he said, marching toward me. “And this might sound a bit dishonest, but I only agreed to most of it because I knew it would make you comfortable. Anything to make you relax enough while I worked my way back to fix things. But this?” His hand pointed in the direction we had come. “It feels like an exile. Locking me out from you and only being present because of the baby.”

“Kazimir—”

“Don’t get me wrong.” I hadn’t noticed him move until he was a few steps from me. “I do want the baby. There’s nothing I want more than to raise one with you, but maybe I have been a bit too focused on using the baby as a bridge that I might have miscommunicated my interest.” He paused, a silence pregnant with the weight of unsaid words. “I want you, Genevieve. Hell, I’m in love with you, and I would still be here even if there was no baby.”

The weight of his words hit me like a moving truck, causing me to stagger a little. “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s true.”

“You don’t get to make choices, Kazimir.” My voice came out louder than I intended, but I didn’t care. “You don’t get to make these long speeches telling me how much you love me and want a family like it’s my fault we’re resorting to legal documents and walking on eggshells around each other.”

“Baby—”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “You could’ve said this earlier. I was waiting for you, I was holding on to the dream that you would one day tell me what we had was real, but you only wove mixed signals and nothing more.”

“It was complicated.”

“It was not. You were simply a coward.” I felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the way his features tightened at my words. “A coward and a liar, Kazimir, that’s what you are. Not someone whose hands were tied by forces he could not control. So you don’t get to stand here and make your demands when it was your actions that caused this.”

My chest heaved, my breaths coming out in forced pants, but I surprisingly felt lighter.

Kazimir and I had been spending a lot of time together in the past month, but that felt a bit performative—like applying plaster on the surface while the wound festered beneath.

This, calling him what he was to his face, felt a bit too good.

Kazimir waited until my breathing had evened out to speak, his voice surprisingly calm and soft for the outburst that just happened.

“You’re right. I was a coward.”

My eyes snapped to him with lightning speed. Kazimir Ivanovich called himself a coward?

“I knew what I should’ve done. I knew when my feelings changed. I could go on and on about how I wasn’t sure you’d feel the same way, and how I felt my world would be too harsh for you to handle, or how I felt breaking off the engagement with Svetlana might trigger a chain reaction which might inadvertently put you in harm's way, and how I would never forgive myself if that happened. Maybe I’d throw in a little note on how some twisted part of me felt I was protecting you from the darkness in my life because you were the only part of me untainted by it all and I wanted to keep it that way. But it would all still boil down to one single detail.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I was a coward, and my actions or lack thereof put you in harm's way.”

Something tightened in my chest as I watched him speak, and I fought the urge to lift my hand and soothe it.

“I should’ve been honest with you, given you a chance to decide on your own. But I was a selfish bastard and I wasn’t sure if you’d stay if you saw the whole of me. But now I know better, and I know it should’ve been me and you navigating things and not me making decisions.” He paused again, his eyes lifting to mine, and in them, I found a look I’d never seen before.

Or maybe I had caught a glimpse of it in the days he came over but refused to make meaning out of it. But now he was in front of me, staring at me with eyes that bled a level of honesty and devotion I wasn’t sure I was capable of handling.

“Please…” The subtle break in his voice cracked something I’d been delicately guarding inside me, shaking the foundations I’d constructed around my heart.

“You lied to me.” I hated how weak my voice sounded.

“I know.”

“You deceived me.”

“I know, baby.”

I pulled back my bottom lip to keep it from trembling. “You made me look like a fool.”

“I am sorry. I’ll never be able to communicate just how sorry I am.”

The last bit of defense I’d been holding onto finally broke, and I let go of the well that had formed in my eyes. “I was so scared, Kazimir. I thought she was going to… the baby, I thought she was going to harm it, and for days, I couldn’t step out of my… I couldn’t…” The rest of the sob caught in my throat, but strong arms wrapped around me, catching me before I completely fell apart.