Page 39 of Marrying the Silver Fox

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

She snatches the tests up off the table.

“Andie, please,” I insist, reaching out to grab her arm. “Don’t go. We need to talk about this⁠—”

“No, we don’t,” she replies, her voice hollow. And with one last look at me, she turns to storm out of the room, leaving me standing there and staring at the spot she was just standing in.

And wondering what the hell I’m going to do to make her see that my care for her isn’t some act I’m putting on.

19

ANDIE

I peer out of my bedroom, peeping around the door to make sure the coast is clear. I know I shouldn’t be sneaking around like this, that there’s every chance I’m going to get caught in the act before I get anywhere, but I just can’t stand to stay locked up in that room any longer, not after everything that has happened.

I feel like I’m going to lose it. The way Nikolai reacted after I told him about the pregnancy is….well, a far cry from what I was hoping for, that much is obvious.

Perhaps I was crazy to think for a second that he would respond like a normal fucking human being. He has shown himself, after all, time and time again, to be the kind of man who’s more obsessed with the way things look than the way things are.

But did he really imagine that I would be as delighted about this as he was? That I wouldn’t have my reservations about the way this has all gone down? It’s driving me crazy, how he seems to dig his heels in whenever I tell him a damn thing, telling me that he has done everything in his power to make sure that I’m provided for when I never needed anyone to provide for me in the first place.

I have to admit, when he brought up Natalie, it stung. Seriously stung. It’s not as though I’m ignorant to the fact that he was going to marry someone else until she ran off at the last moment, but the way he said it, it’s as though we were just dolls he could swap out as he saw fit, not real people in our own right.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to realize that I’m not the same as her, that I’m not willing to barter away my life in exchange for what he can give me. Hell, maybe that’s the reason she made a run for it the way she did, because she knew she couldn’t stand the idea of raising a child, a family with this man.

I creep along the corridor, as light on my feet as I can be to ensure that I don’t make any of the floorboards creak beneath me. I’m sure he’s just looking for a reason to cause me trouble again, as much as I wish he would just ease up on me for a hot second.

He’s not even giving me time to think, when it comes to what I want to do with this pregnancy. I mean, I’m pretty certain I want to keep it, but he didn’t even make it sound like I had a choice in the matter. It’s as though he’s forgotten the significant physical toll this will have on me, not to mention the fact that I didn’t even get to choose the husband who got me pregnant.

No. No, I know that part isn’t true. As much as I am thrown by all of this, it’s not fair to spin this like it’s all his fault, when I’m the one who slept with him. I’m the one who came to him more than once seeking the passion that I knew only he could give me.

And that’s the part of this that is screwing me up the most, the knowledge that, on some level at least, I chose all of this.

Did I want it? Was I hoping that I would fall pregnant on some level? Or was I just searching for a way out of this mess, something I could cling to that would make me feel as though I had some level of control in the way this all unfolded?

I don’t know. But I do know that I’m done playing by every one of his rules.

I need a break. Some fresh air. To go somewhere I know his guards are not going to be able to follow me. Just for a while, just a few minutes, just around the block—something, anything, to clear some of that weight from my mind. As it stands now, I feel like I’m a caged animal, pacing the same concrete of my enclosure until it feels like I’m going to go goddamn crazy.

I’ve been keeping an eye on who’s on the door all day, and I know they switch out around midnight. I’m exhausted from the stress of everything that has been going on, but I have waited up all night to make sure I’ll be able to break out for at least a little while.

I know Nikolai keeps insisting that it’s dangerous for me to leave the house by myself, but God, isn’t it more dangerous for me to stay here with nowhere to go, and feel like I’m losing my mind? Stress isn’t good for the baby, and being stuck in one place has always made me feel antsy.

I think, to some extent, it’s because of how I was raised. I mean, with parents like mine, it’s not as though I spent much time in a single place. They could never afford it, dipping out of rent the moment the landlord came looking, telling Chris and me to pack up our things and taking off before anyone could catch up with us. I guess things like rent came second to getting high for them, always did…

I plant a hand on my belly, wondering, briefly, how my mother felt when she found out she was pregnant with me. I was her oldest, after all. Did she feel that same swell of protection that I’m sensing now? The same urge to look out for her little one, even if it was difficult, even if she struggled? I know she got clean when she discovered she was with child—the only good thing she did for Chris and me was keeping off the junk as long as she was carrying us, even though she relapsed shortly after each birth.

My parents, they were trapped in this cycle, this back-and-forth where getting them both sober at the same time felt damn near impossible. I can still remember, when I was a little girl, that feeling of helplessness when I came home after school to find the house quiet, blinds drawn, the thick, chemical stink of that shit in the air. It was a reminder, whether I wanted to admit it or not, that they had relapsed.

I remember the sinking in the pit of my stomach and how I would turn around to hurry Chris out of there, taking whatever cash we had to get him some ice cream or pizza and praying that our parents would have pulled their shit together by the time I got back.

They never did, of course.

And I had thought, in that stupid, naive way that kids do, that I could keep Chris from being exposed to the same shit I had been. Maybe I did too good a job protecting him, because he was barely seventeen the first time he shot up. When you’re raised in that kind of lifestyle, I guess you go one of two ways, either staying away from it for life or diving into it to find out just what it feels like. To know what kept your parents from being parents. What was so much more important to them than you ever were.

My mom and dad, it felt like, had been a lost cause from the day I was born. But my brother—my brother, God, that hurt worse than anything else. I can still remember when I got the call about him, just after I finished up a job with a particularly wealthy client in the West Side. I was standing there, just outside the hall where the reception was being held, listening to the laughter and joy inside and being hit with the cold, harsh reality of what lay beyond that.

I still can’t wrap my head around it sometimes, the fact that he’s gone. I have to replay that memory in my mind, the voice of the police officer who called me, her harsh tones laced with distaste as though she could barely muster up the ability to care about some junkie who had managed to do himself in. I wanted to scream at her, to tell her that it was my brother she was talking about and that he was the kindest, sweetest, most loving man I had ever met, but I knew she wouldn’t have believed me. Would have probably thought that I was just in denial about the kind of person he really was.