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I’d come around the corner and found Geneva eavesdropping from a seat on the bottom step of the staircase, holding back her laughter. “She was happy to have me,” Geneva informed me cruelly. “I was planned. You were just a nasty mistake.”
I can’t help wondering how my parents would react if I called them now and told them I was pregnant. Would they be happy for me? Horrified? Indifferent?
Or would they just betired?
You know damn well what they’d say,Adrian snarls snidely in my head.You’re just pretending like you don’t care so that it’ll hurt less when they prove you right and act like they don’t give a fuck. Which they won’t. Because they don’t.
I hear his phantom laugh in the peripheries of my mind. It makes me want to cry, just as much as it makes me want to laugh. It’s just the familiarity of it. Of him. I miss that more than I miss the man himself. I miss knowing the path my life was going to take.
“June?”
I drag myself out of my emotional whirlpool and focus on Dr. Calloway. She moves around the examination room with a practiced ease, as though she’s been working from it for years.
She gives me a soft, reassuring smile. Despite my best efforts not to, I actually like her. She’s thorough, clearly smart, experienced, and she treats me like a real person, unlike the rest of Kolya’s household staff, who treat me like Medusa—look me in the eye and they’ll turn to stone. Also unlike Kolya himself, who treats me like a black hole—get too near and I’ll destroy him. I’m tempted to tell him the exact opposite is true.
“Sorry.”
“Heavy thoughts?”
I blush sheepishly. “I was actually just imagining my parents’ reaction to my pregnancy. I haven’t told them.”
“I’m sure they’ll be over the moon.”
“Ha. You clearly haven’t met my parents.” I grimace and rush to correct myself. “They weren’t terrible parents or anything. They never, like, beat me, you know. They were just… neglectful. And overbearing.”
“How does one manage to be both at the same time?”
I laugh grimly. “You basically stay as far away as possible until it’s time for trophies to be handed out, at which point you swoop in and berate your kid for not winning more of them. Other girls used to look forward to recitals. I dreaded them.”
“Recitals?”
“Dance recitals,” I explain reluctantly. “I’m—Iusedto be a dancer.” I hate the way I sound when I’m forced to tell people that. It feels like I’m apologizing for something.
Dr. Calloway glances down at the scar on my leg as she puts the pieces together. “I’m sorry. Losing that can’t have been easy.”
“You’re not going to tell me to be grateful that I can walk?” I ask.
I’d heard that from half a dozen different doctors, back when I was still in denial and convinced that if I found the right one, they’d tell me what I wanted to hear. That my injuries were temporary. That I would be able to dance again. That The Accident was not the end of my career.
Dr. Calloway looks irritated. “I’ve never understood that school of thought,” she says. “Tell a man who’s lost his hand that he’s lucky he didn’t lose the whole arm? It never made much sense to me. You have your arm. What you want are your fingers. That’s only human.”
I smile. “Thanks, Dr. Calloway. It’s nice to not feel crazy for a change.”
“Please,” she says, waving a hand in my face. “Call me Sara.”
“Sara it is.” I smile at her. “So, forgive me for asking, but do you live here?”
She laughs pleasantly. “No, no. But Kolya is paying for my accommodation in a lovely little apartment not far from here. I’m supposed to be on call for you twenty-four-seven.”
“I apologize,” I mutter.
“Don’t. He’s paying me exorbitantly for my martyrdom.”
“I’m sure you’re worth every penny.”
Sara chuckles. “And then some. Speaking of which, how’s the ankle?”
I glance down at the purpled, swollen limb. “It’s… alright.”
