“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t like seeing children everywhere. He traveled a lot and decided he preferred countries where children, especially babies, were kept inside, not brought out into public spaces out of fear of something happening. He decided the best way to make sure he didn’t have to see sleeping babies out on the sidewalk was to scare the entire country into thinking their child would be kidnapped.”
“Asshole,” she breathed.
“Yes. And it gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“He went to the authorities who were frantically searching for me and said that I was never lost or missing. Everything was fine because he was my father. Played it off like my mother was losing her mind and didn’t remember he said he’d take me for a walk. Also implied that maybe my mother was distracted by the affair she was having with Lethabo, and that’s why she forgot.”
“Were your mother and Nils legally married?”
“No. None of my parents ever legally married, in any country, but Nils acted like he and my mother were together. I saw video of the news coverage. He was calm while she was sobbing, angry.”
“A distraught mother made to look like an unstable woman.” Nikolett sneered a little. “How predictable and disappointing.”
“Plus, the country wanted it to be true—wanted it to be her panic and stupidity at fault rather than believe strangers wouldsteal their babies. Though now, most parents use baby monitors and have GPS tags on the strollers.”
“Were you okay? How long did he have you?”
“I wasn’t hurt, though my mother said he didn’t feed or change me in the ten hours I was ‘missing.’ I was hungry and exhausted from crying when she got me back. After that, they never left me alone in a room with him.”
“They protected you.”
“Yes.”
They sat there in heavy, but not uncomfortable, silence.
“My father tried to force me to marry when I was twelve,” Nikolett said into that calm silence. “The marriage was just a legal way to sell me to an older man who was probably a pedophile.”
Eric froze, his stomach sinking. He saw her in his mind, a child version of Nikolett, her blue eyes big and scared. The soft version of her only he saw magnified by ten, made even more vulnerable with youth.
“Fuck, Nikki. I’m sorry.”
“It’s why I…I mean, what you did was objectively horrible, but I… It...” Her words tumbled to a stop.
It took him a minute to realize what she was trying to say. “I used the trinity marriage as a legal way to force you to do something. Not exactly the same as what your father did, but close.”
She nodded once.
“Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry.” Eric needed to release her and get the hell away from her because she deserved better than him. Yet he felt paralyzed, trembling with both the need to act and the fear that anything he did would be wrong. “You should just marry the cookie guy, and we’ll find—no, I mean, you’ll pick, I’ll stay out of it—someone else?—”
“I won’t love them. Not the way I love you.” She rolled her head to the side to look at him. “And I don’t want them. I want you. Even when you make me cry.”
Eric twisted and kissed her, soft at first, until she deepened it. And when they finally broke apart, some of the darkness in the room had lifted.
He rested his forehead on hers. “Have I mentioned I’m sorry?”
“Several times.”
“Will you tell me the rest? About your childhood and your marriage… Anything you’re willing to tell me, I want to know.”
She tried to smile but it was shaky. “I might cry. When it’s you, I don’t think I’ll be able to explain it like a report, facts only.”
“It’s okay to cry, Nikki. And I don’t want bare facts like your life is a report. I want to know what happened to you.”
