“You’re going to be an incredible mother, Yas,” I tell her.
She turns toward me and rests her forehead against my temple. “So are you, El.”
Neither of us fully believes it about ourselves. I can hear the doubt in her voice. I recognize it on sight, because it’s the same doubt that lives in my own chest.
But I believe it absolutely about her.
And I know she believes it about me.
“Yo!” Zeke’s voice carries through the door. “What in the world kind of girl business requires you both to be locked in there with every faucet running full blast? You trying to flood the place?” When we don’t answer, he sighs. “Fine, keep your secrets. You want more coffee or what? I’m gonna make another pot.”
Yasmin tenses beside me. I smile, kiss her cheek, and then we rise from the tub’s edge together and turn off the faucets. The sudden silence feels almost deafening after all that rushing mayhem.
When we rejoin the crowded kitchen, Bastian appears at my side immediately and touches my hip. “You alright?” he murmurs in my ear.
“Yeah,” I say, squeezing his wrist reassuringly. “Better than ever.”
I let myself imagine it: two babies, two couples, endless Sunday morning breakfasts that don’t involve hiding from anyone. A future where the biggest drama is burnt bacon and whose turn it is to change diapers.
It’s a wild, reckless, dangerous hope.
I hold onto it anyway.
50
BASTIAN
walk-through /wôk THro?o/: noun
1: pre-service inspection of the dining room and stations.
2: joggers, sprinklers, her hand in yours—morning ritual, until you notice someone else running the same route behind you.
The next morning, I wake before dawn. I feel like I got shot in the stomach.
Probably because I got shot in the fucking stomach.
But the pain isn’t such a big deal when I have all the other things I need. My little brother is snoring one room over, my best friend and his woman are asleep down the hall, my future mother-in-law is safely ensconced on an air mattress in the den.
And, most crucially of all, Eliana is curled against my side, with our baby at ease in her womb.
I could lie here forever and watch this. I want to memorize every fucking part of her, with my eyes, my lips, my fingers, all of it. I’ve never seen something that made me so violent andso peaceful all at the same time. Violent because the thought of anyone harming so much as a single strand of her hair makes me see red. Peaceful because why would I ever leave this room?
She breathes in, slow and soft. Breathes out, slower and softer. It’s a miracle that happens over and over again.
She’sbreathing. Besideme.
Wonders never fucking cease.
I watch her so intently that it unsettles me after a while. It can’t be safe to love something this much. It’s like staring at my heart as it beats outside my body, all while wondering who the fuck said it was okay to remove it from my chest.
When the moon finally sets behind the trees and sun starts to steal over the sky, I decide to slip out and let her rest, just in case my churning thoughts are audible.
I ease out of bed without waking her, pull on jeans and a hoodie, and go to the kitchen. As the coffee pot stirs to life, I stand at the window scanning the street out of habit. Nothing moves except a cat slinking between parked cars.
I tell myself we’re safe here. Aleksei doesn’t know where we are. But I’ve been telling myself versions of that lie for weeks now, and it’s never once been true. It’s hard to believe it’s suddenly true now.
Eventually, cold hands come around my torso from behind, ten frigid little fingertips ducking into the waistband of my jeans.
