Since the moment the doctor said the wordpregnant, I’ve been drifting closer to him, drawn to the way he stands between me and everything that could hurt me. Even the dangers I can’t see.
It confuses me. I don’t trust it, and yet, every time he steadies me with a hand on my back, I don’t want him to let go.
My body betrays me in other ways too. The smallest things overwhelm me—sounds, smells, the relentless hum of anxiety. Some days my skin feels tight and foreign. Food thatused to comfort me makes me nauseous. There’s a soreness deep in my chest, a heaviness in my limbs. My body aches in places I never noticed before, and when the cramps come, they bring fear sharp enough to make me lightheaded.
Simon notices. Of course he does. Nothing gets past him—not the way I hold my stomach, not the winces I try to hide when I shift positions, not the tears I bite back after I spill tea across the counter.
At first, his constant attention irritates me. It feels like surveillance, a new kind of cage. I snap at him, bristling when he asks if I need anything, withdrawing when he tries to help. I don’t want to be weak in front of him. I don’t want him to see me unravel.
The days keep coming, and he doesn’t stop.
If anything, he grows quieter, gentler. He watches me with a kind of intensity that should frighten me, but all I see now is the fear in his own eyes—fear that he might lose me.
I see it in the way his jaw tenses when I wince. The way his hands hesitate before touching me, as if worried he might break something fragile. The realization softens something deep inside my chest. I don’t want it to, but it does.
We talk more, now that there’s nothing left to hide. He sits beside me in the evenings, close but not crowding, and asks about how I feel, what I need.
He listens—not just hearing, but listening, as if my answers matter more than anything happening in his kingdom of shadows outside our door.
One night, when my stomach cramps are worse than usual, I can’t hold it together. I cry, silent and ashamed, curled up on the couch. Simon kneels beside me, awkward at first, but persistent.
He asks what hurts, how bad it is, if I want a doctor. His voice is tight. I see panic flicker across his expression, a crack in his perfect composure. He doesn’t know what to do with pain he can’t control, and that terrifies him more than a gun in his face.
“I’m fine,” I lie, brushing away tears. “Just… hormones.”
He doesn’t believe me, but he lets me have the lie. Instead, he brings me water, wraps me in a blanket, and sits nearby: silent, a steady presence, refusing to leave.
It’s in these small moments that I see two versions of him. There’s the Simon I first met—the one who terrified me, who could break a man’s neck without blinking, whose voice could freeze a room.
Then there’s the man who sits quietly at my side, who listens to my fears about miscarriage, about my own body, about a future I didn’t choose. Sometimes he reaches for my hand and just holds it, thumb stroking the top of my hand grounding me in ways I don’t understand.
The contrast unsettles me. I don’t know which version I’m falling toward—the danger or the comfort, the monster or the man who looks at me like I’m his whole world. I don’t know if I can trust either side. Sometimes I think there isn’t a line between them at all. He is both, always, and the only difference is how he looks at me.
Still, I find myself reaching for him in the dark.
Some mornings, after nightmares chase me awake, I slip into his bed, curling against his warmth before I can talk myself out of it. He never says a word, just lets me tuck myself into the curve of his arm, his breath steady and slow. He rubs my back until the tremors fade, his hand a heavy reassurance.
It terrifies me—how much I want this, how easily I give in. My mind screams at me to keep my distance, to remember who he is, what he’s done.
My heart betrays me with every beat, every softening, every moment I look at him and see not a monster, but the only person who makes me feel safe in this new, impossible world.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s love, or just survival.
Maybe it’s both. Maybe it has to be.
The days begin to blur into a rhythm that feels dangerously close to domestic. My body still aches, nerves raw and too aware of every change—the morning nausea, the subtle swelling beneath my ribs, the heavy tiredness that makes my limbs feel clumsy.
Now there are patterns: the cup of tea waiting on the nightstand, the careful, wordless check-ins, the extra blankets folded at the foot of the bed as the nights turn colder.
Yet nothing about this life is safe. I remind myself every time the apartment falls quiet and I hear Simon’s voice from the next room—cold, sharp, utterly unlike the man who holds me through a nightmare.
I hear it when he’s on the phone, talking in Russian, the edge in his tone slicing through the walls.
Once, I come into the kitchen and catch him with one of his lieutenants. There’s blood on the man’s lip, fear in his eyes, and Simon stands over him, perfectly still, voice low and lethal.
I freeze at the door, one hand pressed flat to my stomach, heart pounding so hard it hurts. Simon doesn’t glance my way, but I feel his awareness brush over me. It’s a subtle shift, a softening in his shoulders that only I would notice.
“Get it cleaned up,” he says quietly, and the other man vanishes without another word.
