"I spoke with Dr. Jackson," he said. "She can come tomorrow afternoon. Completely discreet—she's worked with the family for years."
"The family." I couldn't keep the edge out of my voice. "You mean she's treated gunshot wounds and kept her mouth shut about them."
"Among other things." He didn't flinch from it. "She's also delivered babies, handled complicated pregnancies, dealt with high-risk situations. She's good at what she does, and she knows how to be invisible."
"I'm not sure I want a mob doctor examining me."
"She's not a mob doctor. She's a doctor who understands that some patients need privacy." He squeezed my hand. "I'm not going to force you. If you'd rather find someone else, we'll figure it out. But the more people who know about this, the more risk there is."
He was right. I hated that he was right.
"Fine," I said. "Tomorrow afternoon."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just—" I stopped, shook my head. "I don't know. This is all so strange. A week ago, I was just trying to survive. Now I'm planning prenatal appointments with a doctor who probably knows how to remove bullets."
"She does. Very efficiently." A ghost of a smile. "But she's also delivered three of my cousins' children. All healthy. All without complications."
"You have cousins?"
"Several. In Russia, mostly. We're not close, but they exist." He shifted closer, his thumb tracing circles on my palm. "There's a lot you don't know about me."
"There's a lot you don't know about me either."
"I'm looking forward to learning."
The sincerity in his voice made my chest tight. I looked up at him—this man who'd killed for me, married me, gotten me pregnant in the space of a few weeks. This stranger who was somehow becoming the most familiar person in my world.
"I called Amber earlier," I said.
"How is she?"
"Worried about me. She can tell something's different, even over the phone." I pulled my hand from his, wrapping my arms around myself. "I didn't tell her about the pregnancy. It's too early. Too uncertain. But I wanted to."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because then it would be real. I'd have to explain—" I gestured vaguely at everything around us. "All of this. And I don't know how to explain something I don't understand myself."
He was quiet for a moment. "What don't you understand?"
"How I got here. How I went from a life that made sense to—" I laughed, a broken sound. "To being pregnant with the child of a man I've known for a month. A man whose family killed my father. A man who lives in the exact world I spent twelve years running from."
"Do you regret it?"
I thought about the life I'd had before—the apartment, the practice, the careful loneliness I'd cultivated like a garden. Safe. Controlled. Empty.
"No," I admitted. "That's what scares me. I should regret it. Everything about this situation is insane. But when I'm with you—" I stopped, struggling to find the words. "It doesn't feel insane. It feels like the first real thing I've had in years."
He moved off the arm of the chair and knelt in front of me, his hands on my knees. "Keira."
"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't say something romantic. I can't handle romantic right now."
"I wasn't going to say something romantic."
"What were you going to say?"
"That you're overthinking this." His eyes met mine, steady and sure. "You do that. You analyze everything, try to understand it from every angle, figure out what it means. And sometimes that's useful. But sometimes—" He reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "Sometimes you just have to feel it. Without understanding. Without knowing where it leads."
