Please stay?
Stay?
Staying put was something I’d wanted to avoid. During my conditioning and brainwashing, I dreamed of nothing but escaping. Of being able to decide where I wanted to go. To have the freedom to move and do what I wanted.
Yet, here was Alexsei, asking me to do the opposite. To stay. To allow myself to be trapped in place again.
That’s not fair.
This wasn’t fairtohim.
He’s not Erik. He’s not Yusef.I had to force my thoughts to shift.
None of the Dubinin men and no one in this family were acting with the controlling nature that my brother and his friend had. It was taking me a long time to believe it, but I had. It wasn’t fair of me to assume that Alexsei could be the same.
Ihadbeen staying here already.
I had stayed with him in the cabin.
Because I extended that much trust in him and his family, I had stayed.
It was time for me to extend that trust again.
“Please stay and listen to me. Can you hear me out?”
He wasn’t telling me to listen. He was asking me. He wasn’t grabbing me to hold me. He was merely touching my hand. Gently.
That stood out the clearest among the fog of fear and confusion with the news of my pregnancy. He was doing the courtesy of asking me instead of ordering me. It was onmeto compromise with him, to give him a chance to explain.
I had come here to his room not to be talked out of leaving, but to simply tell him that he would be a father. To inform him. To basically explain that we had created a new life.
Since the second I took the test this evening and saw the positive lines, I warred with the instinct to assume he’d done this on purpose. Deep down in my heart, I knew he hadn’t bred me like I was taught to expect. At that cabin, he didn’t control me. He only helped me grow and heal.
With a leap of faith, with the kernel of love that still simmered in my heart for him, I wanted to believe he wouldn’t control this situation either.
I gave him a nod, jerkily and slightly, but he saw it.
“I couldn’t be happier with this news, Kalina. I truly couldn’t.”
Oh, Alexsei.
I heard every note of pure joy in his words. Hewashappy. I already knew how much he loved Misha.
“And I vow, with all that I am, to protect you and this child. In whatever shape and form you want your future to look like, I will never stop keeping you safe.”
His promise was a loaded one, and a touchy subject at the moment after what happened at the cabin. But I would listen to him. I would give this a chance.
“I am okay with the fact that you might never forgive me for failing you before. When?—”
“Stop.” I shook my head, refusing to go down this path of ignorance and misplaced blame. I had to look forward, not backward. “You didn’t fail me. I’m alive. Misha is alive.”
“But Ialmostfailed you, and I will never forgive myself for that.”
In the starkest punch of the truth, it all made sense. What Luka told me. What Gabriella, Raisa, and Sadie tried to explain.
Those Rivera men had only come to that cabin because of what others had done. Not because of Alexsei’s decision to bring me and Misha there.
Softening toward him, I sighed and took another step. Then another. Slowly, as if every second that passed was a heavy mark of surrender, I leaned against him.
