“No,” he says calmly. “It’s how mothers do.”
That stops me.
He glances up at my face and must see the surprise there, because he adds, quieter now, “Mine used to say that when she was pregnant, the only thing she could keep down for three months was cold grapes and dry bread. I know you’re further along, but it’s worth a shot.”
He rinses the grapes in the small bathroom sink, chills the water first, then comes back and sets the bowl in my hands like this is the most natural thing in the world.
“Try one.”
I should refuse on principle. I really should.
Instead, I put one in my mouth because the bowl is cold and my stomach is a violent tyrant and somehow the grape does not immediately make me want to throw myself out the window.
I stare at it in my hand. Then at him.
He notices. “Well?”
“That was annoyingly helpful.”
He looks almost pleased with himself, which is deeply irritating.
He opens the ginger ale, pours it over ice, and hands it to me with one cracker balanced on the rim like some absurdly careful butler.
“Small sips.”
I take the glass. And because I am tired and hormonal and still too easily moved by him when he is like this, I have to look away for a second.
This is dangerous.
Not the attack kind of dangerous.
The other kind.
The kind where a man remembers what his mother used to feed pregnant women and somehow that lands harder than any grand declaration. So of course, my brain does what it has gotten very good at doing with Aleksei.
It ruins it.
He doesn’t really care,I tell myself.
Not like that.
This is management. Guilt. Control. He is making me comfortable because he needs me calm and compliant and under his roof. That’s all. Men like him do not suddenly become gentle because they are moved by your suffering. Men like him do what works.
There. Much better.
I eat another grape.
“Better?” he asks.
“A little.”
He nods once, standing again. “Good. My mother wants breakfast outside. She said fresh air might help.”
“Your mother sounds very pushy.”
“Yes.”
“Runs in the family.”
