Chapter 33 Sima
SIMA
I really don’t want to tell him.
God. This is all Kira’s fault. Her little performance rattled me more than I want to admit. I didn’t want to show it in front of her—didn’t want to give her the satisfaction—but now that I’m alone, her words are all I can think about.
“If you can’t give Petyr what he needs… Well. He’ll just have to look elsewhere.”
She’s keeping score. I have no idea why, but she is. And I just failed the first test: get a baby in me.
Maybe she thought I’d already be pregnant. It would be one explanation for why Petyr would marry me instead of Polina Sidorov, or some other well-bred Bratva heiress.
In Kira’s eyes, I’m a nobody. Worse—I’m working class. I’m sure half the reason she hasn’t slapped me is because she didn’t want to get her manicure dirty.
The other half is, of course, Petyr.
When I hear his car in the driveway, I’m still awake, curled up on the bed with a blanket around me and the laptop open. I should be working on an assignment, but actually, I’m just watching the cursor blink in judgment. Yet another entity who’s disappointed in me.
The front door opens. I can hear it all the way from here. Petyr’s keys hit the dish on the table, then his footsteps start climbing up the stairs.
When he walks in, he looks as exhausted as I feel. His tie is loosened, his jacket is slung over one arm, the bags under his eyes deep. But the moment his gaze lands on me, some of the sharpness fades.
“You’re up late,” he observes.
Guilt chokes me. Guilt for not doing the one thing I agreed to do, guilt for not even being sure if I want to succeed yet, guilt for wanting this man in ways that have nothing to do with what we promised each other.
Tell him, my mind urges. Tell him now.
If you don’t, Kira will.
That makes me snap my laptop shut. “I wanted to talk to you,” I begin.
Petyr’s expression tightens. “Something happened.”
“It’s not what you think,” I hurry to say. “Or—actually, I don’t know what you’re thinking, so it might be that.”
“Sima.” He walks over to me and sits on the edge of the bed. “Tell me.”
I swallow hard. “I’m not pregnant. This month, I mean.”
I brace for… something. Disappointment. Frustration. The dreaded lecture about time and biology. A threat to “look elsewhere,” as Kira so eloquently put it.
Instead, Petyr just nods. “Alright.”
I blink once. Twice. “That’s it?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything else. “Just ‘alright’?”
He shrugs. Honest-to-God shrugs. “It’ll happen. We’ve only just started. Can’t expect results overnight.”
I don’t know why I’m suddenly so thrown. If it’s because I was bracing for an explosion and got a pat on the back instead, or because he’s suddenly talking about results like this is just a bad company quarter.
And yet, the knot in my chest comes loose. “So you’re okay with it?” I murmur. “Me not being pregnant, despite…?”
“Of course. I’m not in a hurry.” A wicked glint appears in his eye. “Means we’ll just have to try again. As many times as necessary.”
I groan into my pillow. “Don’t say that while I’ve got a giant ‘Out of Order’ sign down there.”
“Then I won’t say it.”
I glare at him. “If you keep making that face, you’re as good as saying it!”
He lies down next to me. We’re facing each other now, me with a pout, him with an expression I can’t decipher.
“You’re really not mad?” I whisper. “For real?”
He frowns. “That’s a very eighteenth-century expectation.”
“Anne Boleyn does live rent-free in my mind.”
“Wrong century.”
“Right. I forgot you’re a history buff.”
“And that’s not why she was killed.” He looks almost affronted. “She was the mother of the most famous Queen of England.”
“Okay, we’ve already established you’ve had the finest tutors in the land. No need to rub it in.”
“Thought that was my whole job,” he says, eyes suddenly dark as he tips up my chin. “Rubbing it in.”
Sweet Jesus on a motorbike. “Out. Of. Order!” I repeat.
But Petyr’s answer sinks into me. Slowly, like a drop of honey. It was such a normal, reasonable response that I’m not sure how to take it.
Again, I get that strange, dangerous feeling in my chest. Like this is a real marriage, and we’re a real couple who’s trying.
Which is ridiculous, because we have a deal. I’m lying to him in at least a dozen different ways and we both know this thing between us is temporary.
So why do I feel like it’s growing?
I try to shake it off with a half-smile. “You know, this might all be a curse.”
“Hm?”
“You saw me before the wedding. That’s bad luck. We’re cursed now, and that’s why I’m bleeding and you’re horny and we can’t do anything about it.”
That’s why we can’t have a baby. The words stick in my throat. It would be so hypocritical to throw in the towel after a single month. So many couples go through actual fertility troubles, and here I am, being mopey because I didn’t get it right on the first try.
In my defense, my uterus is doing cartwheels inside me and that bitch Kira made me skip dinner, so I’m hungry and sad.
Petyr doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but it’s a close thing. “I told you where that superstition came from.”
“Tell me again.”
“So the groom wouldn’t run away once he saw the bride for the first time.” His lip curls slightly, mischievous. “Too many witnesses at the altar.”
I find myself laughing. “You’re telling me. I didn’t even have a dress.”
He leans in. His gaze is warm now, warmer than a thousand setting suns. “I would have married you no matter what.” Our lips are so close, they nearly brush with every word. “Dress or no dress. Bad luck be damned.”
Something charged fills the air. A crackling heat. For a second—only a second—I forget all about our deal. How we came to be here in the first place, all the ugliness that started it.
For a second, I let myself pretend this is real.
Then the fog lifts.
“Have you thought about—” I clear my throat and pull away. “—about what you’ll do if we have a girl?”
Petyr’s brow lifts, like it’s a silly question. “Unlikely. I was one of two boys. My father was one of three. My grandfather was one of five. There hasn’t been a girl born in my family in three generations.”
“Well, maybe it’s time for a trend change,” I say, keeping my tone light. Definitely not thinking about that spark between us moments ago, or how close our lips were. “I could be your Anne Boleyn. Birth the next great Gubarev queen. Provided you keep my head attached.”
“I like your head just fine where it is.” He strokes my bottom lip, the subtext clear. I momentarily forget how to breathe. “What about you?”
“Do I like my head where it is? I mean, yeah. Pretty fond of the whole setup, more or less.”
He shoots me a pointed look. “I meant, what about your family?”
Shit. Right. “One brother, one sister,” I recite automatically, trying to disguise how badly my pulse just jumped.
The lie slides out too easily. In reality, there are three brothers and one sister, but that’s not information he needs to know. I’m not going to hand him the pieces to the puzzle myself. That would be crazy. Self-destructive.
Petyr’s expression shifts. It’s subtle, but we’re too close for me not to notice. The warmth in his eyes cools a degree, his jaw working where it had once been relaxed.
“I should get a workout in,” he says abruptly, sitting up.
The change is so fast it leaves me blinking. “Right now?”
“Yeah. Basement gym.” He doesn’t look at me as he stands and grabs a few practical workout clothes. “Don’t wait up.”
He doesn’t look at me as he leaves, either.
I sit there for a moment, stunned, staring at the spot he vacated. My chest aches in a way I’m not ready to identify.
My mind, on the other hand, starts spinning in a very familiar way.
What if he heard something, talked to someone? What if he’s figured it out and this was all a trap?
What if he knows?
But no, that can’t be. He can’t know. If he did, I wouldn’t be here, staring after him. I’d be a bloody splotch on the floorboards. I’d be—
Dead. I’d be dead.
The longer I sit here, the heavier the dread gets. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he just actually wants to work out. Maybe my flabby bits reminded him of what happens when you skip leg day, and he decided that wasn’t gonna be him.
But I can’t shake the feeling that something just put a distance between us.
And I have no idea how to close it.