30. Laila
30
LAILA
I could run.
If I’m quick, I could make it back to the couch and pretend to be asleep before Arsen can walk into the living room.
The problem is that I’m not quick. Even before the accident, I was the slowest kid in gym class. There’s a reason people like me call stretching and deep breathing “exercise.”
The other problem is, I’m pissed .
I round the corner with a nasty limp. “I had no idea you and my mom were such good friends.”
“I like your mother,” he says simply.
My chest swells like a balloon. I feel lighter somehow, as if it matters what Arsen thinks of my mother. Which it doesn’t. At all. Why should I care whether my husband likes the most important woman in my life?
“You asked her about the accident. That’s sneaky, even for you.”
“No sneakier than you speaking to Polina about my mother.”
Dammit. I hate when actions have consequences. I try to find the words to apologize for digging around in his past, but that would be another lie. I’m not sorry.
I doubt he is, either.
I’m prepared to tuck tail and pretend this moment never happened when Arsen asks, “When are you planning on telling her the truth?”
“About the accident?” I frown. “She was there, so she knows?—”
His eyes drop to my stomach and there’s a sharp edge to his voice. “I’m not adopting your baby, Laila. She is my daughter. I won’t pretend otherwise.”
A surprised laugh huffs out of me before I realize he’s serious. “I can’t tell her the truth about—” I gesture wildly between us, looking and failing to find a word to encapsulate this tangled web we’ve woven. “… this.”
“You can. You just don’t want to.”
Leave it to Arsen to boil this complicated mess down into a pithy little soundbite. He may be off donating cancer wings to hospitals, but the full spectrum of human emotions is still a bit beyond his reach. I’m going to have to spell this one out for him.
“You think I like lying to my mother?” I hiss. “You think any of this is easy for me? If I tell her part of the truth, then I have to tell her all of it.”
He nods like that’s all perfectly reasonable. “You should. She deserves to hear it.”
“Do you really think it would help my terminally-ill mother to know that I sold my body, not to mention my child? She’d never look at me the same way again. She wouldn’t be able to?—”
“Pause.” He places his hand over mine. I freeze, eyes darting to him warily. “Take a breath.”
But I can’t breathe. My chest is tight—the truth forcing its way out of me whether I want it to or not.
So I drop my face to hide it from him, because dammit, when he looks at me like that, I feel like I’m completely untethered from reality. “I can’t tell her the truth, Arsen. She’ll be ashamed of me.”
“Or maybe not,” he counters. “We’re married now. I made a mostly honest woman out of you.”
He’s trying to make a joke, but nothing about this feels light. It’s heavy. In just a few months, I’ll be an orphan and a divorcee and a deadbeat mom, watching my child’s life from the outside.
“This is just temporary.”
Instead of denying it, he shrugs. “Maybe your mother doesn’t need to know that part.”
“So much for not lying to her.”
He stands up. “I understand wanting to protect her. But you’ll never regret being honest with her. Trust me.”
“Are you speaking from experience? It’s hard to imagine you being fully honest with anyone.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m speaking from regret.”
Oh.
“I’m not willing to let anyone think that the baby in your belly is anything but mine,” he informs me, turning to leave. “The choice is yours, but the options are this: You tell her or I will.”
Mom is clutching her pillow like she’s trying to strangle the stuffing right out of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was pretending it was me. “So, let me get this straight: Arsen isn’t adopting the baby?”
I prepared myself to repeat this story more times than I’d like—especially since I didn’t even want to do it once—but I’ve explained it three times now, and my mom is still staring at me with wide eyes and waxy skin.
I can’t tell if it’s because she’s sick or because of my unexpected truth bomb. Probably a little bit of both.
“No. I mean, yes, he is going to raise the baby like his own, but only because—” I grimace, eyes on the ceiling because the truth really doesn’t get easier. “—it’s his baby. He’s going to be the dad because he is the dad. Like, biologically.”
“But it wasn’t a one-night stand?”
My face flames. It should be illegal to have this kind of conversation with your mother. Maybe I should’ve refused and let Arsen tell her the truth. It might’ve been less traumatic for us all.
“Define ‘one-night stand.’” I groan. “Actually, don’t. But it’s complicated. It was only one night, but that was part of the deal.”
“The contract.”
My stomach flips and I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes, I signed a contract beforehand. It was a business transaction. I made a deal to get pregnant with a man I barely knew, and now, I’m telling you about it. And, as long as we’re being fully transparent, I want the Earth to swallow me whole right this very second.”
She clutches my hand in both of hers. “You haven’t looked me in the eye once since you walked in here, sweetness.”
I crack one eye open. “Did you hear the ‘I want the Earth to swallow me whole’ bit? I’m kind of—okay, a lot embarrassed.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “You’re my daughter. Nothing you do could embarrass me.”
A memory snaps into motion. My first day back at school after the accident. Mom offered to hang back while I walked on ahead of her. “ This is the first time your friends will see me with the scar. I don’t want to embarrass you. ”
“ You’re my mom! Nothing you do could embarrass me. ” I’d grabbed her hand and pulled her down the sidewalk with me, ignoring the stares and whispers.
“You remember that?” I whisper, tears pooling in my eyes.
“Of course I do.” She squeezes my fingers. “Do you remember that little boy with the curly hair?—”
“The one who started crying.” I roll my eyes. Even now, it makes my blood boil. “I’ve never wanted to kick a four-year-old so badly.”
“None of it bothered me, honey. You know why? Because none of it bothered you. You accepted my scars, and I accepted yours.” She stretches up and places a kiss on my forehead. “Nothing has changed.”
I want to just accept her love and move on, but shame still swirls deep inside of me.
“This is a little bit more than the scars from some accident outside of my control, though,” I say softly. “I made this choice. I chose to accept Arsen’s offer and have his baby… even though I knew he was married.”
“To a woman he didn’t love.”
I do a double-take. “He told you that?”
“Not in so many words, but I’m more perceptive than I look. It’s how I knew something was up with you, even though you wouldn’t talk to me.” She winks slyly.
More guilt washes through me, hot and unrelenting. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have avoided you. But I didn’t want to tell you the truth, and I was tired of lying. I was a coward.”
“You’re many things, Laila Barnes, but a coward is not one of them.” She sounds offended on my behalf. “You’re stubborn, you fixate on silly things, your singing voice can make birds fall out of the sky dead?—”
“Gee, Ma, don’t go too overboard with the praise there?—”
“But you’re kind , Laila Barnes,” she continues. “You’re smart and witty. Most of all, you’re as brave as they come. Which is how I knew something was up. It’s how I knew something was going on between the two of you.”
I pull my hand back. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Arsen, Laila.” She sighs, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. “You love him.”
I leap to my feet with a wild laugh. “No. Nope. That’s not what— I mean, yes, I came here to tell you about the baby’s dad, but this is not about him and me. Me and him. Us . Because there isn’t an ‘us.’ It’s just me, right here, and then, a respectable distance away, him.”
Her smile widens, willfully misunderstanding every word out of my mouth. “I know your father and I didn’t give you the best example. I’m sure we made love look scary. But opening yourself up to the possibility of love is worth it.”
I slash both arms through the air. “Who’s talking about love? Not me. This has nothing to do with love.”
“You get this look in your eye when you talk about him, Laila.”
“Platonic business partnership has a sparkle of its own, they say.”
“And after the way he spoke about you—” She shakes her head with a happy sigh. “—it’s obvious to me that the feeling is mutual.”
I pace around the room, laughing like I’m half-deranged. I think I am. Or I’m well on my way to becoming so.
Here I thought my mom would be horrified and ashamed of me, but instead, she’s trying to ship me and my baby daddy.
Telling her we are, in fact, technically married is absolutely off the table. She’d get all kinds of twisted, happily-ever-after ideas.
“This isn’t why I came here,” I say, finally stopping long enough to face her. “I came to tell you the truth about the baby’s father, but nothing else has changed. Arsen and I are not together.”
My throat tightens for no good reason at all. It’s a fact: Arsen and I are not together. There’s no cause to feel any type of way about that. But there are a million very good reasons not to cry about it in front of my tired, delusional mother.
I clench my jaw, willing the tears back. After putting up a good fight, they reluctantly obey.
Mom studies me for a few quiet moments. I know she can see right through me. She’s the one person who always can. Always has. Always will. At least until?—
Welp, the tears are back.
“You don’t have to explain everything to me, honey,” she says finally. “I trust that you know what you’re doing.”
I bite back another barking laugh. That’s news to me. Because I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.
“But I do have one question, and I’d like you to answer as honestly as you can.”
I sigh and kneel down in front of her to take her hand. “Go ahead.”
She dips her chin, meeting my eyes. “How do you feel about the baby?”
My free hand curls around my stomach instantly. Mom smiles, understanding the gesture better than anything else I could have said.
“Mom…” I whisper, my voice shaky.
“You want to be her mother, don’t you?”
I nod, mostly because it’s the only answer I can get out without sobbing.
I could tell her about Arsen’s promise to me. This is the perfect opening. Guess what? I get to be her mom after all. I just had to marry her father to do it.
But I can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Because I’m still terrified he’ll take it back.