13. Laila
13
LAILA
“Hey there, princess.”
The soft rumble of his voice doesn’t startle me awake. Not anymore.
It’s been days of Arsen coming in at night and plucking Nina from her crib. Sometimes, she’s awake. Other times, he just rocks her in the corner, holding her while she snoozes in his arms.
I’m so exhausted that I don’t fight him on it. It’s easier to lie here in the dark and pretend to be asleep.
My milk supply dried up shortly after returning home. Grief screwed me on that one. On the upside, Arsen’s covert nighttime feedings mean this is the most sleep I’ve gotten in months.
Which is annoying in its own way. Gratitude towards Arsen is the last thing I want to feel right now.
Nina babbles. I peek one eye open and see her chubby hand reaching for him. He picks her up and cradles her, running a fingertip down her cheek.
“You look more and more like your mother every day, little one.”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he glances towards the bed. I snap my eyes closed.
By the time I open them again, he’s turned away from me. His voice is muffled as he whispers to our daughter. “I’m sorry I sent you away,” he murmurs. “I should have found another way to keep you safe. I was just…”
The rest of his words are lost to the hum of Nina’s sound machine.
It’s a miracle I don’t roll out of bed the way I’m straining towards them, desperate for every syllable.
As if he can sense that, he rotates back, still whispering. “I know I have a lot to make up for. You deserve better than me, but I want to be there for you, malyshka . It’s just sometimes…”
I swallow down a groan as his voice fades again.
The man shipped us away for three months. The least he can do is speak up!
Suddenly, Nina cries out, making me jolt.
“You must be hungry. I’m sorry.” He warms a bottle for her, singing softly under his breath the entire time. “You don’t have to worry anymore,” he assures her as she eats, safe in his arms. “I won’t send you away again. I’ll make this work, my girl. I promise you that.”
Promises. As beautiful as they are, they’re wasted on my five-month-old. She doesn’t know any better, looking up into the reassuring face of her father. She trusts him.
I’m the one who doesn’t buy a word. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t breathed a word of apology to me.
I’m only his wife, after all. Why should he bother with a conversation?
Rage swells inside of me until tears burn in the corners of my eyes. I war with myself— get up, say something; stay down, stay quiet— but the decision isn’t made until Arsen settles Nina in her crib and turns back to me.
Our eyes meet. “Did I wake you?”
“You’re a dick, you know that?”
He arches one brow. “I’ll take her to the nursery next time.”
“I don’t care about you waking me up,” I snap. “You’re a dick because you’ll apologize to a baby, but you won’t apologize to me.”
He sighs. “I’ve tried?—”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve explained. You’ve justified. But you haven’t once told me you’re sorry.”
He drifts closer to my bedside. “Three months ago, I had a different take on our situation.”
“And now, you regret it?”
His gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “Intensely.”
“How lovely that you regret it now that it’s too damn late.”
A sliver of moonlight slashes across his face. He looks exhausted. “I’m sorry for robbing you of your last few months with your mother, Laila. It was wrong of me.”
I lurch out of bed and stride to the far corner of the room. He follows me, his hands in his pockets like he isn’t sure what to do with them.
“Y’know, I thought I’d feel better, but I don’t,” I whisper. “I knew you made a mistake the second you sent us away. You should have, too.”
“We can come back from this, Laila.”
“I don’t want to. Life with you hurts too much, Arsen.” He flinches, and I feel a sadistic sense of satisfaction in that. “The contract I sent you—I’m standing by it. I want you to sign.”
His eyes harden. Anger so palpable it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end washes over his face. “I’m not signing a fucking thing.”
“You promised me a divorce once.”
“I also promised that you would have no involvement in Nina’s life past delivering her,” he spits. “Things change.”
“They certainly do. As in, I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”
The words hurt, but they aren’t entirely untrue. When I look at him, I see the months I lost with my mother. The time Nina lost with her grandmother. I see what he and I could have had, hovering somewhere just out of reach.
It’s painful.
“You’re still deep in mourning,” he reasons. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
He’s wrong about that. I wasn’t thinking clearly the morning of the funeral when I let him hold me in bed.
I wasn’t thinking when I walked off that stage, past my mother’s casket, and fell into his arms.
But I’m thinking clearly now.
“Don’t do that. I wrote that contract before my mother died, so don’t pretend like I don’t know what I want.”
“Maybe you know what you want, but you don’t know what you need,” he fires back. “I have enemies, Laila. They’ll come for you and Nina. You need my protection.”
I want to accuse him of using our daughter, but he’s right. As much as I wish he wasn’t, Nina needs to be protected. I’d die to save her, so staying married to her father is a concession I should be willing to make for her sake.
“Fine,” I agree, the terms and conditions wafting around in my head. “But I want a place of my own. Away from you.”
His lips purse. I wonder if I’ve unleashed the beast that’s been dormant these past few days.
But when he doesn’t say anything, I press on. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, Arsen. And since I can’t have a divorce?—”
“Out of the question.”
“—then I want my own life. I want my own space.” I gesture to the room. “Everything here reminds me of you. And I… I can’t deal with that right now. I can’t be around you anymore. Not without seeing what I lost. Let me have this, at least.”
He’s stiff as a statue. The only indication he’s heard me at all is the color rising up his neck.
“Are you even truly sorry?” I demand. “Do you really regret what you did?”
“Of course?—”
“Then show me. Give me what I want for a change. You want to drown me in security? You want me to travel everywhere in armored jeeps? Fine. I’ll agree to it all. But only if you give me something in return.”
He looks down at the floor with a sigh. “There was a time when all you wanted was to come home. To be close to me.”
“That was before I realized there was nothing left to fight for anymore.”
His chin juts out. “You really believe that?”
“I’m not holding onto something that was never real, Arsen. You never wanted to marry me. I heard you when you said that loyalty meant everything to you, and I saw it for the truth it was. That’s the only reason you think you still want to stay married to me—out of a sense of obligation.”
“You told me not to tell you what you want,” he says softly. “Extend me the same courtesy.”
I can only shake my head sadly. “I know what love is, Arsen—and this isn’t love.”
He’s quiet for a long time. Even now, there are things he could say to fix this, if only he’d man up enough to check his demons at the door. He could save me, save us—but he won’t. The future Arsen says he wants is right there at his fingertips.
He’s just too stubborn to grab it.
Finally, he walks past me towards the door. I don’t think he’s going to say a thing, but he stops at the threshold and turns back to me. “This won’t be forever, roza .”
He shuts the door before I can ask him what the hell that means.