24. Nina
— ? —
Nina
Birthing class is an exercise in torture.
The room is bright and clinical, full of couples sitting on mats, following instructions from an instructor with an impossibly cheerful voice.
We’re supposed to be practicing breathing techniques and partner support positions, which means Adrian’s hands are on my belly, my back against his chest, and we’re breathing in rhythm because someone told us to.
In public.
With witnesses.
And these particular witnesses know exactly who we are.
I caught it when we walked in - the ripple, the elbow nudges, the woman by the water cooler whispering to her husband behind her hand.
That’s them. The Morettis. From the gala.
The story has been rewritten since that night: no longer the billionaire and the cheating wife, now the devoted husband and the woman who was secretly saving a dying man.
Newport loves us this month. I liked it better when they were wrong about me, honestly. At least then the staring felt earned.
“That’s it,” the instructor says, moving between couples. “Partner, support the lower back. Mom, breathe into the pressure.”
Adrian’s palm presses against the small of my back, and my whole body goes tight.
This is clinical. Sanctioned. We’re surrounded by other couples, supervised by a professional. There is absolutely no reason for my heart to be pounding like this.
His thumb shifts. Just slightly. Tracing the divot at the base of my spine through my shirt.
He knows exactly what that does to me.
“You’re tense,” he murmurs.
“I’m fine.”
“Your breathing changed.”
“I’m. Fine.”
His chest presses against my back as we follow the instructor’s rhythm - inhale, exhale, inhale - and I become acutely aware that we’re essentially spooning in public.
His thighs bracket mine. His breath is warm on my neck.
His hand on my belly is the only barrier between this and something that would definitely get us kicked out of class.
“Okay, partners - move into position two.”
Position two involves me between his legs, facing away, his hands on my shoulders while I lean back into him.
I’m going to kill whoever designed this freaking curriculum.
“Comfortable?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice - the slightest edge of awareness - that tells me he knows exactly how not-comfortable I am.
“Perfectly,” I lie.
His hands tighten on my shoulders. Just for a second. And I press my knees together and stare very hard at the instructor and pretend I’m not thinking about all the other positions we’ve been in.
“Position three,” the instructor announces. “Slow dancing. Mom’s arms around partner’s neck, partner’s hands at the hips. Sway. This one’s wonderful for early labor - gravity and movement and connection, all at once.”
You have got to be kidding me.
Adrian rises and offers me his hand with a courtly little flourish that would earn him a slap if we weren’t in public.
I take it. His hands settle at my hips. My arms go around his neck.
Around us, a dozen couples begin to sway to no music, and it should be ridiculous - it is ridiculous - except that the last time we stood like this was a ballroom under Gilded Age chandeliers, my gown soaked in champagne, all of Newport watching him choose me.
His eyes say he’s remembering it too.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“I’m swaying. Medically.”
“You’re-” His hands adjust on my hips, a fractional correction that isn’t a correction at all, and my breath does something audible. “Medically.”
“Gravity and movement and connection,” he quotes, straight-faced, and sways me in a slow half-turn. “I’m very committed to the curriculum.”
The instructor appears beside us. She’s maybe fifty, with kind eyes and the calm energy of someone who has watched hundreds of couples panic through this exact moment.
“How are we doing here?”
“Great,” Adrian says smoothly.
“You two are naturals.” She beams at us. “Clearly very connected.”
Neither of us corrects her.
Neither of us looks at the other.
Across the room, the water-cooler woman is whispering to her husband again, both of them beaming at us like we’re a movie they’re enjoying.
I want to tell her the truth - we’re separated, it’s complicated, I make him knock - but the truth has too many chapters, and anyway, his hands are still on my hips, and I’ve stopped being sure which version of the story is the lie.
“Okay, everyone.” The instructor claps her hands. “Time for our final exercise. Partners, I want you to make eye contact and hold it for sixty seconds. No talking. Just presence.”
Adrian turns me to face him.
For sixty seconds, we look at each other.
And everything else falls away. The mats, the couples, the whisperers, the fluorescent lights.
Sixty seconds is nothing - it’s a commercial break, an elevator ride - and sixty seconds is endless when the person holding your eyes has known you for twelve years and broken your heart once and is rebuilding it in front of witnesses, one breathing exercise at a time.
Somewhere around second forty, his expression stops performing composure.
Somewhere around second fifty, so does mine.
The instructor calls time. Neither of us moves right away.
***
“Well,” he says afterward, in the parking lot. “That was...”
“Excruciating?”
“I was going to say intimate.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He laughs - a real laugh, the kind I’ve missed - and something in my chest loosens. The evening has gone soft and blue around us, the parking lot lights just coming on, and neither of us is walking to our cars with any particular urgency.
“The instructor thinks we’re naturals,” I say. “Clearly very connected.”
“Aren’t we?”
The question hangs in the cool air between us.
I look at him - this man who knows my body better than anyone, who has seen me at my worst and my best, who broke my trust and is slowly rebuilding it - and he stands there and lets me look, hands in his pockets, making no move to close the distance, because the distance is mine to close now and he knows it.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But I’m starting to think we might be.”
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t push. Just opens my car door and waits for me to climb in, and when I’m settled he leans down, one hand on the roof.
“Same time next week?” he asks.
“Same time next week.”
“I’ll bring the medical swaying.”
“Get away from my car, Adrian.”
He grins and steps back. I drive away, and I don’t look back.
But I’m smiling the whole way home.
***
The phone rings as I pull into my driveway.
Cole. I answer on the first ring, still smiling. “If you’re calling to ask how medically Adrian swayed-”
“They saw something on yesterday’s scan.”
The smile dies somewhere between my mouth and the steering wheel.
“What kind of something?”
“A shadow. Probably scar tissue. Morrison says probably three different ways, which is how I know she means it.” A pause, and underneath the lightness I can hear the nineteen-year-old on the bathroom floor. “They want to rescan Friday. Nina, I know I joke. I don’t feel like joking about this one.”
“Then don’t. Friday. I’ll be there.”
“You have a baby to grow.”
“I’ll be there, Cole.”
We hang up, and I sit in my driveway for a long time with my hand on my belly and the porch light glowing on the house where I was smiling thirty seconds ago.
Then I do the thing I couldn’t have done three months ago.
I call Adrian.
He answers on the second ring, and I don’t soften it, don’t manage it, don’t carry it alone for a single second longer than I have to.
“I need you,” I say.
“Tell me where.”