Chapter 17
Elise
The first Monday after Roman slept in my bed, he knocked twice at nine and waited outside with updated hospital paperwork. Forty-eight hours earlier, he had left with everything he had brought.
“The childcare class moved from Thursday to Tuesday,” he said. “I marked the change, but I haven’t confirmed for you.”
He offered paperwork and nothing from Saturday night.
“I can do Tuesday.”
“I’ll confirm both of us.”
“All right.”
His eyes moved over my face once, warm and careful. “How are you feeling?”
“Like someone replaced my pelvis with unreliable hardware.”
“That sounds structurally concerning.”
“You’re not allowed to inspect it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I had gathered.”
I wanted to touch him. Wanting had become easier. Assuming had not.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“No.”
He left without asking to come in.
---
Over the next two weeks, Roman did not treat sex as a change in address.
He came to the appointments I invited him to and waited for the nurse to ask how we were related before saying, “I’m the baby’s father.”
At thirty weeks, when the technician referred to us as a married couple, his gaze came to me before he answered.
“We’re married,” I said. “We’re also living separately.”
The technician’s smile tightened with the panic of someone who had accidentally stepped into a room without knowing its floor plan.
Roman spared her by asking about the measurement on the screen.
He let my answer stand.
I invited him to dinner the following Friday. He chose a small Thai place near the marina, and when my back started aching halfway through the meal, he asked whether I wanted to leave instead of telling me I should.
The next week, I asked him to walk the boardwalk with me at sunset. We stopped three times because our daughter had decided my ribs were a reasonable place to practice violence.
When my shoelace came loose and I could no longer reach it, Roman crouched. I lifted my foot slightly.
His fingers were warm against my skin. He tied the lace, stood, and fell into step beside me.
The third invitation was to my bed.
We had eaten takeout at the cottage because sitting upright in another restaurant chair had become an act of endurance. At nine, Roman cleared the table and put on his coat without turning dinner into a reason to stay.
“Roman.”
He looked back.
“Stay.”
The word changed his face before he controlled it. His hand dropped from the lock.
“Tonight,” I said.
I took the coat from his shoulders, crossed the room, and pulled his hand to my hip. “Lead.”
Desire darkened his eyes.
For one second he did not move.
Then his hand closed around my hip.
“Come here.”
The command sent heat straight through me.
I went.
Roman kissed me without the careful first pass he had used in the parking lot. His mouth took mine warm and deep, one hand firm at my hip and the other sliding into my hair. He angled around my stomach by instinct now. Nothing in the adjustment softened the hunger in him.
“That,” I said against his lips.
“I know.”
The answer sounded like my husband remembering me.
He kissed down the line of my jaw and bit lightly beneath my ear. My knees weakened. His arm came around my back before I tipped off balance, steady and firm.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to stop being polite with you,” he said.
My fingers tightened in his hair. “Show me.”
He did.
He drew my sweater over my head and dropped it on the floor. Then his mouth was on mine again, his palms moving over my back, my sides, the fuller weight of my breasts. When I leaned into his hand, he stayed. When I shifted away from pressure near my ribs, he changed it.
Roman backed toward the hallway with one hand at my waist.
“Bedroom,” he said.
I followed.
At the edge of the bed, he pulled his sweater over his head. The breadth of his shoulders and the dark trail disappearing beneath his belt made his body feel both known and newly dangerous.
He saw where I was looking.
“Keep looking.”
Heat climbed my throat. I opened his belt and touched him through the fabric. His breath broke.
He kissed me until my hand lost its rhythm, then lowered me onto the pillows and removed the rest of my clothes.
His mouth moved over my thigh.
I reached for him, but he caught my hand and pressed it into the mattress beside my hip.
“Let me.”
The words were quiet. The control inside them was not.
I let him.
He touched me with the confidence of seven years and the attention of a man responding to the body beneath his hands now. His fingers found the pressure I liked, and his thumb set a relentless rhythm while his other hand held my thigh open.
“Roman.”
He did not slow down.
Pleasure tightened until every muscle in my body seemed attached to the same bright point. I caught his shoulder. He looked up once, and the sight pushed me over hard.
Roman stayed with me through every aftershock. When he rose over me, I pulled his mouth to mine.
“More,” I said.
His control slipped visibly.
He reached for the bedside drawer. The packet tore between his fingers. I watched him roll the condom on, then held out my hand.
Roman sat on the edge of the bed and drew me onto his lap, my knees on either side of him, my stomach resting safely between us. His hands settled on my hips.
“Hold on to me.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
He entered me slowly enough for my body to adjust. Once I had taken all of him, his grip tightened and he moved me over him with a firm rhythm that made my breath catch on every stroke.
I tightened my arms around his shoulders and met the next stroke.
Roman’s mouth found my breast. He sucked hard enough to send pleasure through my stomach, then lifted his head.
“Look at me.”
The words belonged to our old bed. Tonight I looked because I wanted to.
His eyes held mine while he drove me higher. The muscles in his shoulders flexed beneath my hands. A rough sound broke from him each time I took him deeper.
“Don’t hide from me.”
I stopped swallowing the sounds he pulled from me.
Roman’s pace changed. Faster. Harder. One hand slid from my hip to the place between us, and the combined pressure made my body clench around him.
“Say my name.”
I did.
His forehead dropped to mine. “Again.”
“Roman.”
The next climax tore through me before I could prepare for it. He held me against him while I shook, his mouth open over my shoulder, my name rough against my skin. Three strokes later, his body locked beneath mine.
For a while we stayed joined, breathing into the small space between our faces.
Then our daughter kicked him.
Roman looked down at my stomach. “That felt judgmental.”
I laughed, the sound loose and surprised. “She has standards.”
“Apparently I failed to observe quiet hours.”
He eased us onto our sides and pulled the blanket over my legs. He did not ask what tonight changed. He did not name the drawer his clothes might occupy or the mornings he wanted to wake beside me.
He kissed my shoulder and said nothing about tomorrow.
In the morning, he folded the blanket, made coffee, and left with everything he had brought.
Desire had taken up space without crowding out the rest of my life.
---
Four days later, Roman called before seven in the morning with bad news he had not solved first.
“I have confirmed information about my work schedule,” he said after I answered. “Is now a bad time?”
“I’m awake.”
“The Greyford civic project lost a site supervisor. They asked me to cover two additional days a week for the next month.”
My hand settled over the curve of my stomach. “That overlaps with the first two weeks after your leave starts.”
“It might. I haven’t agreed.”
“What are the options?”
“I can refuse. I can negotiate remote oversight. Or I can accept until your thirty-seventh week and transfer before the delivery window. I don’t know which option they’ll approve.”
The old Roman would have solved it before telling me. He would have arrived with a polished arrangement and called the missing hours unavoidable.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To refuse unless they guarantee the transfer date in writing.”
“Then ask.”
“I will.”
He left the credit unclaimed.
By lunch, he forwarded the approved schedule. His local assignment remained unchanged from thirty-seven weeks through the first month after birth.
I stared at the timestamp until the numbers blurred. The ordinary schedule had arrived without a hidden interval.
---
At thirty-two weeks, I placed the mediator’s separation and shared-parenting plan on the table. Its language assumed cooperation without depending on affection.
He looked at the first page, then at me.
I rested both hands over my stomach. Our daughter shifted beneath my palm, a slow pressure along one side.
“If I never ask you to come home,” I said, “what happens?”
Roman did not look down at the document.
His answer came without the pause people used when they were trying to find the sentence most likely to save them.
“Then I remain her father, and you remain free.”
The room stayed very still.
He had once asked me for a few more days because he could not bear to be the man who caused someone immediate pain. Now I had placed a future in front of him where the pain might never resolve.
He did not ask me to make it smaller.
I slid the document and a pen toward him. “Sign there.”
Roman read the indicated paragraph and signed.
If I never resumed the marriage, the plan was still complete enough to give our daughter both parents and me a separate home. Roman would carry the rent, the changed schedule, and the miles he had accepted. None of it could choose my marriage for me.
My laptop chimed.
The dedicated account showed a new message from Nadia.
Roman’s shoulders went still when he saw her name, but he made no move toward the screen.
“You can read it,” I said.
The message was short. An anniversary connected to Serena’s old timeline was approaching. Her treatment team believed it might trigger confusion or panic. They had created an increased-support plan, and Nadia was notifying us under the existing transparency agreement.
Roman was not listed as an emergency contact.
At the bottom, Nadia asked him to confirm receipt.
He opened his phone only after I nodded.
His reply contained two sentences.
Received. Please continue with the established care plan. Do not add me to the contact list.
He copied the dedicated account, then placed his phone facedown.
The plan for a life without him remained between us, complete enough to use.
I should have felt relief.
I did.
But relief was no longer the only thing there.
Roman rose when the time we had agreed on ended. The signed plan stayed on the table. I could still choose it tomorrow or after our daughter was born.
“Roman.”
He stopped.
“Are you free for dinner tomorrow?”
His gaze held mine.
“Yes.”
“Seven thirty. I’ll send you the restaurant.”
“All right.”
I opened the door for him.
He stepped onto the porch, and I stood inside with one hand on the frame.
The door was still mine to close.
For the first time, I wanted that freedom because it meant I was also free to open it.