Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Genevieve
“You’ve both agreed on joint physical custody, correct?” Mr. Halloway, the lawyer Anna had helped me find, said after reviewing the papers I handed him.
“Correct,” Kazimir said.
“Genevieve?”
“Yes,” I concurred. “Joint custody.”
“Weekdays with Genevieve, alternating weekends,” Kazimir continued, “unless work requires otherwise, in which case we adjust.”
He glanced at me and I nodded in agreement. “That works,” I said, “as long as adjusting doesn’t mean canceling last minute and leaving me to figure it out.”
“It won’t.” His tone was a bit too flat and cold for someone who had gone over the details with me two weeks ago, but I paid no mind to him.
The decision to bring in a lawyer was completely mine.
After being lied to and deceived, I wasn’t going to blindly leave my fate and that of my child’s to a man I wasn’t sure I could completely trust.
It wasn’t an easy feat to bring up the conversation, but Anna encouraged me, stating it would make me feel protected.
Kazimir, on the other hand, was a bit hesitant when I brought it up during one of his weekly visits, but he indulged me long enough to draft a plan that worked. I couldn’t understand what the change in his demeanor was about.
We went through the rest of it that way, back and forth, with Kazimir mostly agreeing to whatever I said and contributing next to nothing.
His responses to most questions were monosyllabic. At some point, Mr. Halloway himself had to ask if he had any changes to make.
“No,” he answered, his voice the same clipped tone that had been bristling my skin all morning. He looked at me, a fleeting glance that lingered more than it should’ve. “She knows best and I trust her decision.”
I tore my eyes away from his, silently cursing the warmth that engulfed my skin.
I’d read and heard people talk about their bodies being the biggest traitors, betraying them with a different emotion despite what they were feeling logically.
It was a concept I found laughable. How could your body—a part of you—betray you? I could understand feeling something at the wrong time and place, but feeling what you didn’t want to feel? That was something I couldn’t wrap my head around.
Well, at least that’s what I thought until a foot massage turned into a gift of a massager and sweet-smelling foot soaks, which prompted me to say thank you like any well-mannered person would, and somehow led to a late-night conversation about pregnancy symptoms. By a magic I was yet to understand, that birthed a routine where Kazimir created a chart to update my symptoms and started stopping by twice a week to check on it.
During his first visit, I’d told myself I was only letting it happen because it didn’t make sense to agree to something halfway and not see it through.
A little civility would be needed if we were going to co-parent, so maybe biweekly visits were not bad, especially since dinner shed a little light on his side of things.
We didn’t have the most lovey-dovey start. It was a tryst in the elevator, which was frankly just sex at the time for me too.
It didn’t excuse the lies moving forward, but it did soften the blow.
Mr. Halloway walked us through the rest of the process, detailing decision-making rights, medical consent, school choices someday, and financial support that Kazimir insisted on structuring generously enough that Mr. Halloway actually paused to make sure he’d heard the number correctly.
I kept my answers short and my tone even, the way I’d promised myself I would, but somewhere in the middle of it I noticed how easy it had become, sitting across from him and talking about our child’s future like two people who actually functioned as a team.
I hated how much I noticed that.
“I think that covers the major points,” Mr. Halloway said eventually, gathering the papers into a folder. “I’ll have the final draft ready for signatures by the end of the week.”
“Thank you,” Kazimir said, standing to shake his hand.
Once the door closed behind him, the room went quiet, the businesslike air draining out of it, and I felt Kazimir watching me instead of the papers.
“That went well,” I said, reaching for my coat.
He nodded wordlessly, grabbing his keys from the table. “Let me take you home.”
He walked to the door, holding it open for me to step out before following quietly.
I fought the urge to ask him what the problem was. This was something I was doing for myself, and if there was something he didn’t agree with, it would be in his best interest to either say it or suck it up.
I was in an era that required me to look out for myself, and I wasn’t going to let a few homemade lunches and playful conversations over the kitchen counter mess with that.
The drive home was even worse than the walk to the car. Kazimir’s eyes never left the road.
His hands wrapped so tightly against the wheel I was scared it might break in two, and the tension in his jaw never loosened till he pulled up to the front of my house.
“Can I come in?” he asked as I unfastened my seatbelt.
The question surprised me, as I half expected him to zoom off the moment he dropped me off, but I nodded.
It was a little past twelve and Anna still had about four hours at work. I was mostly home alone doing nothing, so I figured I could use the company. Or so I told myself.
I hung my coat on the rack by the entrance. I was currently in my second trimester and my bump wasn’t so little anymore. For some reason, the more it grew, the more I felt the need to protect it.
The bowl of fruit on the dining table beckoned my feet long before my brain gave permission. Food was becoming a little too bland, and salads and fruits made it more tolerable.
“Genevieve.”
Something in his voice made me stop. “What?”
He stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room, like a kid preparing to give a speech he wasn’t sure would be received well by his parents.
“I don’t want this,” he finally said.
I frowned. “You don’t want what?”
“The negotiations, shared custody, and legal documents.”
My frown deepened. “You just spent twenty minutes negotiating it.”
“Only because you said it would make you comfortable to know there are legal documents.”
“I don’t want a co-parenting agreement,” he continued, his voice clearer than it was at the lawyer's office. “I don’t want alternating weekends and custody schedules and a lawyer drawing up terms for how much of my own child’s life I’m allowed access to.
I…” He hesitated, his eyes searching mine like he needed my permission to say what he wanted.
“I want a family, Genevieve. With you. Not shared custody of one.”
I stood there with an apple in my hand, caught off guard by how plainly he’d said it.
“Kazimir, we talked about this.”
“I know what we talked about,” he said, marching toward me.
“And this might sound a bit dishonest, but I only agreed to most of it because I knew it would make you comfortable. Anything to make you relax enough while I worked my way back to fix things. But this?” His hand pointed in the direction we had come.
“It feels like an exile. Locking me out from you and only being present because of the baby.”
“Kazimir—”
“Don’t get me wrong.” I hadn’t noticed him move until he was a few steps from me.
“I do want the baby. There’s nothing I want more than to raise one with you, but maybe I have been a bit too focused on using the baby as a bridge that I might have miscommunicated my interest.” He paused, a silence pregnant with the weight of unsaid words.
“I want you, Genevieve. Hell, I’m in love with you, and I would still be here even if there was no baby. ”
The weight of his words hit me like a moving truck, causing me to stagger a little. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s true.”
“You don’t get to make choices, Kazimir.” My voice came out louder than I intended, but I didn’t care. “You don’t get to make these long speeches telling me how much you love me and want a family like it’s my fault we’re resorting to legal documents and walking on eggshells around each other.”
“Baby—”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “You could’ve said this earlier. I was waiting for you, I was holding on to the dream that you would one day tell me what we had was real, but you only wove mixed signals and nothing more.”
“It was complicated.”
“It was not. You were simply a coward.” I felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the way his features tightened at my words.
“A coward and a liar, Kazimir, that’s what you are.
Not someone whose hands were tied by forces he could not control.
So you don’t get to stand here and make your demands when it was your actions that caused this. ”
My chest heaved, my breaths coming out in forced pants, but I surprisingly felt lighter.
Kazimir and I had been spending a lot of time together in the past month, but that felt a bit performative—like applying plaster on the surface while the wound festered beneath.
This, calling him what he was to his face, felt a bit too good.
Kazimir waited until my breathing had evened out to speak, his voice surprisingly calm and soft for the outburst that just happened.
“You’re right. I was a coward.”
My eyes snapped to him with lightning speed. Kazimir Ivanovich called himself a coward?