Chapter 43 #2
The room runs the length of the garage, with tall mirrors covering one wall above a low rail.
Afternoon light enters through two windows opposite them, falling across polished boards where the slight give beneath my first step remains visible.
Speakers sit in the corners while near the far wall, Artur’s restored turntable rests on a walnut cabinet beside the records Boris carried into the mansion dance room weeks ago.
The air smells like new wood, resin, and the faint machine oil clinging to the turntable’s metal housing.
“When did you build this without me hearing it?” I ask.
“The floor and mirror panels were fabricated off-site after you tested the dance room at the mansion. Nadia held the contract until the deed recorded. The crew installed them during the three days you split between the hospital and mansion. Nobody entered the house.”
Nadia’s invoice confirms the timing and keeps the fresh cedar from becoming another secret construction project under my feet. It includes the option to remove every panel at Artur’s expense if I don’t want it.
I remove my shoes.
The floor yields beneath my weight before returning it, firm at the surface while hidden layers absorb the pressure near my old knee scar. I bend both knees slowly without a hard answer traveling into the joint, while Artur remains by the door.
“You remembered,” I say.
“The hard floor made you shift away from your right knee after every landing.”
He noticed the adjustment I spent years hiding inside movement. The mirrors reflect him several feet behind me, broad shoulders filling the doorway while both hands remain at his sides.
“Is this supposed to make me teach?” I ask.
“No.”
“Perform?”
“Only if you choose.”
“Invite you upstairs whenever you look deprived?”
His mouth shifts. “That use deserves consideration, but the room remains yours.”
The crude answer warms the studio without placing an expectation inside it.
At the turntable, I lower the needle, and the platter holds its speed, sending low music through speakers strong enough for the bass to enter the new floor.
Because repairing what already existed made sense to his hands, Artur restored the machine.
Only after learning that movement belonged to me when nobody assigned it a purpose did he install the room.
Piano opens the song before a heavier beat enters beneath it.
Except for climbing a catwalk while armed men followed—which might qualify as experimental choreography—I haven’t danced since the clinic confirmed three heartbeats.
Still braced, my wrist limits the motion; without warning, fatigue arrives, and nausea has learned to wait until I believe breakfast is safe.
None of those changes removes the old knowledge from my feet.
I step away from the turntable, allowing the left foot to take my weight while the right traces a slow curve across the boards.
The floor gives beneath the first turn, and pressure spreads through hidden layers rather than returning hard through my knee, leaving my hips free to complete the movement.
The mirrors show a woman in dark trousers and a soft sweater, one wrist wrapped and brown hair loose below her shoulders.
Because my breasts have grown fuller, the sweater falls differently.
A slight roundness rests below my navel, visible only because I know where my stomach lay flatter before nausea and three embryos altered it.
Watched, guarded, desired, then used as leverage, the body in the mirror has carried every claim; here, nobody decides where it moves.
Carefully, I raise both arms, and when the brace stops my right, I reshape the motion around it, letting one hand travel through my hair as the other follows the line of my waist. Under my feet, music moves.
On the next beat, my hips release without a client waiting, cash hidden in my shoe, or Artur’s protection turning the room into another assignment.
He watches from near the door.
Clear afternoon light makes the gray in his eyes look pale under dark lashes, while his shirt follows every change from broad chest to narrow waist and the rolled sleeves reveal veins along his forearms. He does not step onto the floor.
Want reaches me anyway through his altered breathing and the heavy attention tracking my thighs when I turn, giving the open space between us a sensual pressure of its own.
For once, his restraint doesn’t feel like distance. It feels like reverence.
I dance through the first chorus.
My body warms beneath the sweater; breath deepens without becoming strained, and relief loosens places captivity left tight. The final turn carries me toward Artur, where I stop close enough that my breasts nearly touch his shirt.
“The floor works,” I say.
His gaze travels from my mouth to the rise of my chest. “I noticed several successful functions.”
“You weren’t invited to inspect the equipment.”
“I remained at the door with admirable suffering.”
I slide my uninjured hand beneath his open collar. Warm skin and dark chest hair meet my palm, while his pulse beats faster near the base of his throat.
“Very admirable,” I say.
For days, the desire between us has gone without a body.
Through this touch, it enters the studio, held in Artur’s open hands beside my hips even when I lean close enough for him to feel how pregnancy has made my nipples ache beneath the sweater.
Downstairs, I want the bed; beyond it, I want the question that can come only after every gift is complete.
I step back before heat answers for either of us.
I turn toward him.
“You gave me the divorce papers before showing me this.”
“The studio can’t become another reason you owe me marriage.”
“You gave me the house too.”
“Yes.”
“And the money.”
“It was already yours.”
Artur steps onto the floor after I hold out my left hand. He takes it gently, allowing me to draw him near rather than closing the distance himself.
“Katie, remain my wife.” His voice stays quiet in the open room. “Please.”
The request contains no tease, no confidence that wealth or pregnancy has already answered for me. He stands inside a studio he built and gave away, asking to remain in the life attached to it.
I touch the pale scar near his right temple. “Yes.”
Artur closes his eyes for one breath.
When they open, restraint is all that keeps his hands near my waist instead of pulling me against him. I end it by placing both arms around his neck, careful of the brace, then kiss him until the quiet room fills with our breathing.
His palm spreads over the subtle fullness low in my abdomen. At nine weeks, the triplets remain invisible to anyone who doesn’t know my body, but Artur follows every change as if skin carries confidential information.
“You may stay married to me,” I say against his mouth. “The review period is indefinite.”
“I’ll submit frequent supporting evidence.”
“Preferably naked.”
“My strongest documentation.”
I laugh into the next kiss.
Downstairs, while Artur waits in the hall, I carry the divorce papers into the bedroom and open the locked drawer with Nadia’s brass key. I place the unsigned pages inside, followed by my copy of the deed, then turn the key.
The available papers keep freedom real while I choose Artur with the door intact.
I return to the hall and hold out my hand.
Artur looks toward the locked drawer, then at the key still held between my fingers. He leaves the key in my hand, allowing the house to wait around us, mine in every legal sense and ours only if I keep opening it.
I curl my fingers around his.
His hand closes warmly around mine, strong without steering. The pull toward the bedroom remains mutual, every boundary there belonging to invitation.
“Come into my house,” I tell him. “You may spend the night if you behave badly enough.”