Page 170 of Ruined Vows
Joanne calls while I’m pacing. “Hey,” she says. Her voice is gentle, and she knows I’m worried. “Just checking in. You okay?”
I pause.Grip the edge of the window frame.
“No,” I whisper. “But I will be. I have to be.”
She waits.
“Is he safe?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think he’s trying to end it. All of it.” My voice cracks like it’s breaking open something I’ve kept locked too long.
Then there is the dull ache in my chest when he leaves a room. The way my heart makes double beats when he enters a room. I’ve fallen for Vukan.
Joanne’s quiet for a beat. Then?—
“Then you hold on. You hold on until he comes back. And if he doesn’t… You still hold on. Because you’re not the girl you were when this started. He loves you, he’ll come back for you.”
I press my hand to my belly and close my eyes. I hold on.
“I will. Thank you, Joanne.”
I shove lunch away and press the heels of my palms into my eyes like that will somehow stop the room from spinning. My sandwich, untouched. Tea, cold.
The nausea hits hard this time—sharp, unwelcome, and impossible to ignore.
Irina sits across from me, perfectly poised with her legs crossed at the ankle, sipping black coffee like we aren’t living in a war zone.
She says nothing. Just watches. But she’s quiet. She has the eyes of a hawk. Nothing gets past her.
“I’m fine,” I mutter, more to the room than to her.
“Of course you are,” she replies, voice smooth and amused in that way only older Russian women seem to master. “You’ve barely eaten in three days, can’t stand the smell of coffee, and you’re glowing.”
I blink at her. “Glowing?”
She shrugs, sipping again. “Like a woman with a secret.”
I scoff. Push back from the table, pacing across the kitchenbecause sitting feels impossible. Everything feels impossible. Vukan’s been gone for days. I haven’t heard from him since the note. The world outside feels like it’s holding its breath, and I’m here—dizzy, nauseous, wrecked.
“I’m not glowing,” I mumble
Irina doesn’t argue. She smiles into her cup.
Meatball lies under the table. His head is on my foot.
I run a hand through my hair. “It’s stress. It’s hormones. It’s?—”
“—a baby,” Irina finishes softly.
My breath catches.
She doesn’t look at me when she says it. She doesn’t have to.
I freeze, heart skidding sideways. “No.”
“Da,” she says simply, setting her mug down. “You knew. You just didn’t want to know yet.”
I’ve been tired. I grip the edge of the counter like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. Her words echo, sink, settle.
