I didn’t want to take three steps back.
If nothing else, I wanted him to love me.
A snort left me as I eyed the tests, waiting for fifteen minutes to pass. Could he ever love me? Was he even capable of love?
I’d felt the gentleness in his touch, but it didn’t mean that he loved me.
Did I want him to love me? Selfishly, I knew that I wanted him to love Naomi and not Sveta who carried his child and his future.
I wanted him to love me. Just me and the child we created together.
That was all I wanted.
My throat clogged with emotion, and I cleared it, not wanting to cry right now. There was nothing I was going to get from tears. If I was pregnant, then I would deal with it. I would deal with whatever Gavril would do or not do.
It wasn’t like I had a way out anyway.
With each passing moment, the knots in my stomach tightened, and I wanted to throw the test in the trash, not find out, and pretend the last few hours hadn’t existed. It would be putting off the inevitable, but at least I would still be in the bliss that I had found with Gavril.
Still, when the time was up, I walked over to the sink and picked up the test.
Pregnant.
My knees buckled and I fell onto the seat of the toilet, suddenly finding it difficult to catch my breath.
I was pregnant with Gavril’s child.
I waited for the despair to come, for the all-consuming fear to take over, but it didn’t.
Instead, there was this, well, strange feeling, almost like a bubble of excitement in my chest. Was I truly happy about being pregnant?
I let myself think about what I was feeling, searching deep down to make sure that I wasn’t overanalyzing anything, and realized that I was happy about this news.
I wanted to have this child for Gavril, for us.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, rubbing a hand over my stomach lightly. “Hey there, little one.”
If I had calculated it right, I was probably more than two months along already.
I had to tell Gavril. Immediately.
After cleaning up my mess, I walked to the door and found Vera coming up the hall.
“Here,” she said, holding out a cell phone. “Master intended to give you this upon your return from Russia, but he was, well, preoccupied, and for good reason.”
“Thank you,” I replied as I took the phone.
“His number is programmed in the phone,” she answered before I could even ask. “It’s his personal number.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I gave her a small smile before moving back into the bedroom and shutting the door. My hands trembled as I thumbed through the phone, finding only a handful of contacts programmed in it, including Gavril and Vera’s numbers.
My thumb hovered over the call button, and I hesitated. Was doing it over the phone right? Maybe I should wait until he returned.
But knowing that Vera now suspected it meant that I wasn’t sure who she would tell herself or if she would call Gavril to tell him. I wanted to be the person to tell him.
If nothing else, I wanted to hear what he would have to say and decipher his reaction.
So, I pressed the button and held it up to my ear, rehearsing my words repeatedly in my head as the phone rang.
When the voice mail kicked in, it was one of the generic ones and I hung up the phone. I wasn’t going to leave a message.
Not for this, anyway.
Tapping the phone in my hand, I thought about how long it could be before he returned. I really, really wanted to tell him in person so that he couldn’t hide his reaction, but I also didn’t want to bother him while he was working, whatever he was doing.
Deciding to wait at least an hour, I spent the time showering and getting the bedroom in order for his return, busying myself so that I wouldn’t look at the clock repeatedly.
It didn’t work. I felt like I was checking the phone every five minutes until the hour had passed, wondering if Gavril knew the missed call was from me.
Finally, I made my way down the stairs, looking for Vera and finding her coming out of the study, a vase of flowers in her hands.
“Do you think that Ivan knows where, um, my husband is?” I asked her. “I can’t get him on the phone.”
She sat the vase down on the foyer table, turning in a few times to give the best view of the flowers from the front door. “I’m sure he does. He knows the master’s schedule well.”
“Do you think you can call for him?” I asked.
Vera stared at me for a long moment before she reached into her own pocket and pulled out a sleek-looking phone, tapping on it with her fingertips.
“He will be here in a moment,” she replied, pocketing the phone.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve bothered you.”
She smirked, adjusting the roses among the other flowers in the vase.