Page 118 of Forced plus-size Bride of the Bratva

We reload together in silence, and for a moment, it’s just the sound of nature and the sharp click of magazines sliding home.

She breaks the silence. “You trust me now?”

I glance at her. “I’m getting there.”

“You’d let me walk into a meeting with armed enemies?”

I pause. “Ask me when I’m dead.”

She grins. “Dramatic.”

I take a step back again and let her have her floor, hoping a time never comes when she’ll call on these lessons and hope it saves her.

***

Months have passed.

And I’ve never known this kind of peace.

It’s in the way Jennie hums when she walks around the house barefoot, her belly round and heavy in front of her. It’s in the way she insists I rub her feet at night—even when she pretends she doesn’t need me to. It’s in the stupid, soft little arguments we have over what to watch on TV while she eats ice cream like the world’s about to end.

Tonight is no different.

Jennie is curled into the corner of the couch, a pint of strawberry swirl balanced precariously on her bump. She’s wearing one of my shirts again—because apparently pregnancy gives her the right to claim half my wardrobe. I’m on the other end of the couch, flipping through channels with the remote, trying to find something that doesn’t involve slow-motion kisses and a weepy orchestral score.

She groans. “Adrian, just put onLove in Lisbon. I swear, it’ll make you feel things.”

I narrow my eyes. “I feel things already. Mostly pain and boredom. These people fall in love after one date and act like it’s fate. It’s not even realistic.”

She gasps. “Are you mocking romance? In my ninth month of pregnancy?”

“I’m not mocking romance,” I say, scoffing as I toss the remote aside. “I’m mocking bad plots. There’s a difference.”

She narrows her eyes and scoops another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “You have no soul.”

“Correction—I had no soul. Then I married you, and now I cry during car commercials.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes. “That was one time.”

“It had a puppy in it, Jennie. A puppy.”

She opens her mouth to respond—and suddenly gasps.

My body goes still. My eyes are on her immediately. “What?”

Her spoon clatters to the floor.

She grips the edge of the couch and looks down at herself. “Oh my God.”

“Jennie.” I’m already halfway to her, my pulse kicking up. “What’s wrong?”

She blinks up at me. “I think…my water just broke.”

I stare at her. At the little dark patch spreading on the couch. Then at her eyes, wide and blinking and slightly stunned.

We’re not supposed to panic. We took a class for this. A class where a woman named Bethany from the hospital told me to breathe and “keep your partner calm.” But the class didn’t account for the fact that my wife is now in labor on my couch. Hypothetical situations are no match for reality.

“Okay,” I say, swallowing hard. “Okay. Alright. That’s fine. That’s normal.”