Page 70 of Nine Months to Bear

Simple as that.

“You’re using too much force.” She elbows me in the arm, and I realize I’m white-knuckled in the dough, pounding it for all it’s worth. “The dough needs gentleness, not punishment.”

I ease up. “I learned from you.”

“And yet you still knead like you’re strangling someone.” She shakes her head, sprinkling dill and garlic into the meat mixture. “Maybe you weren’t paying enough attention.”

She stirs the filling a few more times before I notice her fingers trembling. Her other hand reaches for the counter’s edge to steady herself.

“Sit,” I command. I move to take the wooden spoon from her. “I’ll finish.”

She lets me take the spoon and doesn’t argue. That’s a bad sign—my grandmother never surrenders her kitchen without a fight. She eases herself onto a stool with a soft exhale.

‘I’m fine,” she demurs when she sees me squinting at her. “Just these old bones needing rest.”

I frown, noting the pallor beneath her usually rosy cheeks. I should call her doctor, schedule another checkup. The thought of her health declining sends a cold spike of fear through me that I quickly bury.

I can control empires and enemies—but time remains the one opponent even I can’t beat.

My grandmother watches as I take over. Her eyes never miss a movement. I follow her lead exactly as she taught me, though our roles have reversed now—the student becoming the teacher.

“This woman who’s bothering you… is she special?” she finally asks.

“What the hell did Taras tell you?”

“Nothing your face didn’t scream as soon as I opened the door.”

I hesitate. The dough beneath my hands is smooth, elastic, soft to the touch. Pale, too, like Olivia’s?—

“It’s business.”

“Ah,” she says with sad understanding. “That’s what your father called it, too, at first.”

A muscle in my jaw ticks as I fold the dough over itself again and again. “I’m nothing like him.”

That old mantra. No one believes it anymore, but I insist on repeating it.

Babushka’s laugh is soft. She rests her elbows on the counter. “I remember when he met your mother. He came to me afterward, pretended he needed advice about this or that, but he kept smiling like a fool. I knew instantly he was in love.” Her eyes sharpen on my face. “Just as I see it in you now.”

I set the dough aside. “He was wrong. She was his downfall.”

“And yet he loved her.”

“She was a parasite, not a partner,” I snap irritably.

“Two things can be true at once, Stefushka.”

Whether she’s right or not—she’s not; she can’t be—what I feel for Olivia isn’t love. It’s lust. It’s desire. It’s a hunger that has my insides twisting even now, wanting another taste of her, desperate to hear her cry out in surrender.

But it isn’t fuckinglove.

Her wrinkled hand reaches for my flour-covered one. “The things we love most can wound us deepest. It doesn’t make the love less real.”

I pull away under the pretense of shaping the dough into small rounds. My hands move automatically while my mind races. I don’t want to think about my father—about his weakness, his blind trust, his ruinous love. I especially don’t want to draw parallels between his mistakes and whatever this thing with Olivia is becoming.

Because once I do, I’ll have to admit to myself that seeing Olivia, touching her, sleeping next to her…

It can’t continue.