Page 128 of Nine Months to Love

I keep one hand resting on my stomach. I’ve started doing that at all hours without thinking.

Matvey’s handwriting covers the pages. I’ve read it front to back twice now, but it still makes my skin break out in hives to think about what I’m going to have to do with it now that I know everything.

Well, now that I know Matvey’s version of everything, at least.

I’ve marked at least a dozen passages with sticky notes. Places where Matvey writes about his love for Natalia. His obsession. His jealousy.

April 2nd. Found her laughing on the phone. Asked who it was. She said her sister. I know she was lying. Could see it in her eyes. She wouldn’t look at me. I wanted to grab her, shake her, make her tell me the truth. I forced myself to walk away and take my pills, and slowly, the anger receded. But not gone. Never gone.

That must be the tumor medication he’s talking about. I’m stuck in this crazy loop of wondering if this anger, this fury, was really him, or if it was the sickness rotting him from the inside out.

But there’s more here. Things that make me sick.

April 19th. Hit her again today. I didn’t mean to. She was crying about something, I don’t remember what. The anger just came. My hand moved before I could stop it. She had a bruise on her cheek at dinner. Covered it with makeup. I should apologize. But the words won’t come. They never do.

I flip to another marked page.

May 8th. Stefan asked why his mother was crying. Told him she had a headache. He’s too young to understand. Too innocent. I see the way he looks at me sometimes. Like he knows. Like he sees what I really am.

It terrifies me.

I close the journal and press it against my chest.

Stefan was sixteen when his father died. A child, traumatized and grieving. What if he saw what he needed to see? A villain to blame. A story that made sense.

But the truth is messier. Matvey was sick, violent, obsessed, abusive. And Natalia was trapped.

Does that excuse the affair? No.

Does it mean she and Vasily killed him? I don’t know.

But it means Stefan’s version isn’t the whole story.

I need to tell him. If I show him these pages and help him see that maybe his mother isn’t the monster he thinks she is, maybe things can change.

The problem is how to make him listen.

He’s fiercely defensive when it comes to his father. I’ve seen it. His jaw clenches and his eyes go cold. If I just hand him this journal and say,“Your dad was abusive and your mom had reasons for what she did,”he’ll shut down. Or worse.

I need time and space. A setting where he’s calm and open.

Maybe a trip? Just the two of us, somewhere quiet, somewhere we can open up and talk without the weight of this house and all its ghosts pressing down on us?

I’m still turning the idea over in my mind when I hear a car in the drive. My heart jumps. Stefan’s back. He wasn’t supposed to be home for hours.

As panic sears through me, I glance down at the journal in my lap, then at the door. Then I shove the journal under a throw pillow on the couch. My hands shake as I run them through my hair and check my reflection in the window.

Do I look normal? Casual? God, I hope so.

Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy and confident. And something else. A dragging sound. Louder. Closer. The knob turns and his silhouette fills the doorway and he’s…

… smiling?

Arealsmile. Warm and genuine. The ones I savor because they’re so rare. In one hand, he’s holding a Louis Vuitton suitcase. “I have something for you,” he says.

I force myself to smile back. “What’s this?”

He sets the suitcase down and crosses to me. His hands find my waist as he pulls me close and kisses my forehead. “A surprise,” he murmurs against my skin. “Pack for a week. Warm weather. Bring your passport.”