Page 17 of Nine Months to Love

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

I shrug away from his touch. “Yeah. Fine.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me a lot of things.”

“Lies. Manipulations. It’s what she does.”

“Like you?” I retort.

His jaw clenches. “We can discuss that later. Right now, I need to get you somewhere safe.”

“Iwassafe.”

“You were kidnapped, Olivia.”

“I was having tea and going for walks.” I step back, needing distance from his touch, his scent, the magnetic pull of him. “Your mother hasn’t hurt me, Stefan. If anything, she’s been kind.”

“My mother doesn’t know what that word means.”

“Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think.”

“I know her well enough.” He catches my hand and laces our fingers together. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

I let him lead me through the woods, hyperaware of the journal hidden against my ribs. Behind us, I hear Taras’s men calling to each other, their search growing more distant.

I bought her time, but for what? To disappear again? To plan something worse?

Stefan’s hand is warm around mine, his grip firm but not painful. He helps me over fallen logs, steadies me on loose stones, his palm never leaving my hip. The overlap with his mother’s gentle foot massage makes my head spin. Two people, both claiming to care, both with their own versions of truth that look so much alike from certain angles.

“Stefan...” I want to ask him about the journal, about his father, about the child Natalia lost. But the words get tangled in my throat, a jumble with no beginning or end.

“It’s okay.” He squeezes my hand. “Whatever you’re thinking, whatever she made you question—it can wait until we’re home.”

Home. He says it so easily. I wish I felt the same.

The journal presses against my ribs with each breath, pages full of secrets waiting to be read. Natalia’s words echo:His father isn’t the hero or the martyr he thinks he is.

But then, neither is Stefan.

And maybe neither is she.

Where does that leave me in all this?

7

STEFAN

Olivia barely speaks as I guide her through the woods. Her hand stays limp in mine, neither pulling away nor squeezing back.

The silence eats at me worse than her anger ever could. At least when she’s shouting, I know what she’s thinking. This black fucking void where her feelings should be is swallowing us both whole.

At the Jeep, I open the passenger door and offer my hand to help her up. She ignores it and instead hoists herself in without a word. She’s moving stiffly, mechanically, and part of me wants to believe that it’s because my mother did something to her. That would justify my anger, and anger is something I know how to deal with.

But deep in the marrow of my bones, I know that Natalia didn’t lay a finger on Olivia. Her distance, the ice over her eyes, has everything to do with me instead.

I round the hood and slide behind the wheel, jaw tight. Taras and the others are still combing the woods, but they won’t findanything. Natalia’s a ghost when she wants to be. Always has been. Today will be no different.