Dumbfounded, I blinked and he laughed. It was so deep and genuine; I found it incredibly sexy and wanted to hear it again.
“You love me?”
He wrinkled his nose and mellowed his laughter to a smile. “I mean, should I not? Who knows? It could just be a sixty-second feeling.”
I lightly slapped his chest and wrapped my arms around him before I could cry.
“Not the best at having a good sense of humor. But I love you too, Matvey Yezhov.”
Smirking, he rolled his eyes and looked out the window.
The storm could’ve torn the roof off, and I wouldn’t have noticed. All I could feel was him, and I didn’t think I ever wanted to let go.
Chapter 28 – Matvey
A Few Weeks Later
I wasn’t jumping or kneeling by Zoella’s bedside with tears in my eyes, but standing here by the door and watching her scream and push from a distance was already intense enough as it was.
There she was, in sweat and tears, fighting to bring our baby into this bloodstained, tainted world of ours, while I reminded myself to breathe and stand still.
She’ll be fine, I repeated in my head.She’ll be fine.
If anything happened to her or our baby, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate to send the midwives to early graves.
The countdowns started again, right before they urged Zoella to push with all her might.
And in the middle of it, out of nowhere, came this flash from years ago.
I was maybe sixteen. Still green, still trying to grow into the steel the men around me carried in their bones.
I was at one of the aunt’s houses, dragged there after a job by orders nobody ever dared question.
I was with a bunch of the younger cousins, and the girls were watching some corny American movie; I sat there, pretending not to care.
But I watched with them.
I remembered the scene with the woman screaming on a hospital bed, the father holding her hand, crying when he saw the baby lifted in the nurse’s hands.
I’d laughed, snorted something stupid about him being soft.
But secretly? I didn’t understand it then, not the crying or the father’s joy.
I certainly didn’t understand the kind of love that cracked a person open and made him fall to his knees.
Until now.
A tiny but sharp cry pierced through everything else in the room and carved straight into my chest, almost like the cry came straight from inside me.
I saw Zoella lying there, pale as snow and shaking with exhaustion, butChrist…she was beautiful.
Radiant, even, as if all the pain she’d just endured had only carved her deeper into the depths of my soul.
The midwives moved with urgency to wrap the tiny thing in soft white cloth.
All the while, I struggled to find my breath.
Then they placed our daughter onto her mother’s chest, and this time, the rest of the room blurred around them.
