Page 115 of Mile High Ex's Dad
“Open the door.”
I almost do. God help me, I almost do.
I can feel how badly I want him in the room. Can feel my body already leaning toward the sound of him, toward the thought of him stepping in and shutting the door and pulling me into him until I stop trembling. I want to be held by him. I want to be kissed by him. I want to forget every stupid, frightening, impossible thing outside this room and drown in the one thing that has felt good and whole and consuming.
But wanting is no longer enough. Maybe it never was.
“No,” I whisper.
This time the word shakes.
There’s a pause on the other side of the door. Long enough that I wonder if he’s finally going to leave. Long enough that a fresh kind of ache opens in my chest at the thought of it.
Then he says, very quietly, “Look at me and say it.”
My eyes sting. “I can’t.”
That is the most honest thing I’ve said all night.
Silence again.
I know he understands what I mean. Not that I can’t say no. That I can’t look at him and keep saying it. Can’t open the door and still pretend this is about discipline instead of need.
When he speaks again, the roughness is back in his voice. “Sienna.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Please don’t.”
“What happened?”
I think of Camille’s phone. The photo. The threat. I think of Anna and Yuri and poison and Ethan staring at my hand over my stomach. I think of how quickly everything around Viktor turns dangerous, even when he isn’t the one trying to hurt me.
And underneath all of that is the simplest fear of all.
If I keep letting him in, I won’t know how to stop.
“It’s too much,” I say.
I hear him shift outside the door. Not leaving. Just readjusting, maybe leaning closer. Waiting the way he does when he wants the truth and knows better than to demand it yet.
“What is?”
I rest my palm more firmly over my stomach and finally say the only part I can bear to give him. “It’s better for the baby if I stay away.”
The words hurt coming out.
Not because I don’t mean them.
Because I do.
That’s what makes them hurt.
Nothing on the other side of the door moves for a second. Then I hear his breath leave him, slow and rough. When he speaks, his voice is different. Quieter. Not defeated. Not exactly. But checked, as if he’s run into a wall and knows better than to push harder just yet.
“You think I would hurt you.”
I press my lips together. “That’s not what I said.”
“No,” he says. “It’s what you meant.”
