Page 85 of Sexting the Pakhan

“I’ll come back.”

It’s the sort of thing he says like it settles everything. As if coming back is a decision, not a hope. As if bullets and betrayal respect his calendar.

I pull the sheet tighter around myself. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

He comes back to the bed then, one knee dipping into the mattress as he leans down. For one foolish second, I thinkhe might say something different. Something honest enough to scare both of us.

Instead, he kisses me. It’s brief, but not careless. His hand cups the side of my neck, thumb brushing once under my jaw. When he pulls away, his eyes stay on mine longer than they need to. “Stay inside,” he says.

I should argue. Usually I would. This morning, I don’t.

Maybe because his hand is still warm on my skin. Maybe because the wordmolehas crawled into the room and made everything else feel childish.

“Come back,” I say.

His face stills. Then he says, “I will.”

He leaves after that.

Not while I’m asleep. Not quietly enough for me to pretend it didn’t happen. I hear his footsteps in the hall, the low voices downstairs, the front door opening, cars starting in the drive. I sit in his bed until the sound fades.

Only then does the house feel too big.

For a while, I try to behave like a sane person. I shower. I find my clothes. I ignore the fact that I still reach for one of his shirts because mine feel too much like another life.

I answer Karina’s messages with just enough detail to keep her from threatening to call every police station in the city.

Karina:You alive?

Me:Yes.

Karina:Emotionally or technically?

Me:Technically.

Karina:That’s my girl. Very haunting. Very concerning.

I smile for half a second, then lose it.

Everything feels suspended. Ruslan is out there following the first real lead they’ve had, and I’m in his house drinking tea I don’t want, wearing his shirt under my cardigan, wondering when exactly I stopped thinking of this as captivity and started thinking of it as waiting for him to come home.

That thought is dangerous enough that I get up too quickly and go to the bathroom for something to do.

I open the cabinet looking for a hair tie. Instead, I see the unopened box of tampons.

For a second, it means nothing. Then my whole body understands at once.

I should have needed them already.

My hand stays on the cabinet door. I stare at the box, then at my reflection behind it, as if the woman in the mirror might have a better explanation. Stress, obviously. Fear. Too much change. My body has had every reason to lose track of itself.

But another thought arrives anyway, quiet and terrible.

Pregnant?

I take the box down with numb fingers and sit on the edge of the bathtub.

No. It could be nothing. It’s probably nothing. Three or four late days do not mean my entire life has changed. Bodies are strange. Mine has never been perfectly obedient even under normal conditions, and nothing about the last two weeks has been normal.