Page 86 of Sexting the Pakhan

Still, I count.

Once on my fingers.

Then again, because the first count feels wrong.

Then a third time, slower, with my phone calendar open and my breathing getting worse with every little square I tap.

The dates don’t fix themselves.

I press a hand to my stomach, then immediately pull it away because the gesture feels too real. Too dramatic. Too much like accepting a possibility I’m not ready to hold. There’s nothing to feel anyway. If anything is happening, it’s too early. Too small. Too impossible to touch. But my mind is already moving without permission.

The first night. The next morning. The shower. That half-asleep, stupid, breathless time when we remembered protection late and pretended the timing was enough to save us from consequences. I had wanted him so badly that thinking felt optional.

Now thinking is all I can do.

I stand, pace to the sink, turn on the tap, turn it off again.

I need a test. That is the rational answer.

I think about Ruslan. Ruslan can be gentle with my hair and ruthless with the rest of the world in the same morning. He canlisten to me talk about my mother’s schoolchildren and then leave with a gun under his jacket. I have seen enough now to understand that both versions are real, and neither cancels the other.

But if my period is late, if there is even a chance, he should know.

More than that, I want him to know. That’s the part I can’t look at directly.

I want him to come back, find me in the sitting room, and notice something is wrong before I say it. I want to say, “My period is late,” and watch him go still. I want him to ask the right questions in that blunt, practical voice. I want him to send someone for a test, then sit beside me while we wait, impatient and calm because he’s always calm when I’m falling apart.

Maybe he will say, “We handle one thing at a time.”

Maybe I will believe him.

The hope is so fragile it embarrasses me.

By noon, I still haven’t eaten. By two, Anya brings soup and pretends not to notice that I only move it around with the spoon. By four, the sky has darkened, and I’ve nearly called Karina twice. I stop myself both times because Karina will hear one tremor in my voice and come here with a tire iron, pepper spray, and absolutely no survival instinct.

So I wait.

I wait with a possible-pregnancy-shaped hole in my chest. I wait with my phone in my hand. I wait with all the foolish things I might say arranged and rearranged in my head until none of them sound human.

When the cars finally come through the gate, relief hits first. It’s so strong I almost have to sit down.

Then Ruslan steps out, and the relief dies before it reaches my lungs.

There is blood on him. Not a little. Not the neat, controlled kind from a split knuckle or a cut lip. It stains the side of his shirt and darkens one sleeve. There’s a smear near his jaw, and more across his hand, drying brown-red against his skin.

He walks steadily, so maybe it isn’t his.

That doesn’t comfort me.

I’m already moving before I decide to move. Down the hall, past the sitting room, toward the front entrance as the door opens and cold air pushes into the house. Men come in around him, faces tight, voices low. Dima’s arm is wrapped. Pavel is limping. Stepan looks like he has not blinked in an hour.

Then Ruslan enters. He sees me, and for a second, everything stops between us.

All afternoon I imagined telling him. I imagined fear, maybe anger, maybe practical questions and his hand steady at the back of my neck.

Now I can smell blood from where I stand.

“What happened?” I ask. My voice sounds thin even to me.