Chapter 14: I Will Protect You

BRABRA

I wake early, before my alarm, before the grey light has fully filled my room, and lie there for a moment just listening to the quiet.

Today feels different already, though nothing about my apartment has changed. I press my palm against my stomach, feeling the faint, familiar flutter, and let myself imagine, just for a moment, what it might mean to stop bracing for every single day the way I have for months now.

"Big day," I whisper. "Nothing complicated, he said. We'll see."

I dress carefully, the same soft sweater I chose the night before, and study my reflection one more time before I leave. I look tired still — I don't think that's going away for a while yet — but there's something steadier in my own eyes this morning, something I haven't seen looking back at me in a long time.

Saturday arrives grey and quiet, the kind of soft, overcast morning that makes the whole city feel like it's holding its breath.

Andriy picks me up exactly on time, dressed down again the way he was at the clinic, and for a moment, standing on the sidewalk in front of my building, I almost don't recognize the careful, controlled CEO from that first conference table at all.

"You look nervous," he says, opening the car door for me.

"I am." I don't bother hiding it. "I don't know what to expect."

"Nothing complicated," he reminds me, echoing his own message from days ago. "I promise."

He takes me to a quiet park at the edge of the city, mostly empty this early, the grass still damp from overnight rain. We walk slowly along a path lined with old trees, neither of us in a hurry, and for a while, neither of us says much at all. It's a different kind of silence than the ones we've shared before — not heavy with things unsaid, just quiet, comfortable in a way I didn't expect from him.

"I want to talk about what happens next," he says eventually, when we reach a bench overlooking a small pond. "Practically. Not just — feelings."

I sit down carefully, one hand instinctively resting over my stomach. "Okay."

"I want to help." He sits beside me, angled toward me, his hands loosely clasped between his knees. "Medical bills. A better apartment, somewhere closer to the clinic, somewhere with an elevator so you're not climbing all those stairs every day. Whatever you need."

Something in me bristles instantly, old instincts rising before I can stop them.

"I don't need your pity," I say.

He turns to look at me fully, something flickering behind his eyes. "It's not pity."

"Then what is it?"

"Responsibility." He says the word plainly, without hesitation, like he's been holding it ready for exactly this moment. "They're my children too, Brabra. I don't get to decide that responsibility away just because it's inconvenient or complicated."

"I'm not a responsibility, Andriy." My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, hurt bleeding through despite my best effort to keep it steady. "I've spent my whole life being handled by people who saw me as a problem that needed managing. I don't want that from you too."

He goes quiet for a moment, and I watch something shift behind his expression, careful consideration replacing the instinctive defense I expected.

"You're right," he says finally. "That came out wrong. I'm not good at this — offering help without it sounding like I'm trying to fix something broken. I don't think of you as broken, Brabra. I think of you as someone who's been carrying too much alone for too long, and I don't know how to say that I want to help carry it without it sounding like charity."

His honesty catches me off guard, disarms the sharp edge I'd braced myself behind.

"I've been alone with this since the beginning," I say quietly, staring out at the still surface of the pond instead of at him. "I built a whole life around handling things myself, because there was never anyone else to hand them to. It's hard to unlearn that in a few weeks, even with two heartbeats changing everything."

"I'm not asking you to unlearn it overnight." He shifts slightly closer, not touching me, just close enough that I can feel the warmth of him beside me. "I'm asking you to let me in, a little at a time, if that's easier. I don't need to fix everything today. I just don't want you carrying it by yourself anymore."

I turn to look at him, and something in his face stops me — none of the careful control from our first meetings, just quiet, steady honesty, the kind that's harder to argue with than any grand gesture would have been.

"What does that look like?" I ask. "Practically."

"Whatever you're comfortable with." He holds my gaze. "I'd like to come to every appointment from now on, if you'll let me. I'd like to help however you need, even if that just means being someone you can call at two in the morning when the fear gets loud."

My throat tightens. "It gets loud a lot."

"Then call me." He says it simply, like it costs him nothing, though I suspect it costs a man like him more than he's willing to admit. "I mean it, Brabra. Whatever happens between us — I will protect you. Both of you. All three of you. That's not pity. That's not responsibility, not the cold kind, anyway. It's just what I want to do."

Tears sting my eyes before I can stop them, and this time I don't try to hide them from him.

"I don't know how to trust that easily," I admit. "I want to. I'm just not there yet."

"I'm not asking you to trust it all at once." He reaches over, gently taking my hand the way he did in that exam room, warm and steady. "I'm asking you to let me prove it, one day at a time, for as long as it takes."

I look down at our joined hands, at the small, steady shape of my stomach beneath my sweater, and I let myself, cautiously, lean the smallest amount of weight toward him instead of away.

"Okay," I whisper. "One day at a time."

He squeezes my hand gently, and for a while, we just sit there together on that quiet bench, watching the still water, saying nothing else at all, because for the first time since this began, silence between us doesn't feel like something either of us needs to fill.

ANDRIY

I drive her home slower than necessary, in no hurry to let the afternoon end.

Neither of us says much on the way back, but it isn't the same silence from weeks ago, the one loaded with everything she wouldn't tell me. This one feels earned, comfortable, the kind two people share once something important has finally been said out loud and doesn't need repeating.

I will protect you.

I meant it the moment I said it, sitting on that bench with her hand small and warm inside mine. I've made plenty of promises in my life — to shareholders, to boards, to men in suits who wanted guarantees before they signed anything. None of those promises felt like this one. None of them mattered the way this one does.

I pull up outside her building and walk her to the door, the way I've started doing without either of us discussing it, some quiet routine forming itself around us that neither of us seems to want to question.

"Thank you," she says, at the base of those twenty-two stairs she's mentioned more than once, "for listening. For not pushing."

"I meant what I said." I hold her gaze, steady, certain. "One day at a time. However long it takes."

She nods, something soft and cautious in her expression, and turns to climb the stairs. I watch until she's safely inside, the way I have every time since I learned exactly how much I have to lose if I don't.

Back in the car, I sit for a moment before starting the engine, turning the afternoon over in my mind. I don't need your pity. The words still sting slightly, not because they were unfair, but because I understand now, more clearly than before, exactly how much she's had to protect herself from people who saw her as something to manage rather than someone to know.

I don't want to be one more person on that list.

I start the car and pull away from the curb, already thinking ahead to Monday, to whatever appointment or crisis or quiet ordinary evening comes next, already certain of one thing I don't often let myself be certain of when it comes to anything outside a boardroom.

I'm not going anywhere. Not this time.

Whatever it costs me — reputation, comfort, the careful, controlled life I built for myself before a hotel bar and a woman who wasn't afraid of me changed everything — I intend to keep that promise for as long as she'll let me.

I just have to prove it. One day, and one small act of trust, at a time.