Twilight Sins: Chapter 65

“I don’t get why you would want to sit and listen to someone chew and slurp their food.” I made Mariya put on headphones an hour ago, but every time I catch a glimpse of her phone, I feel nauseous. “Even when I’m not… sick, mouth noises make me want to rip my ears off.”

Mariya slides one headphone off her ear and shrugs. “Mukbang is relaxing.”

“Watching someone eat a pizza and a gallon of ice cream is not relaxing.” I jab a finger at the reality TV show I’m watching. “This is relaxing.”

The only thing that has gotten me through the last two days of nausea so crippling I can barely sit up is a nest of blankets on the living room sofa, a nonstop stream of mindless reality television, and the gingersnap cookies Hope baked in bulk.

Hope said the cookies were the only thing that saw her mom through all of her pregnancies. So far, the same is true for me. Even when I try eating something else, the cookies are the only food I can keep down. Thanks to Hope, I’ve been waking up to them stacked on my nightstand.

Mariya pulls off her headphones and grimaces at the TV. A wide shot of the massive yacht fills the screen. “The guys this season are super mid and the yacht isn’t even that big.”

My jaw practically unhinges. “It’s one hundred feet long!”

Mariya shrugs. “Yakov has a superyacht.”

“Yakov has a what?”

“A couple, actually,” Mariya says. “Unless he sold the one, but—No, I think he still has them both. You never know which coast you’ll be closest to. It’s easier to have two.”

“I have no idea why I’m surprised. At this point, you could tell me he has a magic chocolate factory and a portal to another world hidden in the back of his closet and I would believe you.”

“We briefly owned a French patisserie that my father won in a game of poker, but it wasn’t magical.”

I’m still digesting this new information when Hope runs into the room. “There’s a doctor.”

Mariya and I stare, waiting for more of an explanation. Hope is breathing too heavily to give one, her eyes wild.

“What?” Mariya asks.

“Doctor. Here,” Hope repeats. “Now. There’s a doctor here. To see you.”

Mariya frowns. “Me?”

“No. He said he’s here for you, Luna.”

A doctor is here to see me. Why would a doctor be here to⁠—?

I can’t even follow the train of thought before I sit up straight for the first time in hours. Any thoughts of mukbang or hot people on yachts are cleared away to make room for the sheer panic roaring through me.

I turn to Mariya, but she’s already shaking her head. “I didn’t say anything. I swear.”

“Me, either,” Hope adds.

Mariya looks from me to Hope and back again. “Wait. Hope knows?”

“I figured it out,” Hope whispers. “But I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Neither would I,” Mariya says again. “I’ll take your secret to the grave, Luna.”

“The baby has to come out at some point, so that won’t be necessary.” I nervously twirl my hair around my finger. “I believe you both. But why is there a doctor here?”

Mariya winces. “Okay, so I may have mentioned to my brother that you’ve been getting sick, but it was only because⁠—”

“Mariya!” I throw a couch cushion at her.

She catches it and holds it up like a shield. “It was only because he’s been hiding in his office and being a jerk!”

“So you decided to tell him I’m pregnant?!”

“I didn’t! But you will if you don’t be quiet,” she hisses. “I thought he should have some idea of what’s going on with you. But I said you were sick with anxiety. I thought he’d bring you some candy and make you a coffee.”

The days of Yakov leaving me gifts and cooking for me are long over. That doesn’t mean the reminder doesn’t sting.

I narrow my eyes at her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she protests. “Yakov doesn’t know anything.”

“He will now!” I hiss. “The doctor is going to tell him everything the second he leaves here!”

Mariya’s face falls. “I’m sorry, Luna. I wanted Yakov to come out of his stupid office and… Maybe I can tell the doctor to leave.”

“And what do you think your brother will do if I refuse to see the doctor he called to the house?”

She grimaces. “He’ll throw you over his shoulder and carry you to the hospital.”

“That wouldn’t be good for the baby,” Hope points out.

It wouldn’t be good for my relationship with Yakov, either. I have no idea what he’ll do when he finds out I’m pregnant, but actively lying to him about it isn’t a good solution, either.

I stand up. Nausea rolls through me as I brush the cookie crumbs from my sweats. “I haven’t eaten anything in two days aside from cookies, so I should probably talk to a doctor about that, anyway.”

“Maybe this is all for the best,” Mariya says hopefully.

“Yeah.” I give her a tight smile. “Maybe.”

Dr. Mathers presses gently on my stomach, but it still makes me want to hurl.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks softly.

I have no idea what I expected when Hope said there was a doctor at the door. Actually, that’s a lie. I expected a grouchy old man with a black bag and metal tools that could double as torture devices. But Dr. Mathers isn’t that at all. He is young and soft-spoken.

I planned to try and keep my pregnancy a secret from him as long as possible, but as soon as we were in the room alone together, his kind eyes dragged the truth right out of me.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Just nauseous.”

“You said you’ve been experiencing morning sickness?”

“Morning sickness, afternoon sickness, middle-of-the-night sickness. I’ve got all of it.”

He chuckles. “It’s a bit of a misnomer. Nausea can strike at any time of day. Or, in your case, all day.”

“Lucky me.”

“I’ll leave you with some B6 supplements. That can help take the edge off the nausea. If you’re still not able to keep anything down, we can try a prescription.” He slides his hands from hip bone to hip bone, kneading. “It’s not an exact science, but based on the size of your uterus, you’re measuring right around six to seven weeks along.”

I roll back the weeks in my head. “But we didn’t…”

We didn’t know each other six weeks ago.

Even Dr. Mathers’ kind eyes can’t drag that confession out of me.

It doesn’t seem possible that Yakov and I have only known each other a few weeks, though. We just met, but he’s become this fixture in my life. I can’t imagine a world without him in it. Which has made the last few days especially hard. Nonstop nausea and wistful pining are not a good combination.

“With pregnancy, you start counting weeks from the first day of your last period. You may have conceived three weeks ago, but you’re still six weeks pregnant,” he explains.

“That makes sense,” I say sheepishly.

“But don’t quote me on that. I’m a family practitioner, not an OB-GYN. I’d recommend you make an appointment with one as soon as possible.”

“Do you have any recommendations?”

“I can email a list to Mr. Kulikov,” he says, already packing up his bag.

I barely resist the urge to grab him by the lapels and beg him not to breathe a word to Yakov. But there’s no point. Yakov is paying this bill. He’ll find out about the baby eventually, whether Dr. Mathers tells him or not.

It’s fine. This is the push I needed to finally tell him the truth. He deserves to know that he has a child on the way.

I’ll tell him as soon as he can stand to be in the same room with me again.