girl i loved unplanned it was so beautiful but would you be open to writing a like toxic baby daddy mike 🤭

i'm thinking bad era where him and the reader have known eachother since they were children and have got on each others NERVES ever since. they're relationship like develops into like a friends with benefits kinda thing, she winds up pregnant, they try to be together and it doesn't work out but he's still really possessive over her.

ahh i love you're writing so whatever you cook up will be amazing!! 💋

┃ ࣪𖤐.ᐟ NOWHERE LEFT TO GO

୨ৎ pairing — badera!mike x fem reader

୨ৎ synopsis — basically a confusing, fucked up love story between you & michael that goes from one extreme to another

୨ৎ themes — dom!michael, LOTSSS of angst & tension (i mean that), fwb theme, unprotected sex, cr3ampie, pregnancy, financial control & just control in general, lowkey toxic, obsession, possession with lots of love too, no y/n

୨ৎ word count — 12.9k (i’m so sorry)

୨ৎ note — LMAOO you guys are freaky as fuck y’all gotta stop enabling me to write such things, i get carried away 😜 i spent most of the night writing this so there’s lots of dialogue and backstory, hopefully this lives up to what you asked for !!

You had known Michael since you were seven years old.

Your mother and Katherine had been friends from the Kingdom Hall days, back when the family was still in Gary, before Motown and before the world knew their name. You didn't remember the first time you met him. You just remembered that he was always there, at the same gatherings, the same awkward Sunday afternoon visits where the adults sat in the living room and the children were told to go play. You were told to go play with Michael. Michael was told to go play with you. Neither of you wanted to.

He was quiet and strange, too polite in a way that made you suspicious. You were loud and opinionated with a mouth that got you in trouble at every family function. He once told your mother, at nine years old, with perfect sincerity, that you were the most annoying person he had ever met. Your mother had laughed. His mother had apologised. You had refused to speak to him for six months.

It never got better. As you both got older, the mutual irritation calcified into something sharper. You thought he was performative. He thought you were reckless. You thought his quietness was arrogance dressed in softness. He thought your sharpness was cruelty dressed in honesty. You argued during the holidays. You argued at birthday parties. You once got into a screaming match at a barbecue over whether Stevie Wonder was better than Paul McCartney and it had very little to do with music.

By the time he was the most famous man alive and you were twenty years old with a half finished degree and a dream of modelling that you told no one about, the dynamic had settled into something permanent. You didn't avoid each other. You just bristle like fabric against a wound.

Which is why, when you showed up at Hayvenhurst in November of 1987 for one of those parties where the guest list was half industry and half mythology, you did not expect the night to end the way it did.

The house was enormous. You had been there before, years ago, back when the family still filled it with noise and chaos. Now it was quieter. The younger siblings were grown or gone. Michael had the place to himself and a guest list that read like a magazine cover. The lighting was warm and low, golden, pooling in the corners and catching on the crystal of the chandeliers, the whole room submerged in amber. Something soulful piped through the speakers, Marvin Gaye maybe and the bass thrummed faintly through the floorboards that you could feel it in your heels. The air smelled like cologne, champagne and the faintest trace of gardenias from somewhere deeper in the house, an open window, maybe, or a room that hadn't been aired.

You wore a black dress. It was shorter than your mother would have approved of, cut just above the knee and it clung to you in a way that made you feel like you were getting away with something. The fabric was thin, skimming your waist and hips. The neckline sat just low enough to show the hollow of your throat and the shadow between your collarbones, the gentle rise of your chest where the fabric began. Your heels were high, nude, making your legs look endless and your hair was down, falling past your shoulders in dark waves that you had spent too long on in front of the bathroom mirror. Your lips were red. Your lashes were dark. You had done your makeup in the car because you were late and the lipstick was slightly uneven but you didn't care. You didn't dress for anyone at this party. You dressed because you liked the way you looked when you caught your reflection in the glass of the restaurant window where you'd had two glasses of wine before coming here.

Two glasses of wine was important. Because two glasses of wine was what made you brave enough to walk straight up to the bar, pour yourself a third and not look over your shoulder when you felt him enter the room.

You always felt him enter the room. That was the infuriating thing. He moved quietly, almost apologetically, like he was trying not to take up space and somehow every room rearranged itself around him anyway. You hated that you noticed. You had always hated that you noticed.

He was in all black, naturally. Black trousers that sat high on his narrow waist and fell clean over his legs, legs that were longer than they had any right to be, lean and fine boned like the rest of him. A black shirt, unbuttoned just far enough to show the ridge of his collarbone and the barest suggestion of his chest, the fabric thin enough that you could see the shape of him beneath it when he moved, the firmness of his torso, the breadth of his shoulders that had filled out since the last time you'd seen him. The Bad belt sat heavy and silver-buckled against his hips. There were studs at his wrist, at his collar, catching the light when he turned. His hair was slicked back from his face, dark and precise, it made his bone structure almost violent. The sharp jaw that could have been carved. The high cheekbones that caught shadow. The full mouth that had kissed the whole world and somehow still looked untouched. He was twenty nine and looked it in a way that unsettled you because the last time you had really looked at him, properly looked, he had still been boyish. Now he wasn't. His shoulders were broader. His chest was fuller. He held himself like someone who knew exactly what he looked like and had learned to be very quiet about it. 

He saw you almost immediately. You could tell because his expression did something complicated. A flicker of recognition, then something warmer, then something carefully, deliberately neutral. He crossed the room. He did not hurry. He moved through the crowd like water, people parting for him without being asked and he never once looked away from you.

"You're drinking." He said, by way of greeting. He leaned against the bar beside you, one hand flat on the countertop and the proximity of him was immediate. Unreasonable. He was close enough that you could see the fine grain of his skin, the almost imperceptible hollow beneath his lower lip.

You looked at your glass, then back at him. "You're observant."

"Since when do you drink whiskey?"

"Since when do you pay attention to what I drink?"

That was the thing about arguing with him. You could never tell if he was teasing or testing. His voice was soft, always soft, the same gentle voice that had charmed every talk show host and magazine interviewer in America.

"I pay attention to a lot of things." He said, turning to face the bar, settling in beside you like he intended to stay. His elbow almost touched yours. "You think I don't notice stuff, but I do. I notice you haven't been around in a while. I notice you showed up tonight alone. I notice you're already on your third drink and you've only been here twenty minutes. So yeah. I'm paying attention."

The comment landed somewhere between concern and condescension, yet you couldn't tell which one made you angrier.

"I don't need looking after, Michael."

"I didn't say you did. I said I noticed."

"You going to volunteer anyway?"

He smiled. Not the bright, wide, public smile. Something smaller. something private. It dimpled his cheek and made his eyes narrow. And it did something to you that you refused to examine.

"I might." He said. "If you'd let me."

You took a long sip of your drink. The whiskey was good, warm and sharp, and you held his gaze over the rim of the glass because you had never in your life been the first to look away from him and you weren't about to start now. Up close he smelled like something expensive. Clean. Sandalwood maybe and something warmer beneath it that was just him. You hated that you knew what he smelled like. His hand was still on the bar, long fingers resting against the polished wood, a single ring on his right hand that caught the light every time he moved.

"That's sweet." You said. "But I've seen how you look after people."

His smile didn't waver. "You'd know."

"I would know. Because I've known you since you were a little boy who cried when his brothers broke his toy dinosaurs. I've known you since before all of this." You gestured vaguely at the party, the house, everything. "So don't try to charm me, Michael. I've seen behind the curtain."

"You always bring that up." He said and there was something almost fond in his voice, which was worse than mockery. "The dinosaur thing. Every time."

"Because it always works."

He laughed. Soft, real, the kind of laugh he didn't give in public. His head tipped back slightly, his throat worked, the light catching the silver at his collar and something shifted between you. Not dramatically. Not like a crack in the earth. More like the smallest loosening of something that had been tight for years. The whiskey, maybe. The music. The way the party hummed around you both and neither of you was looking at anyone else.

"I'm going to get another drink." He said. "You want one?"

"I haven't finished this one."

"Then I'll wait."

He didn't leave. He stood there, close enough that you could feel the heat of him through the space between your bodies and he waited while you finished your drink in deliberate, defiant sips, taking longer than you needed to because you weren't going to be rushed by him, not here, not ever. His arms were crossed now and his weight was shifted onto one leg, his hip cocked slightly. He watched you with that terrible patience and you could feel his eyes on your mouth, on your throat, on the line of your shoulder where the dress left your skin bare, on the way the fabric pulled across your chest when you lifted the glass.

When you set the glass down, he took it from your hand. His fingers brushed yours. It was nothing. It was nothing yet it burned all the way up your arm and settled somewhere behind your sternum.

He came back with two glasses, handing you one. You noticed it was the same whiskey, the same pour and you didn’t like that he had paid that much attention.

"So." He said, settling against the bar beside you again, close enough that his shoulder almost touched yours. His sleeves were pushed to his forearms now and you could see the fine bones of his wrists, the veins beneath his brown skin, the way his hands clutched the glass. "What've you been doing with yourself? I haven't seen you since Easter and you barely said two words to me then."

"Living my life."

"That's vague."

"I'm a vague person."

"No you're not." He turned his head to look at you and his profile was almost unbearable in the warm light, the dark lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones, the softness of his mouth against the sharpness of everything else. "You're the most specific person I know. You just don't like people knowing it."

You wanted to say something cutting, something that would make him lean back and put distance between you, but the whiskey was sitting warm in your stomach and his voice was low. The party felt very far away, even though it was happening all around you. His knee brushed yours under the bar. Neither of you moved.

"Maybe I don't like you knowing it." You responded.

It came out softer than you intended. Softer than anything you had ever said to him. You watched his expression change, watched the control slip just slightly, something behind his eyes going dark and quiet, interested in a way that made your pulse jump as your skin tightened against your bones.

He leaned closer. Just barely. Just enough. His breath was warm against the shell of your ear and you could feel the shape of his mouth forming the words even though you couldn't see it.

"I think." He began, his voice almost a whisper now, rougher than before, "That you've always liked me knowing it. I think that's why you fight me so hard because if you didn't care, you wouldn't bother."

The argument started after that.

It wasn't the Stevie Wonder argument or the barbecue argument or any of the arguments you'd had before where the stakes were low and the satisfaction was high. This one was different. This one was about something neither of you would name. It started because a woman in a red dress came over and touched his arm, said his name like she owned a piece of it, all breathy and intimate, her manicured fingers resting on his forearm like she had every right. You made a comment under your breath that you thought he couldn't hear.

He heard.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

"Say it again."

"I said she's touching you like you belong to her. That's all. Forget it."

He looked at you. Really looked. And the softness was gone. His jaw tightened. His eyes sharpened. He set his glass down on the bar with a careful, deliberate click that you felt in your teeth.

"Are you jealous?"

"Of her? Please. I'm making an observation."

"Well that didn't sound like an observation. That sounded like something else entirely."

"Well, it wasn't. So you can relax."

"I'm perfectly relaxed, I'm just asking you a straightforward question."

"And I'm giving you a straightforward answer. I don't care who touches you, Michael. You can let every woman in this house put her hands on you for all I care. I'm just saying what I saw."

"You care."

"Michael.”

"You care and it's driving you crazy. Now you're standing here in that dress, making comments under your breath about women touching me and you want me to believe you don't care?”

Your breath caught. The party noise swelled and faded. He was watching you with that terrible patience, that control, his body still and his face calm and you hated him for it, hated that he could stand there so perfectly composed while your heart was doing something violent behind your ribs. His chest rose and fell evenly, hands loose at his sides. He looked like a man who had all the time in the world and knew exactly how this was going to end.

"You think you know me." You continued, your voice thinner than you wanted it to be.

"I've known you since you were seven."

"You don't know me. Not like that. Not the way you're implying."

"I know you're scared right now."

"I'm not scared of you."

"I didn't say you were scared of me." He stepped closer, his voice cascading to something barely above a breath.

The fight went out of you. Not all of it, but enough. Enough that when he said, "Come with me." And put his hand on your waist, his palm warm and broad, sure against the thin fabric of your dress, his fingers curving into the dip above your hip like he already knew the shape of you, you didn't pull away.

Enough that when he guided you out of the main room and down the hallway, into a room with the door shut and the party muffled behind the walls, his hand never leaving your body, sliding to the small of your back where the dress left your skin bare, his fingertips pressing gently into your spine, you let him.

Enough that when he pushed you against the wall and kissed you, finally, after twenty years of every other kind of friction, you kissed him back like you had been waiting your whole life for the exact thing you'd been fighting against. His mouth was soft. Certain. It tasted like whiskey and something sweeter. His hands found your waist and pulled you into him. You could feel all of him, the hard line of his body beneath the black fabric, the heat of him through the thin shirt, the way he held you like he already knew exactly how you fit against him and your fingers found his jaw, his throat, the slicked back hair that was just beginning to loosen at the temples and neither of you said a word, because there was nothing left to argue about.

You kissed against the wall for a long time. Long enough that your lipstick was ruined and his hair had come loose at the temples. You could taste whiskey every time his tongue dragged against yours. His hands were on your waist, your hips, sliding up your ribcage with his thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts through the thin fabric of the dress and every time you made a sound into his mouth, his fingers tightened like he was trying to hold you in place, like he was afraid you'd change your mind and leave.

You weren't going to leave. You knew that. He probably knew it too.

Michael pulled back just enough to look at you. His lips were wet and swollen, his eyes dark, the brown almost black in the low light of the room. His chest was rising and falling harder now, the controlled breathing finally cracking. There was a flush along his cheekbones that you had never seen before, a warmth beneath his brown skin that made him look almost feverish. His mouth was parted just slightly but you could see the tip of his tongue against his lower lip and the sight of it made something low in your stomach clench.

His mouth found your throat. Not kissing, not yet. Just his lips resting against the skin, warm and barely there, his breath hot against your collarbone and it sent something electric down your spine, pooling between your legs with an ache that was almost unbearable. His nose traced the line of your throat and then his mouth opened as he kissed you there, slow and wet. His tongue found the place where your pulse beat, tasting you like he had been starving and you were the first meal he'd been offered in years.

His hands moved to the straps of your dress. He slid one down over your shoulder, slow, deliberate, watching the fabric peel away from your skin like he was unwrapping something precious. His fingers followed the strap down your arm whilst his mouth followed his fingers and he kissed your shoulder, the curve of it, the bone. Then he pushed the other strap down and the dress fell to your waist, leaving you stood in front of him in nothing but your lingerie 

He looked at you. Really looked. His eyes moved over your chest, your stomach, the dark lace of your bra against your skin. His lips parted and his breath hitched, for a moment he just stood there, his hands hovering like he didn't know where to touch first.

"Michael." You whispered.

"I know," he said and his voice was wrecked, stripped of all that composure, all that control. "I know. Just let me look at you."

He didn't wait long. His mouth found your breast, his lips closing over the lace. His tongue was hot. Wet. He sucked gently at first and then harder, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin through the fabric as your head fell back against the wall and your hands went to his hair, the slicked back style gave way completely, dark curls falling loose around his face. He groaned against your chest, a low, guttural sound that you felt in your teeth. His hands were on your hips pulling you into him and you could feel him, all of him, hard and pressing against you through the fabric of his trousers. The pressure of it made you gasp.

He lifted his head. His lips were swollen and his eyes were wild, a look you had never seen on him, not on any stage, not in any interview, not in any photograph. This was private. This was yours.

"Turn around." He said, words laced with demand.

His voice left no room for argument. And you didn't want to argue. You turned.

His hands found the zipper of your dress and pulled it down, slow, so slow that you could feel every tooth of the zipper separate against your spine. The dress pooled at your feet and you stepped out of it before his hands found your hips, your waist, sliding up your stomach, pulling you back against him so you could feel the full length of his body against yours, the hard planes of his chest, the ridge of his arousal pressing against the curve of your ass. His mouth found the back of your neck and he kissed you there, open mouthed and wet as his teeth sank gently into the sensitive skin. You moaned, a sound that was louder than you intended and his arm tightened around your waist.

"You have any idea…" He breathed against your skin, "How long I've wanted this? How long I've thought about this?"

"You never said anything."

"You would have hit me."

"Maybe."

"You definitely would have hit me."

His hand slid down the front of your underwear, past the lace and his fingers found you, hot and wet. He made a sound against the back of your neck, a broken, desperate sound and his fingers pressed into you. One, then two, slow and deliberate. They curled in a way that made your knees buckle. His other arm caught you, holding you up, holding you against him and his fingers worked inside you while his thumb found your clit, circling it, gentle at first, then harder, and your hips moved against his hand without your permission, seeking friction, seeking more.

"Michael, please."

"Please what?" His voice was in your ear, low and ragged, yet he was still so controlled even now, even with his fingers inside you, even with your body trembling against his. That was the thing about him. He could be falling apart at the seams and still sound authorative. "Tell me what you want."

"You know what I want."

"I want to hear you say it."

"I want you to fuck me."

He turned you around to face him. His hands were shaking now, actually shaking and he unbuttoned his shirt with fingers that fumbled against the fabric. You reached up and helped him, pushing the shirt off his shoulders, his chest bare and beautiful, the brown skin smooth and tight over the firm planes of his muscles, the flat stomach, the narrow waist. He kicked off his shoes and his pants soon followed. Then his underwear and he was naked. You had never seen anything like him, thick, hard and wanting.

He backed you toward the bed. When your knees hit the edge, you sat down and he was suddenly towering over you, one knee on the mattress, his hand cradling the back of your head as he lowered you down. The care of it, the tenderness, was at war with the hunger in his eyes and the contradiction made you dizzy. His mouth found yours again, deep and messy as his body settled between your legs, the weight of him pressing you into the mattress. You could feel him, hot and heavy against your inner thigh, your hips tilting up instinctively, seeking – a scandalous invitation. 

He pushed into you slow, not because he was being gentle. Because he was savouring it. You could see it on his face, the way his eyes fluttered shut and his jaw went tight, his breath stuttering out of him in a ragged exhale. He filled you completely, inch by careful inch. The stretch was perfect and aching and you felt it everywhere, in your stomach, in your chest, behind your eyes. His forehead dropped against yours as his hands braced either side of your head, yet he didn't move, he just stayed there, buried inside of you, breathing hard with his eyes closed, his lips barely touching yours.

"Look at me." You said.

He opened his eyes. They were glassy, dark and focused entirely on you. Something passed between you that was too big to name, too old, too tangled in twenty years of friction and fighting and pretending you didn't feel what you felt.

Then he moved.

The first thrust was slow, deep, pulling almost all the way out before pushing back in and the sound you made was not a sound you recognised. It came from somewhere primal, somewhere that had nothing to do with pride, composure or the sharp tongue you wielded like a weapon. His hips set a rhythm that was steady and relentless, each thrust angled so that he hit something inside you that made your vision blur. His mouth found your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast, kissing and sucking and biting in a way that would leave marks, but you didn't care, you wanted marks. You wanted proof that this was real.

His pace quickened. The slow, deliberate control gave way to something harder, deeper, his hips snapping against yours with a force that pushed you up the bed. His hand fisted in your hair, tilting your head back so he could kiss your throat as the other hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise, holding you in place whilst he drove into you. The bed frame knocked against the wall. The sound of it, wet and rhythmic, filled the room. 

"You feel so good." He panted against your mouth. The words were wrecked, guttural, nothing like the soft spoken man the world knew. "You feel so fucking good, I knew you would, I always knew."

"Harder."

He obeyed. His hips drove into you with a force that bordered on brutal and the pleasure was so sharp it almost hurt. Your nails raked down his back and he hissed against your neck as his rhythm stuttered, then steadied, then broke entirely as his hand found your clit and rubbed in tight, desperate circles while he fucked you. The dual sensation was too much, too much and you came with his name in your mouth, your back arching off the bed with your whole body seizing around him, clenching, pulling him deeper.

He followed you moments later. His thrusts went erratic then shallow and he buried himself to the hilt. You felt him pulse inside you, hot and thick, a warm wetness spurting into you in waves of pleasure. The sound he made was almost a sob, a broken, wrecked, beautiful sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest and his forehead dropped against your collarbone, his body shuddering and trembling before he went still.

For a long time neither of you moved. He was heavy on top of you but not crushing, his weight braced on his forearms, his face buried in your neck, his breath hot and damp against your skin. Your fingers traced the knobs of his spine. His hair was a disaster, loose and tangled, falling into your face. You pushed it back gently and he turned his head, placing a kiss on your jaw, soft, so soft, nothing like the man who had just fucked you hard enough to shake the bed.

The party was still going. You could hear it through the walls, muffled and distant, the bass thrum of the music, the murmur of voices, the occasional burst of laughter. None of it mattered. The world was this room.

He lifted his head, looking at you. His eyes were soft now, tender and there was something almost scared in them, something he would never have shown anyone else. His thumb traced the outline of your mouth, your swollen, bitten lips and he said nothing. He didn't need to. You both knew that something had cracked open between you that would never close again.

He pulled out of you slowly and the loss of him made you shiver. He laid beside you, pulling you into him, his arm around your waist, his mouth against your temple. The party hummed. The bed was wrecked. Your dress was on the floor.

Neither of you said goodnight.

––––––

The pregnancy test was not dramatic. You had bought it at a pharmacy three blocks from your flat on a Tuesday morning in March, after your period was eleven days late and you had thrown up twice before noon. Your breasts were so tender that the shower water against them made you flinch. You took it in your bathroom with the door locked and the fan on as you sat on the edge of the bathtub with the stick on the counter, staring at the tile floor. You did not look at it for four minutes. When you looked, there were two deep pink lines. You sat there for a long time after that. You sat there until the water in the bathtub went cold around your ankles because you had turned the tap on without thinking and hadn't noticed.

You didn't cry. You thought you would, but you didn't. You just sat there with your hand on your stomach, flat and unchanged. You tried to imagine something growing inside you that was half him and half you but you couldn't. It felt abstract. It felt like someone else's life.

You told him three days later.

He came to your flat on a Friday night, the way he had been coming to your flat every Friday night and most Wednesday nights, occasionally Monday nights when his schedule allowed since the party at Hayvenhurst four months ago. He had a key. He had always had a key, since before the arrangement, since back when he'd helped you move in and insisted on paying for it because he was like that, generous in ways that made you uncomfortable. You had argued about it and he had won because he always won when it came to money. He used the key now, letting himself in without knocking, the way he always did, hearing the door open and close. His footsteps filled the hallway before he was standing in your living room doorway in black trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hair loose and soft around his face. He was holding a paper bag from the Thai place you liked.

"I brought Pad Thai." He said. "And those spring rolls you pretend you don't like."

"I don't pretend anything."

"You pretend a lot of things." He set the bag on the kitchen counter and came toward you, his hand finding your waist as his mouth joined with yours, a kiss that was familiar now, easy, the kind of kiss that had replaced the frantic, desperate ones from the first few weeks and settled into something almost more dangerous because of how natural it felt. His thumb traced the curve of your hip through your jeans and he pulled back, looking at you as his brow furrowed slightly. "You okay?"

"I need to tell you something."

His hand didn't leave your waist, but his fingers stilled. His eyes searched your face and you could see him cataloguing, the way he always did, reading you like sheet music, finding the notes that didn't sound right.

"Okay." He said. "Tell me."

"I'm pregnant."

His hand dropped from your waist. Not quickly, not like he was pulling away, but like his arm had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing. He took a half step back and the space between you was small, but you felt it.

He didn't say anything. His jaw worked, his mouth opening slightly, then closing. His eyes moved from your face to your stomach and back again. You watched him try to find something to say and fail, which was remarkable because he always had something to say. He was just standing there with the Thai food on the counter and his hands hanging at his sides like he didn't know where to put them.

"How?" He asked.

You stared at him.

He stared back.

"Michael."

"I know." He held up both hands, pressing his palms into his eyes and when he dropped them, his face was flushed beneath the brown of his skin, a heat rising along his cheekbones that had nothing to do with desire. "I know how. I know how that works. I just. I didn't. How."

"How far along." You corrected him, because the alternative was screaming. "You're asking how far along."

"Right. That's what I meant." He ran a hand over his mouth, fingers trembling. "That's obviously what I meant."

"Six weeks. Maybe seven."

He was quiet. His eyes went to your stomach again and you could see him counting backwards, the weeks, the nights, his lips moving faintly without sound and whatever calculation he was doing landed because his throat bobbed and he looked at the ceiling like it might help him.

"Right." He said again, his voice hoarse. "Okay."

He sat down on the edge of your couch, leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped together. His head was slightly bowed and you could see the part in his hair, the dark line of his scalp and his shoulders were tense beneath the white shirt, the fabric pulled taut across his back.

"I'm not going to ask what you want to do." He said, looking at his hands. "That's yours. That's not mine to ask."

"I'm keeping it."

He looked up. Something shifted in his expression, something quick and he blinked. His throat moved and he nodded again.

"Okay."

"I just thought you should know."

"Okay." He stood before crossing the kitchen and opening the bag from the Thai place. He took out the containers one by one and set them on the counter, opening drawers until he found the forks. He did all of this without looking at you, with the practiced ease of someone who had been in your kitchen enough times to know where everything was and there was something almost stubborn about the normalcy of it, like he was refusing to let the moment be bigger than it was.

He paused with a fork in his hand, looking at it like he'd never seen one before. Then he looked at you.

"I really asked you how." He said. His voice was quiet, almost wondering, like he couldn't quite believe himself. "I really just stood there and asked you how."

"You did."

"I've been finishing of inside you for four months."

"I'm aware."

"Four months. Every time. And I stood there and said how like I was twelve years old."

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. Not a big laugh, not a real one, just a short, sharp exhale through your nose that you pressed your lips together to contain, but he heard it. His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something more fragile than that.

The absurdity of it hung between you. Standing in your kitchen with the Thai food going cold and the test sitting in your bathroom bin, your whole life shifting on its axis. He had asked you how, as if the answer was not obvious, as if the answer was not him, as if he had not been the one pressing into you in the dark, murmuring your name against your neck, staying inside you afterward and refusing to move, pulling you closer when you tried to roll away.

"Sit down." He said, pulling out a chair. "Eat."

"Michael."

"You haven't eaten. I can tell. You get that look when you haven't eaten, your eyes go all hollow. Sit down."

You sat. Not because he told you to, but because your legs were tired and your stomach was empty and the smell of the Pad Thai was making your mouth water despite everything. He sat across from you and pushed the container toward you, unwrapping his own and for a few minutes neither of you spoke. You ate. He didn't, not really. He moved food around his container with his fork and took occasional bites that he didn't seem to taste. His eyes kept drifting to your stomach and then snapping back to his food like he'd been caught doing something.

"You can't tell anyone." You said.

His fork stilled. "I wasn't going to."

"I mean it. Not your family. Not your people. Nobody. Not yet anyway."

"I heard you."

"This stays between us until I figure out what I'm doing."

"I said I heard you." His voice was still controlled, still even, but there was an edge to it now, the faintest thread of something defensive. He set his fork down. "You think I'm going to run and tell someone? You think that's who I am?"

"I think you have a lot of people in your life who manage things for you and I don't want this managed."

"Nobody's going to manage this. This is between you and me. I'm not an idiot."

"I didn't say you were."

"Then stop talking to me like I'm going to fuck this up before there's anything to fuck up."

The sharpness surprised both of you. You could see it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers pressed flat against the table, the way he looked at you with something almost startled behind the control. He hadn't meant to snap, you could tell. He was usually so careful with you, so measured and the fact that he'd let even that small crack show meant this was hitting him harder than he wanted you to see.

You didn't fire back, which was unusual. Normally you would have gone for the throat, would have matched his sharpness with something sharper, would have left a mark. But the two lines on the test and the three days you'd spent sitting with this alone had taken the fight out of you, at least for tonight.

"Okay." You spoke quietly.

He exhaled, slowly. Ran both hands over his face, pressing his palms into his eyes and when he dropped them his expression was different. Softer. More open. More like the boy who had cried over broken dinosaur toys and less like the man who held a room in his hands without raising his voice.

"I'm sorry." He apologised. "I shouldn't have said it like that."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. You just told me something massive and I'm sitting here snapping at you about my family." His eyes found yours and held them. There was something in his gaze that you hadn't seen before, something that made the back of your neck prickle, something that sat just beneath the surface of every interaction you'd ever had with him and had never quite broken through.

"I need to say something." He said. "And I need you to let me finish before you say anything back."

Your stomach tightened. "Michael."

"Let me finish." He was quiet for a moment, looking at his hands and when he spoke his voice was low and careful, like he was handling something fragile. "I've been in love with you since I was sixteen years old."

The words landed in the space between you and sat there.

"I know how that sounds." He continued, before you could speak. "I know you think I don't know what that word means because of who I am and how many people have said that word to me meaning something else entirely. But I've always known. Since that Christmas at your mother's house when you yelled at me for knocking over your drink and I stood there, looking at you, thinking I was going to lose my mind. You hated me and I thought, this is it, this is the person and I've been thinking about it ever since."

You opened your mouth. Nothing came out.

"You said you'd let me finish."

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face said something." He almost smiled. Almost. "I know you don't believe me. I know this is probably the worst possible time to say this, with everything else, with the baby, with whatever this is between us that we've been calling casual for four months when it hasn't been casual for a single second, but I know that I love you.”

"You don't love me." You said finally and your voice was smaller than you wanted it to be. "You love that I fight with you and that I'm not scared of you. That's not the same thing."

"It is the same thing. It's exactly the same thing." He leaned forward, his forearms on the table, his hands reaching across toward yours but not touching, leaving the choice to you. "You think I don't know the difference? That I haven't been around enough people to know what this is? People who want me for what I am, for what I can give them, for the name? You think I can't feel the difference between that and this?"

"This is just sex, Michael. Really good sex. That's all it's ever been."

"You don't believe that."

"I do."

"You're lying. You're lying because if you admit it's more, then you have to deal with what that means and you don't want to.”

"I'm not lying."

"You're the bravest person I know and you're terrified of this." His eyes were bright, intent, locked on yours with an intensity that made it hard to breathe. "Why do you think we fought so much? Why do you think every argument we've ever had felt like something more than an argument? You felt it too. I know you did."

The silence stretched. His hands were still on the table, still reaching toward yours and you looked at them, thinking about all the times those hands had been on your body. All the times they had held you, gripped you, traced your skin in the dark and you thought about the Christmas when he knocked the drink over, how you had yelled at him and he had looked at you like you were the only person in the room.

You put your hand in his.

His fingers closed around yours. Tight. His thumb pressed into your palm. His breath left him in a long, shaking exhale and his shoulders dropped, pressing his mouth against your knuckles and holding it there.

“We’re going to figure this out, just give me a chance to prove myself to you.”

–––––

The first three months were good. Genuinely, quietly good, in a way that surprised both of you because neither of you had expected it to work and neither of you had ever been good at the soft, unremarkable parts of being with another person. But there you were. He came over on weeknights and cooked things badly, burning rice and overcooking pasta, once setting off the smoke alarm with a steak that he had insisted on making because he'd seen it done on television and thought it looked simple. You stood in the hallway with a tea towel waving at the ceiling and he stood at the stove with his mouth open, his eyes wide and you laughed so hard you had to sit on the floor.

He bought you things. Not the way he bought things for other people, not the extravagant, performative gifts that made the papers and the magazines. Small things. A book he'd seen in a window that reminded him of something you'd said weeks ago or pair of earrings that were simple yet exactly to your taste. A sweater that was too big for you but soft, so soft and he brought it over, folded in brown paper, saying he'd seen it and thought of you as his ears went red, not looking at you while you opened it.

He touched you constantly. Not just in bed, though in bed he was attentive in a way he hadn't been during the friends with benefits arrangement. Slower, more careful, pressing his mouth against your stomach where the baby was growing and staying there, his breath warm against your skin, his hands cradling your hips like something sacred. But outside of bed too. His hand on the small of your back when you stood at the kitchen counter. His fingers finding yours in the car. His arm draped over you on the couch while you watched television, his face buried in your hair, his breathing evening out into something close to sleep. He was physically incapable of not being near you and for those first months it felt like warmth instead of weight.

You talked about names. Not seriously, not with any conviction, but in the speculative way that expectant parents talk about names when they're laying in bed at eleven o'clock at night. The negotiation was the point, not the outcome and it made him smile in a way that was so unguarded, so open, that you had to look away sometimes because it hurt to see it and know that you were the reason for it.

The first argument happened in the sixth month.

It started over nothing. It always started over nothing, or what felt like nothing until it wasn't, until the nothing had grown teeth and was tearing at something that had been bleeding long before either of you noticed. You were at his place, Hayvenhurst, the sprawling estate that smelled like furniture polish and always felt too big, too empty, too full of people who weren't there. You were sitting in the living room with your feet up on the armrest, a glass of water on the side table because you couldn't drink anymore. He was across the room on the phone, talking to someone about something scheduling related, a shoot or a rehearsal, his voice low and smooth. You weren't listening until you heard him say a name.

A woman's name. Someone from the label, someone from a video shoot, someone whose voice you didn't recognise but whose tone you did because it was warm and familiar. It was the kind of warmth that women used with him when they wanted something and he was responding to it in kind, his own voice dropping into that register he used when he was being charming, the one that made people feel like they were the only person in the room.

It shouldn't have mattered. It didn't matter. You knew that. You knew he wasn't doing anything, you knew the call was professional, you knew the warmth in his voice was just the way he spoke to everyone because he was incapable of being cold to another human being unless he was actively trying to destroy them, which he never was. You knew all of this and it didn't matter. By the time he hung up the phone and turned to you with that easy smile, you were already standing.

"I'm going home."

His smile faltered. "What? Why?”

"I'm tired."

"It's eight o'clock."

"I'm tired, Michael."

He stood, coming toward you. His hand reached for your arm, gentle, the way he always was and you pulled away before he could touch you. The pull was sharper than you meant it to be and his hand hung in the air between you. 

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"Nothing's wrong. I want to go home."

"Something's wrong, talk to me."

"There's nothing to fucking talk about."

He blinked. The profanity was new. You didn't usually swear at him, not like that, not with that kind of heat and you could see him recalibrating, adjusting, trying to find the line you'd just crossed and figure out how to get you back over it.

"It was work.” He said quietly. "That's all it was."

"Oh, fuck off, Michael. Don't do that. Don't stand there and tell me what it was like I'm stupid."

"I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm saying it was a work call."

"A work call. Right. A work call where she giggled, you went all soft voiced and I sat here while you flirted with someone three feet away from me."

"I wasn't flirting."

"You were doing that thing. That voice thing. That thing you do where you make someone feel like they're the only person on the planet. You think I don't recognise it? You think I haven't been on the receiving end of it?"

"That's just how I talk."

"Bullshit. That is absolute bullshit and you know it."

His jaw tightened. The control was still there, still holding, but you could see the effort now, could see him gripping it with both hands.

"Sit down.”  He said. "Please. Let's talk about this."

"I don't want to sit down. I want to go home. I want to not be pregnant and I want to not be sitting in your stupid fucking mansion listening to you charm someone on the phone."

The words came out before you could stop them. All of them, not just the anger but the thing beneath it, the ugly, honest thing you'd been carrying in your chest like a stone. His face changed. The control slipped, just for a second and what came through was hurt, real hurt, the kind that made his eyes go wide and his mouth press into a thin line.

"You don't mean that." He said.

"Maybe I do."

"You don't mean the part about the baby."

"I didn't say I didn't want the baby, I said I didn't want to be pregnant. There's a difference."

"There's no difference. That's our child."

"Don't you dare make this about that. You think you can stand there and use the baby to make me feel guilty for being upset?”

"I'm not using the baby. I'm stating a fact."

"You're deflecting. You always deflect. Someone flirts with you, then I get upset and suddenly we're talking about semantics instead of the fact that you were on the phone, flirting, while I sit here with your baby inside of me."

"I was talking about a scheduling conflict. You're being ridiculous."

The word hit you like a slap. You had never been called ridiculous by him, not once, not in all the years you'd known him, not through all the fights and the screaming matches and the slammed doors. He had called you stubborn, impossible, infuriating and a hundred other things that were sharp, but never once had he made you feel so small.

"Ridiculous?” You repeated the word back to him, your voice very quiet.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Ridiculous? I'm carrying your child. My life is practically over and you're calling me ridiculous."

"I said I didn't mean it."

"Fuck you."

"Stop."

"Fuck you, Michael. Fuck you, and your phone calls, and your mansion, and your money, and your charm and every single woman who's ever looked at you like you're something special because you're not. You're just a man. You're just a man who happens to be famous and you use it like a weapon."

His face hardened. The hurt was still there but something else was rising beneath it, something defensive and sharp edged, the part of him that was used to being adored and could not reconcile that with the way you were looking at him right now.

"You're being cruel.” He said.

"I'm being honest. That's not the same thing."

"You're angry and you're taking it out on me but you need to stop before you say something you can't take back."

"I've already said a hundred things I can't take back. What's one more?"

He stepped toward you. Close. Close enough that you could smell his cologne, the one he always wore, the one that had become so familiar it lived in your clothes, your sheets, your hair. His hands came up and held your face, firm, not rough but not gentle either. He tilted your head up so you had to look at him.

"I love you." He said. 

You pulled his hands off your face. Not gently.

"Don't touch me when I'm like this."

"Then stop being like this."

"I can't stop. That's the point. That's the whole fucking point, Michael. I can't stop being angry, jealous and I can't stop feeling like my body isn't mine anymore. Everytime you touch me, it's like a reminder that I belong to you now and I never wanted to belong to anyone."

His expression faltered slightly.

"Tell me why every part of my life has your name on it? The flat is yours. The money is yours. The baby has your genes. My body is changing for your child. What's left that's mine? What's fucking left?"

He didn't answer. He stood there with his hands at his sides and his chest heaving, his eyes locked on yours. The silence was thick and suffocating.

"I had a career." You said and your voice cracked. "I had something that was mine, something that wasn't you. And now it's gone because of this baby, yet I can't even be angry about it because you’ll make me feel stupid."

"I said I was sorry. I said I didn't mean it."

"Sorry doesn't fix a goddamn thing."

"Then what does? Tell me what to do. I'll do it, I'll do whatever you want, just tell me."

"Stop flirting with other women on the phone."

"I wasn't flirting."

"There it is. There's the fucking deflection again."

"I'm not deflecting. I'm telling you the truth and you won't hear it."

"I won't hear it because it's not the truth, it’s just you acting like you're always innocent and I'm always crazy.”

"I never called you crazy."

"You called me ridiculous, which is close enough."

You were crying now. Not the quiet, dignified kind. The ugly kind. The kind that came with shaking and sounds you couldn't control, the kind that pregnancy hormones dragged out of you like something physical, something that lived in your body and erupted without permission. You pressed the heels of your hands into your eyes and the tears kept coming. You hated yourself for it, hated the weakness, the vulnerability, that he was standing there watching you fall apart.

"Baby." He said and the word was soft, so soft, reaching for you again.

"Don't call me that."

"Please. Let me hold you? Please."

"I don't want to be held. I want to be left alone."

You grabbed the glass of water from the side table and threw it. Not at him. At the wall. It hit the plaster and shattered, water and glass exploding outward. The sound was violent and satisfying in a way that made your chest ache. He flinched, actually flinched, stepping back, his eyes wide, his hands raised like he was trying to tame a wild animal.

"Hey." He said. "Hey. Okay. It's okay."

"Don't tell me it's okay. Don't fucking patronise me."

"I'm not patronising you. I'm trying to help."

"You can't help. Nobody can help. I'm twenty seven years old and my life is over. I'm stuck with you and your jealousy and your suffocating need to be everything and I can't breathe. I can't fucking breathe."

Something shifted in his face. The concern didn't disappear but it changed, curdled and beneath it came something cooler, something more deliberate. He straightened as his hands went into his pockets. His chin lifted slightly and when he spoke, his voice was different. Quieter. Calmer. The kind of calm that made the back of your neck prickle.

"Stuck with me?" He repeated. "Interesting choice of words."

"Don't do that. Don't go all cold and analytical on me."

"I'm not going cold, I'm listening. You said you were stuck with me and I want to make sure I understand what you mean."

"You know what I mean."

"I think I do. I think you mean that you feel trapped. That the baby and the flat, the money, all make you feel like you can't leave. Is that right?"

"Stop talking to me like I'm a patient."

"I want you to hear what I'm about to say." He took a step closer but not toward you. Toward the centre of the room, planting himself and the shift in his posture was subtle but unmistakable. He was not reaching for you anymore, he was standing his ground. "You said you wanted to leave and you've been saying it in different ways for weeks. So leave. Go. Walk out that door and don't come back."

"I will."

"Do it then."

"I'm going to."

"Go on." He gestured toward the door and the gesture was open, almost generous. His face was calm, so calm and his eyes were watching you with a precision that made your skin crawl. "Go. Leave. Take a cab. Go back to your flat. Sit there alone and be free of me."

"Fuck you."

"That's what I thought."

"Don't you dare stand there and act like you've won something."

"I haven't won anything. I'm proving a point. You don't want to leave. You want to be angry and you want me to chase you. The drama is easier than admitting that you need me."

"I don't need you."

"You do. You need the flat, the money and the groceries. The appointments and every single thing I provide because you have nothing. You had a career that was going nowhere. You had a flat you could barely afford that I pay for. You had a life that was going absolutely fucking nowhere and I gave you everything. Now you're standing here telling me you're stuck. You're not stuck, you're taken care of. There's a difference."

The cruelty of it was precise. Not explosive, not loud. Surgical. He said it the way he said everything, with that low, measured voice that could make a room fall silent, and the words cut through you like something sharp and clean and you stood there bleeding from wounds you couldn't see.

"You bastard." You whispered.

"Maybe. But I'm the bastard who pays for your flat and your food. The same bastard who's also going to provide for this child for the rest of its life, so maybe think about that before you start throwing glasses and telling me how trapped you are."

"I never asked for any of that."

"You didn't have to. That's what money does. It provides, takes care of things. You should be grateful."

"Grateful? You want me to be grateful?"

"I want you to be realistic. I want you to look at your life and understand what it looks like without me in it, because I'll tell you what it looks like.” He paused, just for a brief moment.

“A one bedroom flat you can't afford as well as a baby you can't feed. It looks like bus rides to checkups and hand me down clothes, counting every penny until the end of the month. That's what you're choosing when you stand there and tell me you're leaving."

"You don't get to hold money over my head."

"I'm not holding it over your head. I'm reminding you. There's a difference."

"Stop saying there's a fucking difference. You say that every time you want to make me feel small. There's a difference, there's a difference. You're the same. You're exactly the same."

He smiled. Not a warm smile. Not the smile that made his ears go red and his eyes go soft. A different smile. A smile that was all teeth and control, the smile he used in boardrooms and negotiations, the smile that said he had already calculated every possible outcome and knew exactly how this ended.

"You're right." He said. "I am the same, I've always been the same. And all I’m telling you is that you're not going anywhere. You can scream, throw things, call me every name in the book, but, you are not leaving nor are you taking my baby and you sure as hell are not walking out of my life. Not now. Not ever."

"Watch me."

"I have been watching you. For twenty years. But don’t forget, you came to me. To my party. You let me kiss you, you let me fuck you and most important of all, you let me put a baby inside you. Now here we are and you're still pretending you have a choice."

"I do have a choice."

"You think you have a choice but that choice was made the second you got into my bed, when that test came back positive and you told me, I decided I was going to keep you. And I am going to keep you, not because you want me to, but because I want to. I keep everything I've ever loved and I don't let go."

"You sound insane."

"I sound like a man who knows what he wants.”

You stood there, six months pregnant, barefoot on the hardwood of his living room, crying, shaking, your hands balled into fists at your sides and you looked at the man in front of you, the boy who had loved you since he was a teenager, the man who was using that love like a weapon. Something inside you that had been bending for months finally broke.

"I'm leaving you.” You said. Your voice was steady now, steadier than it had been all night and that steadiness was not calm but exhaustion, the flat, dead exhaustion of someone who had nothing left to fight with. "I'm leaving and you will never see this child. Do you hear me? Never."

His face didn't change. The smile stayed. The calm stayed. The hands in the pockets stayed. He looked at you the way a person looks at a chess board when they are three moves ahead and the game is already won.

"No.” He said, flatly.

"You don't get to say no."

"I just did."

"I'll take you to court. I'll get a lawyer. I'll fight you."

"With what money?” 

The question landed like a punch. He asked it gently, almost curiously, the way someone asks about the weather and the casualness of it was worse than any cruelty because it meant he wasn't even trying to hurt you. He was just stating a fact.

"With what money?" He asked again, quieter. "For a lawyer, for a custody battle. Where is that money coming from?"

"I'll find a way."

"There is no way because it’s all me. There's my money. There's my lawyers. My name is printed onto every piece of paper that matters, even down to the key of your flat that I'm not giving back. There's my groceries in your kitchen and my baby in your body. My life is wrapped around yours so tight that you'd have to tear yourself apart to get free."

"You can't do this."

"I can and I will.”

"I'll disappear, somewhere you can't find me."

He laughed but not a big laugh. A short, quiet exhalation through his nose and the sound was devastating because it was genuine, because he actually found it funny, because the idea of you disappearing from him was so absurd to him that it made him laugh.

"Disappear?" He asked, that shit eating grin still taut on his lips. "Go ahead. Try. I have people and plenty of resources. I have more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes and every single dollar of it will be spent finding you if you run. You won't make it to the end of the street before someone calls me."

"You're threatening me."

"I'm telling you the truth. There's a difference."

"If you use that word one more time I swear to God."

"Then stop acting like there isn't one. Stop acting like you have leverage because this isn’t a negotiation. It's a statement. You are mine. That baby is mine. This life you're living is mine and I am not about to give any of it up. Certainly not for your pride or your fucking freedom."

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

"I do. I hate you. I hate what you've done to me."

"You love me. You've loved me since that Christmas and you've been running from it ever since. I have chased you across every room, every argument and every slammed door for twenty years. What makes you think I won’t chase you for twenty more if that's what it takes? I will spend every dollar I have tying you to me in ways you can't even imagine.”

Your face burned rosy, the heat rising beneath your cheeks like gasoline on a fire. 

“The best lawyers in the country, the kind of custody arrangement that keeps you within arm's reach for the next eighteen years. Every school holiday, every birthday, every milestone, I will be there. You won't be able to blink without me knowing about it."

"That's not love."

"Maybe not for some. But it’s our love."

He pulled his hands from his pockets, crossing the room as he stopped in front of you, close enough that his cologne filled your lungs. His hand came up and his fingers traced the line of your jaw, feather light, his thumb brushing the tears from your cheek. His touch was gentle, impossibly gentle, and it was the cruelest thing of all because it reminded you that he loved you, that he had always loved you, that the love was real even when the rest of it was poison.

"You're not going anywhere.” He said softly. "Neither is the baby. We're going to figure this out, together. Whether you like it or not."

"Michael."

"I mean it. I will keep you in my life by any means necessary.”

The tears were still coming. Your hands were still shaking. The baby was moving inside you, restless, pressing against your ribs like it was trying to escape and you stood there in the living room of the house that smelled like furniture polish whilst you looked at the man who had loved you since he was sixteen. Who was now holding you in place with nothing but money and the terrifying certainty that he would never, ever let go.

"I'll fight you." You spoke, the words barely a whisper.

"I know you will and I’m counting on it but fighting me means you're still here. It means you haven't given up and I would rather that than your absence, sweetheart."

He kissed your forehead softly. The way a person kisses something they own.

"I'll see you tomorrow.” He said.

He left. The door closed. You stood in the living room with the glass shattered on the floor, the water spreading across the hardwood. You couldn't breathe and you couldn't leave. Hell, you couldn’t even make him stop and the absolute worst part was that some small, broken part of you didn't want him to.

But the breakup changed nothing.

You buckled. Not all at once, not in a single dramatic moment that could be pointed to and named. It was gradual, the way all surrender is gradual, a slow erosion of the walls you had built until there was nothing left but the foundation and even that was crumbling. He was patient. That was the thing about him that no one understood, the thing that made him so dangerous. He was not violent. He was not cruel. He was patient. He had loved you for twenty years and he would love you for twenty more and in the meantime he would simply wait, filling every gap, occupying every silence, making himself so essential to the machinery of your life that removing him would have meant the whole thing collapsed.

It started with the nights. He would show up, the key still working because you had stopped changing the locks and he would stand in the doorway with food or flowers or nothing at all.  His face would be open and exhausted, so full of love that it made your chest ache. You would step aside and let him in, not because you had forgiven him, not because you had forgotten what he said about money, lawyers and custody, but because you were seven months pregnant. Your back hurt and your feet were swollen, the flat was cold and quiet and the loneliness was a physical thing, a weight on your chest that made it hard to breathe but he was warm and he was familiar. He smelled like home even when home was the place that was hurting you.

He would cook for you. Badly, always badly, the same burned rice and overcooked pasta. You would sit at the kitchen table with your hand on your stomach, watching him move around your kitchen with that particular grace of his, the one that belonged on a stage and he would talk about nothing, about a song he was working on or a meeting he had or something funny one of his brothers said and his voice would fill the flat the way it filled every room, low and constant. You would listen and not speak, the silence from your end would be its own kind of conversation, the kind that said I am here but I have not forgiven you and he would hear it but he wouldn’t push.

Michael was gentle with you. In the way he touched you, in the way he held you, in the way he pressed his mouth against your stomach and stayed there, his breath warm against your skin, his hands cradling your hips like you were something breakable. He rubbed your feet when they ached. He brought you water in the middle of the night when you woke up thirsty and disoriented. He slept beside you, curled around you, his arm across your waist, his hand resting on the place where the baby moved. His body was a furnace, always had been and the heat of him seeped into your muscles and that ache that lived in your lower back. You let him, because the letting was easier than the fighting, you were so tired of fighting.

But he was not only gentle. There were other nights, nights when he arrived with something darker in his eyes, something coiled and restless. You could see it before he said a word, could read the tension in his jaw and the set of his shoulders, the way his hands moved, not reaching for you but unbuttoning his cuffs, loosening his collar, like he was preparing for something. The jealousy lived in him like a second heartbeat and when it was activated, when something had set it off, a phone call or a name or a photograph in a magazine of you from before, from the life you used to have, the modelling life, the free life, he would come to you and he would not be gentle.

He would fuck you like he was trying to prove something. Not to you. To himself. To the thing inside him that was terrified of losing you, that had always been terrified, since you were children, since the first time you yelled at him and he realised you were the only person in the world who was not afraid of him. He would press you against the wall or bend you over the couch or lay you down on the bed, pinning your wrists above your head and his mouth would be on your neck, your collarbone, your breasts. His hands would grip your hips hard enough to leave marks, the kind of marks that faded by morning but served their purpose in the dark, the kind that said mine without words.

He would talk to you during it. Not sweet things. Not the way he talked during the gentle nights, the names and the tenderness. Different words. Rougher. He would tell you that you were his. He would tell you no one else would ever touch you. He would tell you he could feel you, all of you, every part of you, that you were his and the baby was his, the flat was his and the life you were living was his. That you would never, ever, ever be free of him. His voice would be low. Ragged. Stripped of all the charm and performance. What was left was raw, possessive and terrifyingly honest, and you would come apart beneath him, not because the words were romantic but because they were true, because he meant every single one of them. The truth of it, the absolute certainty of it, undid you in a way that tenderness never could.

You enjoyed it. That was the part you could never say out loud, the part that lived in the darkest corner of your chest and pulsed there like a guilty heartbeat. You enjoyed the roughness, the jealousy, the way he held you down and told you you were his whilst he fucked you like he was branding you, as if he was leaving something permanent inside you. The enjoyment was complicated and ugly… it did not align with anything you believed about yourself, about love or freedom, but it was there, undeniable, physical, the way your body responded to his the way it always had, since that first night at Hayvenhurst, since the kiss and the undoing.

Michael still looked after you, even on the rough nights, the same ones where he was fucking the jealousy out of himself and into you but still careful with your body because of the baby. His hands that gripped your hips would shift, soften, find the place where the skin was stretched tight over the swell of your stomach and hold it, protect it, cradle it even while the rest of him was consuming you. He would check on you afterwards, his breathing still ragged, his skin still damp and he would ask if you were okay, if the baby was okay, if you needed anything. The question would be asked in a voice that was wrecked and still half lost in whatever dark place the jealousy had taken him but the tenderness that came after the violence of it, the care that followed the consumption, was its own kind of cruelty because it reminded you that he loved you, that he had always loved you, that the love was the engine driving all of it, the good and the terrible and everything in between.

You let him stay, night after night, week after week, through the seventh month, the eighth and into the ninth when the baby was so big you could barely sleep. Michael would lie behind you with his hand on your stomach, his mouth against your hair and his breathing slow. Steady. You would close your eyes and feel his heartbeat against your back, the baby's heartbeat under his palm and the two rhythms would sync. The house would be quiet and the city would be quiet and for a few hours, in the dark, in the space between waking and sleeping, it would feel like something that could work.

But it could not work and you knew that. You had always known that. You knew it the way you knew the modelling was over and the career was finished, the way you knew that the girl who had walked into that Hayvenhurst party in a black dress with two glasses of wine and a sharp tongue was gone, replaced by someone heavier and bound to another person in a way that could never be undone. The baby was coming and when it arrived, when you held it in your arms for the first time, you looked at its face and saw Michael in it, the dark eyes, the sharp cheekbones and the mouth that would one day smile the way he smiled, you knew that freedom was not something you would ever have again.

Not because he had taken it from you. Not entirely. You had given it away, piece by piece, the flat, the money, the key, your body and your nights, there was now nothing left to give because the baby was the last piece, the final surrender, the thing that tied you to him so completely that no lawyer or lock, no city or continent could undo it. You were his. The baby was his. The life you were living was his. And some nights, when he was asleep beside you, his hand was on your stomach and his breath was warm against your neck with the baby kicking gently under his palm, you would lay there in the dark and feel the walls of the cage close around you. They were beautiful, expensive and lined with love. You would think this is it, this is my life now, this is what I chose and the thought would sit in your chest like a stone. You would close your eyes, but that was it. No tears, no fight. You had nothing left to give, because you knew, deep down, there was nowhere left to go.