I am what I am, and I can’t change.

Not even for her.

“I talked to my parents this afternoon,” Nora says as we sit down to dinner that evening. “They asked me again about visiting them.”

“Did they now?” I give her a sardonic look. “And is that all you talked to them about?”

Nora looks down at her salad plate. “I’m going to tell them soon.”

“When?” It pisses me off that she keeps acting like the baby doesn’t exist. “When you deliver?”

“No, of course not.” She looks up and frowns at me. “How do you know I didn’t tell them yet, anyway? Are you listening in on my conversations?”

“Of course.” I don’t listen in on everything, but I’ve eavesdropped a few times. Just enough to know that her parents remain in blissful ignorance of the latest development in their daughter’s life. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have Nora think all her conversations are monitored. “Did you expect me not to?”

Her lips tighten. “Yes, perhaps. Privacy being a basic human right and all that.”

“There’s no such thing as a basic human right, my pet.” I want to laugh at her naïveté. “That’s a made-up construct. Nobody owes you anything. If you want something in life, you have to fight for it. You have to make it happen.”

“Like you made my captivity happen?”

I give her a cool smile. “Precisely. I wanted you, so I took you. I didn’t sit around pining and wishing.”

“Or dwelling on the construct of human rights, apparently.” Her voice holds just the faintest edge of sarcasm. “Is that how you will raise our child? Just take what you want and don’t worry about hurting people?”

I inhale slowly, noting the tension in her features. “Is that what worries you, my pet?”

“A lot of things worry me,” she says evenly. “And yes, raising a child with a man who lacks a conscience is fairly high on the list.”

For some reason, her words sting. I want to reassure her, tell her that she’s wrong to worry, but I can’t lie to her any more than I can lie to myself.

I have no idea how I’m going to raise this child, what kind of lessons I’m going to impart. Men like me—men like my father—aren’t meant to have children. She knows it, and I know it too.

As though sensing my thoughts, Nora asks quietly, “Why do you even want this baby, Julian? Why is it so important to you?”

I look at her silently, unsure how to answer the question. There’s no good reason for this child to be as important to me as it is. No reason for me to want it as badly as I do. I should’ve been upset—or at the very least, annoyed—by Nora’s pregnancy, but instead, when Goldberg gave us the news, the emotion I felt was so foreign that I didn’t recognize it at first.

It was joy.

Pure, unadulterated joy.