Chapter 11: The First Heartbeat
The cold, clinical gel on her lower abdomen made Vanja shiver. The paper gown felt flimsy, absurd, a stark contrast to the profound, terrifying reality expanding beneath it. Dejan’s chair was pulled so close to the examination bed his knees pressed against its metal frame. He held her hand, his thumb tracing frantic circles on her palm. The room was too bright, smelling of antiseptic and lemony cleaner. Through the window, the iconic roof of Anfield was a grey silhouette against a bleached autumn sky.
The sonographer, a cheerful woman named Fiona with a kind smile, moved the transducer wand with gentle precision. The black-and-white static on the monitor swirled, a nebulous galaxy seeking form.
“There we are,” Fiona said, her voice softening. “See that flicker?”
Vanja’s breath caught. In the center of the chaos, a tiny, pulsing light. A frantic, rhythmic flutter. Like a captured star.
Dejan leaned forward, his entire world narrowing to that gray screen. “That’s…?”
“That’s the heartbeat,” Fiona confirmed. She clicked a button, and a rapid, thundering whoosh-whoosh-whoosh filled the room. It was the sound of a miniature gallop, a life at full sprint against impossible odds.
Dejan’s hand tightened around Vanja’s, his grip almost painful. A low, strangled sound escaped him. He dropped his head, pressing his forehead against their joined hands on the sheet. His shoulders shook once. When he looked up, his eyes were sheened with tears he’d never let fall. He turned from the screen to look at her, his expression one of raw, undiluted awe.
“Jebo me,” he whispered, Croatian rough and reverent in the sterile air. He brought their clasped hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles, then turned her hand over and pressed his mouth to her palm. His other hand slid from her thigh to her belly, his large, tattooed fingers splaying possessively over the place where the sound originated.
Fiona, sensing the privacy of the moment, made a few more clicks. “Measuring perfectly. Due date looks to be late May.” She printed a few images, the whirring of the machine a mundane counterpoint to the seismic shift in the room. “I’ll give you two a moment,” she said softly, placing the grainy black-and-white photos on the bed and slipping out.
The door clicked shut. The whoosh-whoosh of their child’s heart continued to play from the machine’s speaker.
Dejan stood abruptly, his chair scraping loudly. In two steps he was at her side, his face burying in the crook of her neck. His breath was hot, uneven. She felt the dampness of his lashes against her skin.
“Čula si?” he murmured into her throat, his voice thick. “You hear that? That’s my son. My daughter. In there.” His hand smoothed over her stomach again, a gesture so tender it made her own eyes burn. Then his tone shifted, dropping lower, saturated with a dark, possessive heat. “Your beautiful, tight little cunt is keeping my baby safe. Fuck, Vanja. Look what you’re doing. Look what you made.”
His words, filthy and worshipful, sent a shocking bolt of arousal straight through her center. The fear, the awe, the clinical setting—it all condensed into a sharp, physical need. She turned her head, found his mouth. The kiss was desperate, all tongue and teeth, a clumsy transmission of everything they couldn’t say.
He pulled back, his eyes blazing. “I need to be inside you. Now. I need to feel you around me while I listen to that.”
He helped her sit up, his movements hurried, his hands trembling slightly as he wiped the gel from her skin with a rough paper towel. He didn’t wait for her to dress, simply wrapped her open gown around her and bundled her coat over her shoulders. He snatched the ultrasound photos from the bed, folding them carefully into his inner pocket, right over his heart.
The drive home was conducted in a fevered silence. His hand was on her knee, gripping, releasing, gripping again. He took the corners too fast. Every stoplight was a personal affront.
He barely had the front door closed before he had her pressed against it, his body pinning hers. The coat slid from her shoulders. He ripped the paper gown, the flimsy material offering no resistance.
“Here,” he growled, his hands on her ass, lifting her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her back against the cool wood of the door. He fumbled with his jeans, freeing himself. He was already painfully hard, thick and ready.
He guided himself to her, nudging through her slick folds. She was drenched, had been since the ultrasound room, her body humming with a potent mix of profound emotion and base hunger.
“You hear that heartbeat in your head?” he rasped, not entering her yet, just pressing the head of his cock against her clit, making her shudder. “You’re going to come with that sound in your ears, thinking of our baby in your womb while I fill you up.”
Then he drove into her, a deep, unchecked plunge that stole the air from her lungs. The angle was intense, pinning her completely. He set a relentless, pounding rhythm against the door, each thrust jolting through her. The force of it, the sheer physical claiming, was a brutal counterpart to the fragile miracle they’d just witnessed.
“This cunt,” he chanted, his breath hot against her ear, his hips a piston. “This perfect, fertile cunt. It’s mine. That heartbeat is mine. Everything. Sve je moje.”
His words unspooled her. The crude possession, layered over the terrifying, beautiful responsibility, broke something open. Her orgasm surged up, unexpected and violent. She cried out, her nails digging into the backs of his shoulders, her inner muscles clamping around him in rhythmic, milking waves.
The feel of her pulsing around him tipped him over the edge. With a guttural roar, he buried himself to the hilt and came, his release pumping into her in hot, endless spurts. He held her there, impaled, both of them shaking, their breathing ragged in the quiet hallway.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out. He lowered her gently until her feet found the floor, but her legs buckled. He caught her, sweeping her up into his arms. He carried her upstairs, into the bathroom.
This time, he ran a bath. He poured in salts that smelled of lavender and chamomile. He helped her in, then sank in behind her, drawing her back against his chest in the warm, steamy water. His hands, so violent moments before, now soaped her skin with infinite care, his fingers gently massaging her belly.
“Late May,” he said, his voice quiet against her damp hair. “After the season ends.”
“If you win anything,” she murmured, leaning into him.
“When we win,” he corrected. His hands stilled. “You’ll be huge. Beautiful.” He paused. “Will you be ashamed?”
She turned her head to look at him. “Of what?”
“Of this. Of looking like this in front of them all. The press. The club.”
She considered it. The thought of her pregnant body, her rounded stomach, being photographed, discussed, dissected. Then she thought of the tiny, flickering light on the screen. The galloping heartbeat.
“No,” she said, and realized she meant it. “Let them look.”
He kissed her shoulder, a soft press of lips. “Good.”
He helped her out, toweled her dry with a tenderness that felt like a vow. He dressed her in one of his own soft t-shirts, the hem falling to her mid-thigh. In the bedroom, he pulled back the duvet and guided her in. He left the room, returning a moment later with the ultrasound photos. He propped them on the nightstand, facing the bed.
He climbed in beside her, pulling her into the familiar fortress of his body. His hand rested on her stomach, over the silent, secret life beneath.
“Halid Bešlić will sing at the christening,” he said into the darkness.
She smiled against his chest. “He’ll be sick of us.”
“He’ll be honored.” Dejan’s voice was already slurring with sleep. “We’ll have a house full of noise. Mess. Toys everywhere. Your books on the floor.”
The image was so visceral, so completely at odds with the sterile silence of the clinic, that her heart clenched. It was a promise. It was a threat. It was everything.
“Sleep,” he murmured.
But she lay awake for a long time, listening to his breathing even out, her hand covering his on her stomach. In the dark, the future wasn’t a vague anxiety. It was a shape. It had a heartbeat. And for now, that was enough.
And for now, that was enough.
The nursery was the last empty room, a hollow square of pale yellow paint they’d chosen after a pointless, tense argument. Vanja had wanted a soft grey. Dejan had insisted on something brighter. “It’s a child, not a minimalist fucking gallery,” he’d grunted, and bought five gallons of sunshine yellow. Now, the scent of fresh paint still clung to the air, sharp and new, mixing with the smell of pine from the unassembled crib pieces leaning against the wall. Cardboard boxes of baby clothes, sent from both their mothers, sat in a hapless pile near the window, a colorful explosion of tiny kits and floral dresses awaiting organization.
Vanja knelt on the floor, the hardwood pressing into her knees through the thin cotton of her sundress. She pulled a miniature Liverpool onesie from a box, her fingers tracing the embroidered crest. A laugh, soft and disbelieving, escaped her. Dejan stood in the doorway, watching her, a cable-knit sweater in his hands that was so small it seemed meant for a doll. His stillness was a palpable thing.
“My mother sent this,” he said, holding it up. The sweater was a traditional pattern, white and blue. “She’s already knitting another, bigger. For when it’s six months old.”
“It’s sweet,” Vanja said, folding the onesie neatly. She felt his gaze like a physical weight.
“She asked about names.”
Vanja stilled. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her we hadn’t decided.” He dropped the sweater onto a nearby rocking chair. “She suggested ‘Milan’. Or ‘Ivan’.”
Vanja pressed her lips together, placing the folded clothes into a drawer of the waiting dresser. “My father suggested ‘Vladimir’. Or ‘Svetozar’.”
A thick silence pooled between them, filled with the ghosts of maps that no longer existed and wars they’d only heard in stories told in bitter whispers. Dejan pushed off the doorframe. The empty room seemed to shrink with his movement. He came to stand behind her, his shadow engulfing hers on the sun-drenched floorboards.
“They want to claim it,” he said, his voice low. “This little thing. They want to stamp it with their own fucking flags.”
“It’s just a name, Dejan.”
“It’s never just a name.” His hands came down on her shoulders, his grip firm. He pulled her up, not gently, until she was standing. He turned her to face him. The afternoon light cut across the sharp planes of his face, catching the green-gold flecks in his eyes that were so like her own. “You know that. Don’t play naive.”
His anger wasn’t at her, not really. It was at history, at bloodlines, at the impossible expectation that this child could be a treaty. She saw the conflict in the tight line of his jaw, the same war that lived in her own marrow. The child would be both, and therefore, in the eyes of some, neither. A new kind of ghost.
Her chin lifted. “What do you want to call it, then?”
He didn’t answer with words. His answer was a kiss, hard and claiming, his tongue pushing past her lips as his hands slid down her back to grasp her ass through the thin dress. The tension from the conversation, from the ultrasound, from the weight of the future, fused into a sharp, single point of need. She kissed him back, biting his lower lip, and he groaned into her mouth.
“What I want,” he growled, pulling back just enough to speak, his breath hot on her face, “is to see you full of me in this room we made for it.” His hands clenched on her ass, pulling her against the rigid proof of his want. “I want you to remember who put it in you. Whose blood mixes with yours in here.” He pressed a rough palm against her lower belly.
The vulgarity, the raw biology of it, sparked a liquid heat between her legs. It cut through the sentimental fog. This was something they owned together, this primal act, outside of politics and grandparents.
“Show me,” she challenged, her voice husky.
A dark, possessive smile touched his lips. In one swift motion, he spun her around and pushed her forward. Her palms slapped flat against the cool, freshly painted wall. The yellow surface was flawless, still slightly damp in places. He gathered the hem of her sundress in one fist, yanking it up over her hips, exposing her bare skin to the cool air of the room. She hadn’t worn anything underneath.
“Look at you,” he muttered, his hand smoothing over the curve of her ass, then down to the soft swell of her belly pressed against the wall. He squeezed her hip, his fingers digging in. “Fucking perfect. This belly.” He leaned in, his teeth grazing the shell of her ear. “Your tits are so full and heavy now. I get hard just watching you walk across a room.”
He undid his jeans with a sharp rip of the zipper, freeing his cock. He was already fully erect, thick and straining. He spat into his palm, slicking himself, then pressed the broad head against her entrance. She was wet, had been since he mentioned his mother’s knitting, the slickness making his push easier.
“This is our fucking country,” he hissed, and drove into her in one brutal, deep stroke.
The force drove her weight harder against the wall. A gasp tore from her throat, part shock, part blinding pleasure. He filled her completely, a harsh, stretching invasion that left no room for gentle thoughts. He pulled back and slammed home again, setting an immediate, punishing rhythm. The sound was obscenely loud in the empty room—the wet, rhythmic slap of his body against hers, flesh on flesh, punctuated by both their ragged breaths.
“Tell me whose it is,” he demanded, one hand splayed on her belly, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. Each thrust jolted her forward, her cheek mashed against the smooth yellow paint.
“Yours,” she gasped, the word punched out of her.
“Louder.”
“Yours!” she cried, her fingers scrambling against the wall for purchase. The crude, territorial claim should have angered her. Instead, it unraveled her, coiling her tighter. The half-assembled crib, the piles of pastel clothes, they were just set dressing for this raw, fundamental act of possession. He fucked her as if he was branding her from the inside, as if to overwrite every other claim with his own.
His pace became frantic, erratic. The hand on her belly slid down, his fingers finding her clit, circling it with a rough, merciless pressure. “Come on my cock,” he snarled, his thrusts turning sharp and shallow, hitting a spot that made her vision whiten at the edges. “Come all over it while I fill this pretty, stretched cunt up.”
The dual sensations—the deep, pounding fullness and the sharp friction on her clit—were too much. Her orgasm detonated without warning, a violent, convulsing wave that ripped through her core. She screamed, her body clamping around him in relentless pulses, her knees buckling. He held her up, pounding through her contractions, his own control shattering.
With a final, guttural shout, he buried himself to the hilt, his body rigid against her back. She felt the hot, sudden flood of his release inside her, a stark, physical claim that left her trembling. He collapsed over her, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, his breath sawing in and out.
They stayed like that, pinned against the nursery wall, for a long moment. The smell of paint and sex and their own sweat hung in the air. Slowly, carefully, he withdrew, his hands coming up to steady her as she winced. He turned her, her dress still rucked around her waist, and pulled her against his chest. His heart hammered against her ear.
On the wall behind her, where her hands had been, were two faint, sweaty palm prints on the perfect yellow paint. A mark. A claim.
He looked over her shoulder at them, then down at her stomach, his expression unreadable. He smoothed her dress down with a tenderness that felt like an apology, or a ceasefire. Outside, the sound of a lawnmower started somewhere down the street, the ordinary world resuming.
“We’ll call it something that means nothing to them,” he said, his voice rough but calm. “A name for here. For now.”
She nodded against his chest, feeling the truth of it settle. Not a treaty. A new place, with its own borders, drawn in sweat on a nursery wall.