"Does he really love me?"

That was the question I should have been asking myself. That was what the girlfriend of a rock star would normally ask herself, wasn't it? It was a world full of temptation and passion and many, many more than willing fans. Competition was everywhere you turned. Insecurity was inevitable. Women in my position needed to have a thick skin and strong spine.

But we weren't made of rubber.

You could never truly trust someone when they were away from home for so long and offered such a variety of sins. I couldn't believe Gakuto when he told me he loved only me when he wasn't willing to prove it at the alter. What kind of love was that? If he loved only me, why couldn't he commit?

You could never truly trust someone when they were left at home for so long and offered nothing. The house was too quiet, and I was too lonely, and the walls only spoke of how much more I deserved. Their surfaces were always painted with warped images that projected from my subliminal self. Each room showed a different slide; a man down on one knee as the cherry blossoms fell; a distorted woman dressed in white; a swirling mass of pink and cream. The last picture would span out, and an infant would be sleeping, cradled in a crib of bleached cottons under the moonlight. Two silhouettes would stand over the tiny angel, and the three were one joined soul and body and essence.

A family. I'd always wanted a family more than anything else in the world. To be a bride and a mother, that was my calling. He knew that. He knew that, so why wouldn't he give it to me? Why was I still dreaming about it? He got to live his dream, so why couldn't I live mine? What kind of love was that?

But still, questioning his love for me wasn't the issue. My worries were rooted more towards the mystery: "Does he hate me."

He had to hate me. Honestly. He had every reason to. Just like I couldn't trust him, he couldn't trust me. The proof of that was in my womb.

Women all around the world knew Gackt for his ageless features and physic, but I was one of the few to ever see him look so jejune. He was sitting across from me on a separate couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced before him. His cheeks were sunken in, it seemed, and the shadows carved fine lines around his eyes and lips. Everything about him was grim.

His eyes snapped up to meet mine. Despite the frosty blue contacts, they were lacking all color.

His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed, and his lips struggle to part. "I thought you were taking medication?"

I didn't say anything. I was taking medication. Two types of medication. Contraceptive pills, like we had agreed on in the beginning, but something else, too, starting more recently.

I'd been getting headaches. Migraines. I blamed the walls and their dizzying simulations, but I didn't tell my physician about that. She did tell me about the side-effects of the new bottle of pills she prescribed me, though. One was the break-down of estrogen supplied in birth control.

But I still took them. Hell, taking them was practically the only reason I woke up in the morning. The side-effects would be the true cure for my headaches, I decided. Or maybe it was heartaches?

Gackt took in a long breath through his nose, raising his fists so that it would press against his mouth. He stared straight ahead, blind and bleak. "Is it mine?"

A part of me broke. A part of me was horrified that he'd feel the need to ask such a thing.

But another part of me knew very well that if it hadn't worked with him, I would have moved on to someone else.

"Yes," I said, my voice husky and grating against a wall of suppressed tears. "It's yours."

I wasn't sad, but I wanted to cry.

I was so happy I wanted to cry. For the first time in a long time, I was looking forward to the future. I had a future. Me and the baby had a future.

Me and the baby and the baby's father, Gackt.

My eyes blinked, and the world sharpened by a few shades all around me, boxing me into reality. Almost as if in a daze I looked up, my stare wandering around the structure of Gackt's face before finding and flickering back and forth between his eyes. They – his eyes – were suddenly wide, and I knew he knew.

I could feel the corners of my lips curling up at the most minuscule angle. My hands, in their own oxydocin-driven motion, had settled at my abdomen, shielding the tiny, perfect body behind them from any and all threats in the dark and dilapidated world. It was what I was meant to do. My whole life had been leading up to this point. Despite all of the pain and emptiness I’d felt in the past, it was all behind me, in the past. The path ahead was bright.

I had what I wanted. Everything I had always wanted was finally there in front of me, at my fingertips, delivered from the hand of God himself. I'd never been a religious person, but they did say He worked in mysterious ways. This was just one of them.

Gakutot stood. His chest heaved, and the skin on his neck stretched tight across his throat as he struggled to take in each breath. He looked anywhere else but at me, his hands first gripping his hips, then his hair, and then falling down to his sides in defeat.

When he turned to me, I saw it all in his eyes. The betrayal, and the fear, and the anger. It pierced me like an iron maiden and punctured my air passage.

There weren't any words to express whatever emotions were running through him. Instead, he laughed once, a single, crusified laugh. Then his jaw tightened, and he gulped, and after one last glance in my direction he made his way out of the room. His movements were stiff. Forcefully slow, but all the while supressing an omnipotent urge to run as far and fast as his feet could take him.

I averted my attention once Gakuto had escaped my sight. My fingers caressed my unswollen stomach, soothing the little life inside of me. Daddy was gone, but just for now. He would be back. He wouldn't be away forever.

He couldn't be away forever.

He and I were tied together, just like I'd always wanted. In one way or another, we were a part of each other's lives, irrevocably. Not a marriage, but a bond all the same. Finally it was my turn.

Finally my dream was coming true.