I can't answer that with her tucked away in a fortress of her own making. "Come here." My hand extends toward her. "Let me hold you and I'll tell you."
"Amos," she sighs.
"Please?"
Giving in, she crawls onto my lap. I wrap her around me and hug her, caressing up and down the length of her spine. A finger pokes my side, making me flinch. "Don't think you're getting out of answering me just because I did what you said."
Hiding a smile in her hair, I hold her tighter and breathe in her scent. I love soft and submissive Mercy but I'm loving this feistier side of her, too. "You're no broodmare. I've waited all my life foryou, Mercy. And it seems you've been waiting for me, too. And you may not believe me, but I love you." I need her to see me and know that I mean every word. A quick tilt of her chin and our eyes lock like a pair of magnets. "Not just because I want to make babies with you, but because I look at you and think,Damn, I want to grow old with this woman. I want sunrises and sunsets with you. Every single damn one of them."
She sniffs and dips her head down, but I lift it back up and kiss away the wetness trailing down her cheeks toward her trembling lips. I've made her cry again, but I think these are good tears. "Life is short, kitten. Too damn short. And if you don't reach out and grab it by the balls to make it slow down, it'sgonnapass you up and be over before you even know it's happened. And I don't want you spending the rest of your life alone. Not when we can do it together. Not when we can make a family."
Sorrow flashes in her eyes for a brief second before they clench shut, her mouth gaping in a silent cry that precedes the most despairing and guttural sound I've ever heard from a human being. With athunk, her head falls against my chest, fingernails gouging my back as she fists my shirt.
These aren't good tears.
Panicking, I pull back to see her face, but she constricts around me like a snake, her gulping sobs breaking my heart. "Baby, what's wrong? Was...was it something I said?" I replay my words in my mind as her tears drench my shirt. Love...babies...sunrises and sunsets...family.
Family.
I want a family more than anything, she'd said.
Because she's an orphan and deprived of love as a child? The beating of my heart picks up. "Oh, Mercy...I'll give it all to you. All the babies. The biggest family you want, that's what we'll have."
"Stop." Mixed in with her tears, the word is too soft and I don't hear it.
"We'll add on however many rooms we need to. Myfamily'llhelp out, too, because all of usShayslove kids. Connor can build a rocking chair—"
"Amos. Stop it."
"—and mydad'llmake a crib—"
"Stop it! Do you hear me?" Her watery eyes meet mine, filled with pain as she croaks the words in raspy anguish. "No more. I can't—my heart can't take it. Just stop."
"Tellme what's wrong, Mercy. Please." Reaching for the tissues on the nightstand, I tenderly wipe the mess on her face. "I can't fix it if I don't know where to start, baby."
Pitiful sniffs flare her red-tipped nose. "It's not something you can fix, Amos. I"—her gaze falls to my throat—"I don't know if I can have kids. Ever."
Stunned, I try to process what my ears just heard. "Mercy, what..."
"I have PCOS. Polycystic ovary syndrome. My body doesn't like to let my ovaries work like they should, and...and..."
She needs to catch her breath. "Breathe, Mercy. With me. In and out...there you go."
Shuddering inhales slowly smooth out. "I only have one fallopian tube, too. And yeah, there's a possibility that I can ovulate from the opposite ovary and have the egg travel to the other side, but it's small—so small—for it to happen correctly. And the older I get, the more I worry about it happening at all. I'm thirty-three, Amos." Her fist punches the bed in frustration. "Thirty-three and about to be a thirty-four-year-old virgin! Some women struggle for years, and they've all got a head start on me. Even with medicine to help regulate my periods, it still isn't completely effective."
She's throwing all this information at me—and I hear her, I really do—but my attention locks onto that word.Medicine. "That's what your pills are for? You don't have diabetes?"
A weak laugh leaves her. "Is that what you thought it was for? Mycondition, as you called it?"
"Yep. I looked up the name on the pill bottle." I see something else now. How my talk about making babies and a family with her must have been like a knife to the heart all this time. "Mercy, I want you to listen to me and listen to me good—I love you for who you are. Not for what your body can or can't do for me. Come here, kitten."
Turning her sideways in my lap, I lean against the headboard and tuck her head to my chest, loving the way she curls into me. "Families can be built any way they need to be, by blood or by choice. That's what my dad did with ours. I don't remember much about my birth mother because she died when I was one, but when I was six, Dad brought me a mother. Married her right before he picked me up from my uncle's and introduced me to her."
"You mean your dad and...and Corina?"
If her eyes get any wider, they'll pop out of their sockets. "He did. You ought to ask her after we eat. In fact, food's probably almost ready. Do you feel like going out there with me?"
"Oh, Amos." Alarm stiffens her muscles. "I can't go looking like this, and my head is killing me. Would your...Corinathinkme rude if I asked for a little snack or something to eat in here? I don't want to impose."
