Five years.
Daggers.
One thousand, nine hundred, and seventy-three daggers.
I’d done that to him. To us. To me.
That didn’t make me feelbrave.
That made me feel like a goddamncoward.
Sully cocked his head to the side. “But El?—”
“Stop, really.” Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, I opened the car door. But the air was just as stifling as I got out, and all I could think about was making it inside, where maybe the air-conditioning would make things bearable. I never liked September in Minnesota. Never liked not knowing if it would feel like summer or fall, if I’d feel a breeze or if the weather would choke me.
“Eleanor?” Sully called after me. I heard the car door slam, heard his steps as they hastened to catch up to me.
“I’m sorry,” I threw over my shoulder, but my words were blubbery, and I realized I was crying again.
Oh, God, I was sosickof crying.
But mostly, I was sosickof holding everything in all the time.
Sully cursed, called my name again, and I couldn’t do it anymore.
“I wasn’t brave!” I cried, stopping in my tracks just before the front steps and throwing my hands up in defeat. “I’m not brave now. And I wasn’t before. I was terrified. I was scared. And I ranawaybecause of it.”
I turned to find Sully walking up the front sidewalk behind me. “What are you?—”
“You talked about wanting kids since the summer I met you, Sawyer,” I cut in, needing him to understand. “You were thirteenyears old, staring at the stars, and daydreaming about bringing your kids to see them when you got older. And I never thought much of it because I thought I wanted that, too. But then I was twenty, and I got all these clots in my lungs, and there was a day or two there where everyone treated me like I was going todie?—”
“Baby, I know.” His expression cracked, and itkilledme to see. “I was there. I was there, and you had every right to be terrified. Because it wassogoddamn terrifying, El. Nothing in the world has ever scared me more than the thought of losing you.”
I nodded, agreeing. Because if the situation had been reversed, I could only imagine how scared I would have been. But he wasn’t grasping what I was trying to say—not really.
“But I wasn’t okay,” I said, quieter. Barely audible. A truth I’d never said aloud.
Sully had stopped, just a few feet away. His hands sort of hovered in front of him, like he desperately wanted to reach out for me, but he was scared to. Scared that I’d slip away again.
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “And I think I know that now.”
“Because even though I was fine, even though I survived, none of itstopped.” Tears streamed down my face, and I didn’t have it in me to stop them. I just let them run, dripping from my jawline and my chin. “It justmorphed…the way everyone treated me.”
Sully inched closer, a flash of protective anger in his gaze. “Who?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Doctors, nurses, any medical professional I saw in the year after.”
His frown deepened. He shook his head. “I don’t understand, Eleanor.”
“Are you being careful about pregnancy?” I mimicked, channeling the doctors I saw, the things they said, the words that repeated over and over in my brain because they felt like they were repeated to me just as many times. It didn’t matter if I was going in for a pap smear or a throat culture or some goddamn cough syrup. Appointments that had nothing to do with myreproductive needs would end in me walking to my car with a pit in my stomach, worries circulating in my head. “Are you on a new birth control? Are you aware of the risks of being pregnant with your medical history? Make sure you talk to your ob-gyn before you plan for pregnancy. You’ll want to have a plan first. It’ll be high-risk, just so you know.”
High-risk, high-risk, high-risk.
The number of times I thought about those words that year and what they meant for me felt endless.
Sully’s lips were parted, floundering for words. But it was okay because I wasn’t done yet.
“And I wasafraid, Sawyer. I was afraid about not being able to give you the one thing I knew you wanted. I was afraid to admit that pregnancy fuckingterrifiedme, that all these doubts had been put in my head. It felt like…I’d only ever seen women who fully embraced pregnancy, who were excited for it, unbothered by the risks entailed in it. People talk all the time about the pain of childbirth, but it’s not even that. It’s everything else, themortalityof it, and I was ashamed that my feelings were so complicated. It made me feel soselfish, like I was a fucking coward. Like I was only thinking about myself. Like Ifailedyou because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it. For you. For us. Forthem, the children we talked about having. And then I was twenty-two and feeling lost and no longer sure about what I wanted my future to look like, but it was never because I didn’t want you in it.”
