Page 162 of Vow to Claim You

“That’s understandable.” My father’s voice is gentle now. “You’ve been through a trauma. Multiple traumas. No one expects you to have answers right now.” He reaches for my hand, and the gesture feels strange. He hasn’t been affectionate toward any of us for years now. “I’m not asking you to choose anything, habibti. I’m simply letting you know that you have a choice. That you’re not trapped. That whatever happens next, you have a family who loves you and a home waiting for you.”

A home.

Is Monsera still my home? Was it ever, really? Or was it just the place I lived before I started living somewhere else?

And this place—this cold, beautiful, violent world I’ve been thrust into—is this home now? Is anywhere home when you feel this lost?

“I need to think,” I exhale quietly.

“Of course. Take all the time you need.”

My parents leave for Monsera the next day, but my father’s words keep ringing in my mind like a broken tape on repeat.

Naomi comes and sits with me for hours. She tells me stories about the palace, about the time I snuck out to meet Luca and she covered for me until Mother caught us both. I nod in the right places. I make the right sounds. Something that might pass for a smile.

But I’m not there. Not really. I’m somewhere gray and silent, where the only thing that exists is the absence of something I didn’t know I had until I’d already lost it.

Ingrid brings tea I don’t drink and sits with me without needing me to speak. Eero hovers in the doorway, lost, like looking at me hurts him in a way he has no words for.

They all want to help, but there is no help. There’s nothing anyone can say that fills the space where she was.

And Aric is always there.

In the chair beside the bed when I wake. At the window when I manage to stand. Moving through the room like a shadow, never more than a few feet from me. He brings me food I don’t eat. Asks me questions I barely answer. Holds my hand when I can stand to be touched and gives me air when I can’t.

He’s so steady. So controlled.

He still attends meetings, still signs papers, still gives orders, and still shaves every morning and dresses immaculately.

And some ugly, drowning part of me begins to hate him for it.

Because he lost a child too. And he isn’t breaking. He told me our baby was gone, and his voice barely cracked, and I got more sympathy from my father—the last man I’d expect from—than my own husband. The man who should share my pain, my grief. Instead, he watches me come apart, and he stays so calm, so contained, so whole. And the dark unfair thing building in me wants to scream at him.

Did she mean nothing? How are you still standing? How can you carry this without even bending?

I know it isn’t fair. Somewhere under the grief, I know it. But knowing it doesn’t reach the gray place. Nothing reaches the gray place.

Naomi once told me I should take colorful crayons and paint my world with them, but how do I do that if all I see is gray and all I feel is grief and guilt?

I can’t stop blaming myself. I should’ve known… What kind of woman doesn’t know she was pregnant? I was so caught up in the gala preparations and all the chaos around that I haven’t even noticed something has changed. Now that I look back, there were signs. Signs I did not notice. Not pay attention to. I didn’t feel nauseous or have any major symptoms, but I peed a little too often and blamed the cold for it. I felt hungry and thirsty and blamed the stress for it. And I didn’t have my period, but I’ve never had regular periods. If only I realized it a little sooner…

Weeks pass. The wound closes, the stitches dissolve, the pain fades to a dull ache I stop noticing. Kirill comes and goes and eventually pronounces me recovered.

Recovered. As if the body is the only thing that counts. As if the wound that doesn’t show on a scan doesn’t exist.

I start functioning again. I smile when smiling is expected. I nod when they talk about time, about healing, about moving forward. I say the words people need to hear.

But I’m not better. I’ve just gotten better at pretending I am.

And at night, when the house goes quiet, and Aric thinks I’m asleep, I lie with my hand pressed flat to the place where she was, and I can’t stop thinking about what could’ve been. How she would be like. Where is she now.

Anabella.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Aric

Anabella.