Page 164 of Diego

I keep my eyes half closed while he carries me farther inside. There is a sense of space around us, more than I am used to, and city light coming through what feels like an enormous amount of glass. When I finally lift my head enough to look, I get only the impression of large windows before Diego carries me into the room and lowers me onto an expansive bed.

The mattress gives beneath me, soft enough that my entire body seems to surrender and sink into it. Diego pulls the covers over me and starts to straighten, but my hand closes around his before I am fully aware that I have moved.

“Don’t leave.”

The words come out quietly, and Diego stops immediately. For one horrible second, I feel exposed in a way that has nothing to do with the hospital gown I wore or the blood or the fear. I have spent a week refusing his messages, insisting I needed space, reminding myself how furious I still am with him, but none of that matters right now because I do not want to be alone.

His expression is soft as he looks down at me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He takes off his shoes and gets in beside me. The bed shifts under his weight, and then he reaches for me, drawing me carefully against him without jostling me more than necessary. I go willingly, settling my cheek against his chest while one of his arms wraps around my back and the other rests lightly across me. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear, slower than mine, and after a while I realize I have started matching my breathing to it.

“I’m scared,” I whisper.

His hand moves slowly over my back. “I know.”

“I keep thinking something is going to happen.”

“Me too, but everything is fine, and it's going to be all right. Just rest.”

There is no argument in him tonight and no attempt to tell me what I should feel or what I should do with it. He simply holds me while the fear pumps through me and gradually loses some of its edge.

My eyes grow heavier with every breath, and the last thing I register before sleep finally takes me is Diego’s mouth against my hair and his arms tightening around me just enough to remind me that I am not alone.

I wake slowly, without opening my eyes, and for several minutes I do nothing except lie there and listen to myself breathe. The mattress beneath me is soft, the room around me is quiet, and one hand is resting over my stomach before I am fully conscious.

The memories follow almost immediately, bringing the hospital back in pieces I would rather not revisit: blood soaking through my leggings, pain in my abdomen, Julia reaching for me with fear on her face, the ambulance, the long hours waiting for someone to tell me what was happening.

Then the slightly better memories: the ultrasound returns, the tiny image on the screen, the shockingly rapid heartbeat. The doctor’s words that finally let me breathe again.

The baby is still here.

Relief moves through me so deeply that I have to keep my eyes closed for another moment and let myself feel it. I knew I wanted this baby from the second Diego asked me in the penthouse and the answer came out before I had time to think about it. There has never been hesitation about that part.

What I had not understood until yesterday was how completely that desire had already rooted itself inside me. The doctor had been careful with her words, but the one thing she made clear was that I had not miscarried, and that was the first time I allowed myself to think the word.

Miscarriage.

Even silently, it hurts.

I swallow and press my palm a little more firmly against my stomach, remembering how convinced I had been for those terrible minutes that I was losing the baby. I had barely begun adjusting to the idea of becoming a mother, and suddenly the possibility of that future disappearing had opened beneath me.

The fear had been so immediate and complete that everything else vanished. Work, Diego, security, arguments, all the questions I had been turning over for weeks. None of it mattered while I waited to see that heartbeat.

Then there was Diego.

I know he is no longer in bed beside me. The space next to me is empty, although the memory of falling asleep against him is still clear enough that I can almost feel his arms around me. That surprises me too, although perhaps it should not after the last twenty-four hours.

He came into the hospital looking like somebody had torn him open, then spent every minute afterward making sure I wasn’t alone for a second. He stayed not just through the exam and ultrasound but through the night, brought me home when they finally discharged me, tucked me into bed, and climbed in beside me when I asked him not to leave.

I had expected him to care about the baby. I never doubted that.

I had not expected the tenderness.

There had been no impatience when I cried, no attempt to make the fear smaller because the immediate crisis had passed, no irritation when I woke during the night and shifted closer to him because I needed the reassurance of another person there.

He simply held me. Every time I surfaced enough to notice him, his arm was still around me.

My eyes remain closed while I ruminate.