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She flung the comforter off as if it burned her, even if it acutely dismayed her to be seminaked in front of him now. Now that their intimacies were over, she felt as she had all her life, stripped of her every dignity and hiding place. She felt far worse than she ever had. With any other, she hadn’t cared about feeling like a sullied, expendable object.
She talked as she started to dress. “I’m leaving Japan within a week. So it will be before your wedding. This time when I disappear, you won’t have to worry you’ll ever see me again.”
“Was that the original plan? To disappear without telling me?”
She blinked up at him. His face was gripped in some emotion she couldn’t fathom. Every angle in his masterpiece bone structure jutted out more against his burnished skin, as if he was straining under an insupportable burden.
“Telling you what?”
“That you’re pregnant.”
If Raiden had told her he was an alien, then flew around the room to prove it, she wouldn’t have been more stunned.
She must have gaped at him for minutes before she closed her open mouth and tried to overcome her shock.
“When were you going to tell me, Scarlett?”
Slowly, carefully, as if testing her voice for the first time, she said, “Never, I guess. Since I’m not.”
His eyes suddenly took on a faraway look. “I have been feeling it in every inch of you. The changes in your body, in your appetite, the extra sensitivity to some scents, to my touch. But I didn’t reach the obvious conclusion, because I thought you’d tell me if it was true. But you didn’t.” His eyes focused on hers again, something enormous roiling in their depths. “Why, Scarlett? Was it because you thought we’d say goodbye and I didn’t have to know?” His face drained of all color suddenly. “Or was it because it was a mistake, one you intended to...fix?”
She shook her head, his every word making her more nauseous. “If you’re suspecting I fainted because I’m pregnant, don’t. I can’t be.”
“Why can’t you be? I haven’t taken any precautions.”
She raised her hands, needing to stop this before she fainted again, or vomited, or both. “You didn’t because you assumed I did. So if you’re thinking you shouldn’t have left this in my hands, that if I’m pregnant it would cause you major trouble, don’t be. I am not pregnant.”
It was his turn to gape at her. “You’re really not aware that you are pregnant, are you?”
“Listen, Raiden, I’m not only not pregnant, I can’t be pregnant. So stop it...please.”
“What do you mean can’t? You are.”
“No, I’m not.” He opened his mouth to persist, and her voice rose to a shriek to drown out his. “I can’t ever be pregnant. I had a traumatic miscarriage and doctors told me I’d never be able to get pregnant again!”
* * *
Raiden staggered a step back. Even the most innocuous words from Scarlett hit him harder than any of the vicious blows he’d had in his life, literal or figurative. But this blow almost felled him, when nothing before had ever even compromised his balance.
She truly had no idea she was pregnant. She thought she couldn’t become pregnant. Because she’d...she’d...
It made sense, explained the pervasive loss in her eyes that not even her past or their present situation explained. That was what he’d still felt her holding back from him. And he had to heal that wound that remained open inside her.
“You were pregnant with my child?” He made it a question, in case it hadn’t been his. She hadn’t given a time frame, and it might have happened long before they’d met. Even though everything inside him screamed she’d lost his—their—baby.
From the wounded look in her eyes, his care seemed to offend her. “You think I would have let myself get pregnant by another man? Protecting myself was the first thing I was taught in the business I was pushed into.”
His heart squeezed and expanded at the same time. Her pregnancy had been premeditated. Out loud he still asked, “You let yourself become pregnant with my child?”
She looked away, as if she could no longer bear looking at him. “I knew there was no possible future with you, but I wanted to at least have a part of you with me always. I had this plan that I was going to save you from Medvedev, escape The Organization and go somewhere safe and raise the baby on my own, give it the life we’ve both been robbed of. But we both know how this plan went.”
Was it possible there was always more pain? He felt a new level of agony contemplating the incredible courage and selflessness and love it took to make those plans. It was excruciating imagining how she’d felt—the resignation that she’d never have him, the hope she’d considered the epitome of her ambitions, the determination to have a baby, alone, make it safe and loved, as she’d never been.
He struggled not to sag to his knees before her, not to beg her to forgive him for not being there for her, for being oblivious, for not giving her everything she deserved. He choked out his words. “It went spectacularly for the most part. You did save me from Medvedev, did escape The Organization.”
“Not because my plan was masterful or anything. The one reason I pulled it off and I’m not dead is because Medvedev underestimated me and underestimated what I’d do to protect you. It was all touch and go and the price was our—” Her face seized, as if she’d caught herself in a terrible faux pas. “The baby. Now I’m unable to have any other.”
Before he insisted she’d always call it “our baby,” before he convinced her she was already having another one, there was one more poison he needed her to purge from her system. “It was Medvedev’s stab that aborted our baby.”
