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“You okay?” he asks, shoulders shrugging out of his jacket.
“Do I look okay?”
“You look radiant. Always do.” What an arsehole.
“Flattery is not going to work today.” He smirks, and then pulls at his tie to reveal a skin I’m far too familiar with and not the least bit diverted by anymore. Well, maybe a little, but no.
“It’s the truth.”
“I know. Start apologising and give me a reason. I’m too wise for your games now, Alex. And too sodding tired.” He chuckles. I don’t know what at. Nothing is funny in this room. We just lost another baby.Ourbaby. “The smug look is not what you should be aiming for. We just lost a baby.” He frowns at that, stiffening his posture. “Youjust lost a baby, Alex.” I look over at the flowers he’s brought, annoyed with them. “Did you think some flowers would make us better? Make me feel better?” He sighs, as I drift my eyes back to him, filling me with a dread I already know. We’re broken, aren’t we? Something’s happened to us in all this hope and trying for a family. We’re lost. Almost like two separate entities with entirely different dreams. “You didn’t even want it, did you?” I mumble, lifting the covers up higher to my chest. “That’s why you haven’t been here.”
The counter argument I’m after doesn’t come. He just sits still, telling me everything I don’t want to acknowledge, as he looks at me. He doesn’t even need to tell me. I’ve known all along really. I just thought that maybe when it came, when he held it in his arms, life would change and he would be so far in love with that baby we’d be okay. We’re not, though. In fact, regardless of my hope, we’re a million miles away from okay.
I sigh, tightening my arms around my empty stomach, as he looks away from me, thoughtful. Perhaps I was a fool to imagine this life with him. Being the four of us has worked. We were happy like that, all of us flitting in and out of our lives, enjoying each other with no real sense of ownership or need to settle down. I enjoyed it, too. I smiled and laughed all the time, got involved with my business each day and enjoyed the thought of going back the next day. It was even my idea to open the New York branch, knowing that I could separate time between there and here and spend time with Lilah and Pascal at the same time. And then the need for a baby came. I tried to stop it, tried to push the thoughts away, but seeing Pascal withClaire made me frantic for one of our own, of my own maybe.
“It’s fine, Alex,” I whisper, desperate to stop the tears that are coming. I wipe my eyes, attempting to scrub the feeling away. “Really, it is. You don’t need to say anything else.” Still he stares out the window, eventually getting up to go and stand in front of it. “If you’ve come here to end it, that’s fine, too.” His head snaps back to me.
“What?”
“I know we don’t want the same things and I-“ he scowls, as if the worst thing in the world has just left my lips, stopping them instantly.
“I want you, Elizabeth.You.” I frown as he walks over. “I have never wanted anything as much as I want you. You know that.” I don’t. Not really. Not anymore. I scan his features, seeing nothing but honesty there waiting for me. Still so handsome. Screwed up, but beautiful.
He sits on the edge of the bed near me, reaching for my hand and lifting my ring finger to his mouth. “I have always wanted you, even before I knew you were there to find,” he says. My hand lays softly in his. It feels like the first time in weeks, and a choke of a sob comes out that I can’t stop. All this time with him, all this love. All the things we’ve been through and yet, this one thing, we don’t meet on, do we? We’re an open wound on this, unable to connect about the most precious of things.
“But you don’t want a baby, do you, Alex?” His fingers squeeze like they’ll never let go, another sigh falling from his lips.
“No. I don’t.”
There it is. For the first time out in the open and loud and clear in my mind.
I pull my fingers from his, cradling my hands around my stomach again, and look away towards the end of the room. I don’t even know what to say. Two dead babies that he never wanted anyway and I so desperately did. I gaze, head spinning at all the thoughts of happy futures I hoped for. They were doomed from the beginning. What the hell would have happened if I’d actually gone to term, I don’t have a clue about. I’m part ready to let anger take over and part wanting nothing more than to sink beneath these covers and never come back out.
“You can go,” I whisper, still looking towards the door.
There’s no point in any other discussion. There’s nothing else to say. I should have known, should have understood he meant it when he said he didn’t want children. Maybe all those times he said he might, or that trying was okay, he just didn’t mean. Maybe he just thought it was the right thing to do for me. But it wasn’t. He couldn’t have made me feel worse if he’d just stopped all this at the beginning. Said no and meant it. We’ve wasted all this time, lied, and now we’re too broken to fix back together.
He starts moving around the room. I don’t know what for. I’m still looking at the door, perhaps hoping that if I ignore him for long enough he’ll just go away. I can’t do this now. I’m empty, lost, alone, and terrified of what my life is now going to be. I’ll move back into the flat, I suppose. Stay with Teresa. Make a new sort of life for myself. With time, I’ll move on. Forget this life ever existed and find someone who does want a future with children involved. My eyes close, hoping to feel something inside my stomach. A baby,ourbaby. It’s not there, though, is it? It’s dead and gone. Just like this pretence at happiness I’ve been living in.
“Up,” snaps out of him. I slowly turn, wondering why he’s still here.
“Just go, Alex.”
The sudden rush of him coming at me and scooping me up takes me by surprise. I slap out at him, an anger rushing through my bones.
“Stop it, Elizabeth,” he says softly, his hands doing nothing to stop me other than squeezing tighter. My nails rake his skin, another choked sob coming out with the effort. Screw him and his lifting me up. The days of me being lifted and moved have long gone. I kick, too, leveraging all my weight to try and make him drop me. Still nothing.
“Put me down,” I snap out. He doesn’t. He reaches down instead and picks up my bag, trying to manoeuvre me to his front with the same move.
“Tighten your damn legs,” he says. “Hold on.”
“Screw you.” He looks at me, a wry smirk settling in where smirks do not belong.
“I know you’re mad. And I know you’re confused. But hold onto me before this becomes a fight you’ll lose.” I half halt my struggle at his tone, then remember he is an arse and we have nothing in common anymore. “Youarecoming home, Elizabeth.”
“That isn’t home anymore,” I snark. “You’re not my home.”
He sneers and grips on so tightly I nearly bellow at the pain of the bruise it will leave. Rage comes from the move. It’s nothing like the calmness the pain normally causes. I’m indignant. Annoyed by his man handling. It’s the first time the sentiment has ever been there, certainly in the last few years anyway.
