AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And that’s relevant, how?
The question was an angry roar inside his head. He was her husband. She had needed his support, needed him to be there. Instead, he’d been chasing another deal.
He thought back to the meeting with Maclean. Or rather the meetings, plural. Hours and hours spent picking through the contract with his lawyers while he’d been fighting jet lag and a need for Delphi that had crept into every fibre of his being, so that simple activities like brushing his teeth and getting dressed had felt impossible.
And what did he have to show for it? Another cable network in Australia.
But what if he had been there with Delphi?
Would it have been different?
It was the second time he’d asked himself that question, and he wanted the answer to be definite. He needed it to be no, but he wasn’t sure it was. He didn’t know if he would ever be sure.
Only he couldn’t deal with that now. Right now, Delphi needed him, and this time he wasn’t going to let her down.
‘You did the right thing.’
She looked up at him. Her eyes were puffy, her cheeks tearstained. ‘Did I? I just keep going over all the things I could have done.’
The static was roaring in the ears again.
‘You can’t think like that. Miscarriages happen for all kinds of reasons.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I know. But I was so sure it was going to be okay. Everything’s always been so difficult for me. School. Making friends. Even you.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘But this was so easy. I was just pregnant. No fuss. No drama. And I thought that must mean something. But it was the same. I couldn’t make it work.’
In the dimly lit room, her body was made of shadows.
‘I’m so tired of having to fight for everything... I can’t do it any more...’
The ache in her voice rolled over him like one of the sandstorms that swept in from the desert, and he heard it then. Not just grief, but defeat, and finally he understood that she had lost more than their baby in London. What little faith she’d ever had in him, and in the world and in herself, had been torn from her.
His arms tightened around her, and guilt swelled inside his chest, crushing his lungs so that it was difficult to take a breath.
‘And you don’t have to. You’re not alone, Delphi. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.’
He held her close, cradling her against his body, stroking her hair, wishing he had more than words to prove what he was saying.
He didn’t know how long they stayed locked together. Maybe they would have stayed there all night but somewhere in the night an owl screeched and she shifted away from him, blinking as if she had woken from a trance.
Staring up at Omar, Delphi felt her heart flutter. She knew that to stay any longer in the half-circle of his arm was a risk not worth taking, but already she missed his hand caressing her hair, gentle as the wings of a hummingbird.
‘You should probably go and get some sleep. Goodness knows what time it is...’
‘Is that what you want?’ he asked.
His eyes were fixed on hers, dark and velvet-soft, shimmering with something that made her breath catch and her heart feel suddenly too big for her chest. She had supposed that talking would unravel the last threads binding them together. But how could ‘we’ become ‘I’ when he was holding her so close? Suddenly she was acutely aware of the thin layers of fabric that was all there was between her skin and his.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
She felt her body tense in objection. But her body was not to be trusted. She was not to be trusted. ‘I want... I want...’ She paused, took a breath, tried again. ‘I want...’
There was a beat of silence.
Her heart was speeding now, and she knew she should push him away, but she was hypnotised by the sudden harshness of his breathing. Around them the lights were blurring and the air in the room was changing, blooming, starting to press in on them, weighty with the feelings they had both pushed aside—feelings she refused to name but that were impossible to ignore, impossible to deny.
‘I want it too,’ he said hoarsely.
A minute went by, and then another. And then, reaching up, she touched his cheek, tracing the line of his mouth with her thumb, fear and desire and anticipation chasing through her restless body. Somewhere in the back of her mind a drum was beating out a panicky, percussive message in Morse code.
