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“It’s not like you haven’t fucked me before. It could have happened then.”
“We’re not compatible, so no, it couldn’t,” he said.
“But if it’s about betraying him or whatever, you already did.”
“This would create evidence of the betrayal. Permanent, living evidence, in the form of a child. Who I can’t think you’re not somewhat trying to create because you want to hurt Valdi, which is a shit reason to get pregnant.”
“Fuck you.” She snarled it, getting up from her chair and coming across the deck to take the wine from him. “Fuck you. You have no idea what I have gone through. You have no idea, Niles. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to be a mother. You don’t understand. Do you know how many times there’s been life growing in me and I’ve sobbed and begged the ancestors, holding my belly, hoping against hope that this one would finally survive? And then—”
“Hey, I’m sorry.” He was, too. He was chagrined. Valdemar said shitty things about Hiljd sometimes, like she’d gotten over the death of their child together way too easily, but grief just looked different on different people, and Niles shouldn’t have ever given any kind of credence to it. He should have realized they were just shitty things that Valdi was saying because of his own issues. Obviously, this woman was devastated. She’d been through hell.
Look at her.
He pulled her into his arms.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He stroked her hair. She was nearly taller than him, so he had to tuck her head down against his shoulder, but he gathered her up anyway, and he murmured in her ear, apologized in a soft voice, over and over again.
She made one half-hearted attempt to get out of his arms, and then she gave up and gave herself over to her sobs, which wrenched out of her like a well of bottomless pain had been unleashed.
He clutched her to him. His voice was soft. “Hiljd, I’m not having sex with you again.”
“But—”
“You don’t want that. I don’t know if I want to have kids. I rarely think about that and when I do, it’s in the abstract. But, uh, I definitely don’t envision it like this. This would not work.”
“But Niles, if I don’t get pregnant this time, I’m going to hate myself for not having pursued every single option, you know? If you won’t even try—”
“I won’t,” he said.
“But Niles, if you don’t do this for me, who am I supposed to go to?”
“No one.” He pulled back and cupped her face with his hands. “No one, come on, Hiljd. This is not like you. This isn’t how you want this to go.”
“It’s like, he has everything, now. A brand-new lithe little graceful thing, andlookat me—”
“You are quite an attractive woman, okay?” said Niles, and this was very true.
A tear slipped down her cheek. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh, whatever.” She sniffled. “If I had a baby, Niles, it would besomething.”
“Hey, come on.”
“I come home from work every day and take off my scrubs, and it’s empty.” She shook her head. “Just me. All alone. I have love to give, Niles, I really do. But there’s nobody to take it. If I had a baby—”
“I think you will have a baby someday, Hiljd,” said Niles.
“I’m running out oftime.”
“But you haven’t run out yet,” he said. “Women our age are getting pregnant constantly.”
“But—”
“Whether or not you have a baby because you have one on your own or with someone you meet or if you adopt or however it goes, I think you will.”
