His expression doesn’t flicker. “There are worse fates.”
“Not for me.”
That makes him flinch. A tiny movement, but it’s there. A crack in the marble.
“Were you going to do it?” I ask, voice shaking.
“Do what?” he says, like he genuinely can’t guess which of his crimes I’m referencing.
“Swap my pills again?”
His jaw works once. Then horrifyingly calm he says, “I already had,cara. You’ve been getting placebos since Christmas.”
My mind blanks.
Christmas.
Weeks before this arrangement, before the thirty days, before the promises and the lies and the nights tangled in sheets that suddenly feel like a trap.
Oh my god.
I could be pregnant right now and I wouldn’t even know. I’ve never had regular cycles. I never bothered to count days because the pills were supposed to protect me. Because I trusted?—
My knees nearly give in. Because what if that queasiness I felt earlier wasn’t just because I skipped a meal?
He steps forward, but I jerk back like he’s fire.
“Does the thought of having my children disgust you so badly?” he asks, wounded, but somehow still arrogant enough to sound offended.
I wipe at my eyes with shaking fingers. “No. And that’s the worst part. I would have loved—God,I would haveloved—to have all the babies in the world with you.”
His breath catches.
“But not like this,” I choke out. “Not because you manipulated me. Not because you took the choice away.”
I take a step back. Then another. Each one feels like tearing skin.
“I think I need to move back into the guest room.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, Lorenzo looks like someone just ripped the ground out from under him.
“Elizabeth,” he says softly. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“I’m not walking away,” I whisper. “I’m putting a door between us before I forget why I should.”
His eyes darken, something feral flashing through them.
“This isn’t over,” he says quietly.
But I turn anyway because staying in his bed now feels like lying down in a cage. And I can’t do that. I won’t.
I cry myself to sleep in the guest room.
Not the soft, gentle kind of crying. The broken kind. The kind you muffle with a pillow because you don’t want anyone in this house to hear how thoroughly you’ve fallen apart. I cry until there’s nothing left in me and my face is red and swollen with grief.
That’s what this is, right? Grief. I’m grieving the love that just died between two people.
I don’t go down for dinner. I can’t. My chest hurts too much and my stomach is too twisted. Instead, I curl under the blankets that don’t smell like him and pretend that distance will make this easier.
