“This is my second attempt,” I whisper, clutching my nightie. “At intarsia.”
His jaw, as usual stubbled at night, moves back and forth. “It’s perfect. Just like the first.”
Again, I want to ask him.
I want to ask him what he did with the sweater that I made him. But I can’t.
I’m still too afraid.
I’m afraid that he will break my heart even more. I’m afraid that even though he’ll tell me that he’s thrown it away, that maybe he doesn’t even remember where he put it because it was so inconsequential to him, I’ll make him another sweater.
I’ll keep knitting for him and storing them away somewhere like the brokenhearted girl that I am.
So I don’t and he doesn’t tell me.
What he does do is love me.
That night he’s the most tender he has ever been. He clutches my belly, cradles it as he moves inside of me. And when we come together, he cuddles with me tightly.
He can’t stop kissing my forehead.
He can’t stop smelling me, rubbing his nose in the crook of my neck. And then he does the sweetest thing ever. He spreads that tiny sweater over my naked bump and kisses it.
In fact, he sets up camp there, near my swollen belly, lying on his stomach and propped up on his elbows as he keeps staring at the sweater, at my belly. Deep in thought, he keeps tracing my veins over my distended belly.
“No boys,” he says, suddenly.
I was playing with his hair, my other hand cradling my bump, but I stop now. “What?”
He looks up with a fierce frown, his bare chest tight, his shoulders brittle. “No boys. Ever.”
Halo kicks in my stomach. “For Halo?”
“Yeah. Boys are fucking assholes.”
I chuckle, tugging on his hair. “Takes one to know one.”
His frown thickens. “Exactly. No one gets to break her heart.”
“What if she falls in love with one?”
“She won’t,” he declares as if he can control that. “And if she does, I’m going to kill him. So problem solved.”
I can’t help it then. I laugh. “You’re going to kill the boy Halo falls in love with.”
“If that’s what it takes to protect her, yes.”
I study his outraged features, his longish hair brushing his strong, muscular shoulders, his hand on my belly, the hand of a protector, a predator.
Her hero. My villain.
“You’re crazy,” I murmur.
“She’s mine.”
I smile, my eyes all wet. “She is.”
“No one gets to hurt her.”
