The despair that follows is colder than any hate.
I failed, I failed so spectacularly.
I didn’t manage to die, and I didn’t manage to spare this innocent creature a life tethered to its monstrous father.
We are both survivors of my failed suicide, bound together in this bleak aftermath and the love I feel is just another chain around my neck, slowly, surely strangling me.
A sound breaks the rhythmic beeping. A soft, rustling shift from behind me.
My heart plummets like a stone dropping into an icy well. I’d seen my supposed spouse when I first woke, slumped in the chair by my bed, his usually impeccable suit rumpled, his head bowed in sleep. I couldn’t look at him for more than a second. The sight of him, playing the concerned husband made bile rise in my throat.
I try to convince myself I’m hallucinating. The drugs are strong, after all, maybe this is all a fever dream. But then I hear it; the slow, deliberate sound of footsteps. They are too heavy to be a nurse’s soft-soled shuffle. They are the steps of a man who owns every space he’s ever walked into. The cadence is imprinted on my soul, the sound of my own personal earthquake.
I don’t turn.
I keep my one good eye fixed on the baby, as if it can be a shield.
But I feel him stop behind me. I feel as the air changes, as it grows heavier, charged with his presence. I can smell the faint remnants of his cologne, something dark and expensive, cutting through the hospital sterility. It’s the smell of my cage.
He doesn’t speak. He just stands there. A silent statue of guilt and power. I can feel his gaze on the back of my head, boring into me.
The silence becomes unbearable. It’s a contest, and I’ve already lost every battle with this man.
Words bubble up, acid and raw, from a place of pure anguish.
“I hated it, you know,” I say, my voice a hoarse scrape, alien to my own ears. “I hated that I was pregnant. I hated feeling something of yours growing inside me. It felt like a parasite, a cancer. A final, complete conquest.”
I swallow, the motion painful after having so many tubes down my throat. I can’t stop staring at the baby. The tiny chest rising and falling in time with the machine.
“But now…” My voice breaks. I hate the weakness in it. “Now that I’m looking at him… all I can feel is… love.”
A hot tear escapes my bandaged eye, soaking into the gauze. I let it fall. There’s no point in hiding anything anymore.
“How fucked up is that?” I whisper, the question hanging in the air between us, a confession of my own pathetic brokenness.
He doesn’t reply. He just stands there, absorbing my pain, letting it fuel his silent vigil. His silence is a weapon. It always has been.
And then his hand drops to my shoulder, and he whispers words so sweet I could almost believe them. “You’re safe now. You both are.”
“Stop,” I rasp, as my anger finally finds a crack in the despair. “Stop with the lies, Antonio.”
A beat of silence. Then, his voice is low, carefully controlled. “What lies?”
The calm in his tone is a match to the gasoline of my rage. I twist my head, a painful, jerky movement, to look at him over my shoulder. My vision swims, but I see him all the same. His face is etched with a fatigue I’ve never seen before but his eyes, his eyes are the same. Dark, intense, possessive. In my drug haze, he looks what he is; he looks like the devil come to claim my soul.
“That I’m safe,” I snap, the words tasting like ash. “Thatheis safe. I know what you did. You tricked me. We’re married.” The word is a vile thing on my tongue.
He stares at me and in his gaze, I see no denial. Only a stark, unshakeable certainty. He owns me. Legally, completely. The finality of it is a sucker punch to my already battered spirit. The carefully constructed walls I’d built in my mind crumble all at once.
A sound rips from my throat, half-groan, half-sob. I lunge upward from the wheelchair, my body screaming in protest. My balance is gone, the world tilting, but I don’t care. I stumble toward him, my right hand curling into a fist.
“You bastard.” I scream, the sound tearing through the quiet hum of the room. I swing my fist, putting all the feeble strength I have left into it, aiming for the solid wall of his chest.
It connects with a dull thud. It probably hurt me more than it hurt him. I swing again, a pathetic, flailing blow. “You lying, manipulative bastard.”
He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t fight back. He simply moves, so fast I don’t have time to react. His hands come up, but not to strike me. One captures my wrists, pinning them together effortlessly. The other arm wraps around my back, and he pulls me hard against his chest, crushing me.
I am engulfed by him. His strength, his smell, his heat.
