A roar builds behind her eyes, red flecks encroaching on her vision until she thinks she will lunge from the bed and snarl at him. Snatch for the key. Howl her feral fury.
But she stays quiet, demure, accepting.
He doesn’t look at her on the way to the en suite, and when he comes out, showered and in old sweats, he flops onto his side of the bed without a word. Darkness pulls close, muddy with suffocation. He snaps off his light.
The curve of his back is to her, ribbed sweater shirt riding up toshow the hard line of hip bone. She slides across the bed and presses herself along his back, her fingers tracing gentle circles on the nape of his neck. Any other night, he’d roll over immediately and start kissing her, his hunger stoked. Now he does nothing.
Panic threads through her veins and it takes effort not to tremble.
“Can we talk?” Her voice is small in the dark, threadbare and narrow, something he could wrap around his fingers and reel her in if only he wanted to. “I’m sorry about before. I’m not well. Like you said. I’m— I should see the midwife again. Make sure the baby is okay.”
This should pique his worry, have him respond with fretful care over any potential risk to the child in her womb. But still he keeps his back to her.
“Did Jude go down okay?” There’s a catch in her voice.
“Yes, actually. I told him nothing scary would go into the nursery tonight. Which is true, because his mother is staying in here, with me, and can’t terrorize him.”
Elodie’s stomach twists. “You have this so backward. I check on him at night. I—I make sure he’s safe. What if he cries out?”
“Then I’ll go to him.”
“You won’t be fast enough. The walls are—”
“Jesus, Elodie.” He rolls over, and she lies still as he props himself up on an elbow and leans over her.
The wild tremor of her heartbeat means nothing, she tells herself. She is not scared of him.
“I’ll take you to see Oliver, all right? We’ll get a medical plan together on how to… deal with this.”
Understanding distills with brutal swiftness, how her life will look if he decides she needs medicating, silencing. How somehow it is his decision, not hers. She is struggling to remember when she last decided something.
She takes his hand and gently puts it between her legs. His eyes close for a brief minute, and then he pulls away.
“We’re not doing this.” There’s something raw and scratchy in his voice. “It’s really fucking unhealthy, Elodie. It fixes nothing.”
“I don’t need you to fix me. I need you to listen.” Ice has layered itself through her chest and she fights it, the panic, the fear, the need to claw her way inside him andmakehim believe her. The only other choice is closing her eyes and pretending none of this is happening.
It is almost more horrible to consider itisn’thappening.
It’s all in her head.
She is struggling to hold on to thoughts, not to slide sideways and puddle on the ground like old, purpled blood pooled in a corpse.
Shadows trace the dark line of his jaw and the tilt of his mouth holds only sadness, his eyebrows drawn together in concern. He leans down and kisses her, slow and tender.
She kisses him back, hungry, panicked.
“I love you,” he says. “I’ll love you through anything. We’ll work this out together. I’ll fix you.”
It meant to be a comfort. It is a threat.
A tear traces down her cheek and collects in the corner of her mouth.
NINETEEN
The plan comes to herin the early hours of the morning.
When Bren’s alarm finally goes off, she stays quietly in bed as he moves through his morning routine, coming out of the bathroom with his hair combed, buttoning the cuffs of his neat white button-down. It ages him, the suit, makes him seem less like a fluffy-haired boy with a head full of butterflies and more like a stately businessman ready to dissect numbers. He seems a million miles away as he perches on the edge of their bed and stuffs his feet into black socks. Her tongue has moldered into a flaccid thing and she can barely shape words around it. Maybe she has none to give.
