He glances past me to the room.
“Why don’t you pick a room closer to mine?” His large hands cover mine. Enormous in comparison. “I want you both with me.”
I study his face. Still so handsome. So much like my boys’. The silver at his temples seems far more prominent in the light radiating from the windows behind me.
“You still want me?”
I tease, but it has been a reoccurring thought since finding out. This could be too much for him. He never asked to be a father/grandfather. And I understand him being uncertain about raising it so soon after losing his sons.
Plus, it’s all happening so fast. Neither of us have even had a chance to properly process how this is even happening.
“So much,” he murmurs. “You and the baby. That will never change.”
It’s hard to kiss him with the bulge between us, but I manage somehow and smile up at him through a wall of emotions. It all brews up in my chest, a rising ocean threatening to swallow me whole.
“I’m scared,” I confess out loud for the first time.
It occurs to me to also mention that it’s not the idea of bringing this life into the world that terrifies me. I’m sure that’s what he thinks. I’m scared that once the final Duval falls, Veyn will have no reason to let me live.
A deal is a deal.
I doubt a baby is going to mean much to him. But maybe I can convince him to let me give birth and see the child at least once before he takes me. Maybe even let me watch it grow up through the mirrors the way he can. I don’t even know where he’s going to take me. Maybe he’s just going to eat me, and I can become a ghost.
“Mon p’tit?”
I focus back up into Marcus’s face, but the corridor is gone. We’re in the bedroom. All around us, versions of me stare back with confusion and fear.
“What…? How did I get here?”
Marcus tilts his head, brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
I stumble back a step and turn to face the room. The windows with the miles of night pressing against the glass.
“We were at the nursery.”
Even through the mirrors, Marcus looks baffled. Concerned. “That was hours ago.”
Panic has me spinning to face him. “We were just there.”
He shakes his head, concern deepening. “No, Linny, we weren’t.”
Hands shaking, I press them into my middle and I swear … I swear, it feels bigger. Tauter. The weight is unmistakable.
And the nudge.
The roll and kick.
Tears slip from my lashes as I stare up into Marcus’s frightened expression.
“No, this isn’t right. I keep … I keep missing time and…” I suck in a breath and glance around the room again like the answer is hiding somewhere. “This baby keeps growing. It’s too fast. I don’t think … I can’t…”
The shame is immediate.
The guilt of being too paranoid and emotional. How can I know anything when I know nothing? When everything keeps spinning. It’s all too much.
Losing the boys.
Veyn.
