‘I’m telling you now.’
‘That isn’t good enough.’
‘It will have to be.’ She jutted her chin out, trying not to let him intimidate her.
He narrowed his eyes as if he could see straight through her. As if he knew there was something she was hiding.
‘Why not?’ he demanded abruptly.
Archie flinched.
‘It’s...irrelevant.’
‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ Kaspar barked, folding his arms across his chest.
She tried not to notice how it made his already wide shoulders seem all the bigger, his strong chest all the more unyielding. And she tried not to notice the long fingers that had done such...things to her. Over and over that night. That weekend.
When they’d made a baby.
What was she playing at? They were kids and this wasn’t a game. She owed him an explanation.
‘I didn’t tell you because I was scared. I was pregnant once before.’ She heard her voice crack but she pushed on, pretending it hadn’t. A part of her had known this subject would come up. That it was inevitable. She was ready for it. ‘Eighteen months ago. But I lost that baby at eighteen weeks.’
She stopped abruptly, pain ripping through her. Lacerating her from the inside out. Dizzying and unforgiving.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.
‘Her name was Faith.’
She didn’t even realise she’d spoken until she heard the words. The agony that had haunted her ever since with what ifs and if onlys. The self-recriminations. She’d thought she’d been mentally prepared. She’d been dealing with the pain every single day, and each day it had felt just that tiny, minuscule bit easier. But hearing the words aloud, for the first time since it had happened...nothing could have prepared her for that.
She only realised he’d caught her from crumpling on the spot as she found herself in a seat she didn’t recall moving to, and Kaspar coming back into the room, a steaming plastic cup in hand.
‘Sweet tea.’ He thrust it at her. ‘Drink it. All of it.’
She didn’t dare disobey.
Bit by bit, she sipped at the cup until it was empty. And Kaspar just sat opposite her. Waiting. Wordlessly. While the minutes ticked by. As if he had nowhere else to be but right here. With her.
Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them back. She shouldn’t read anything into that. It didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t afford to think it did.
‘I...needed to get past that point...the eighteen weeks. And then I thought that when I had my twenty-week scan, if it...’ What had they agreed, that she would call the baby he, and Kaspar would say she? ‘If he was okay, I would tell you. So...here I am.’
She trailed off. Not quite sure how to articulate the storm that roiled around her entire body, constantly up-ending everything.
His eyes never moved from her. Clear and unblinking.
‘So the scan was fine?’
‘Yes. But these things are always fine until...until they’re suddenly not.’
It was all she could do to keep her voice even and sound calm. There was no point in letting the dark fear that lurked deep inside her take a hold. No point in imagining scenarios that might never happen. The doctors didn’t think there was anything they needed to worry about or do, so she had to trust them. They were the medical professionals. Not her.
‘What are you doing?’ She frowned as Kaspar stalked around his desk, snatched up the phone and stabbed a couple of numbers on the pad.
He didn’t answer her, too intent on the call.
‘Dr Jarvis, please, it’s Dr Athari.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Catherine? It’s Kaspar. I have a patient I need you to examine. It’s urgent. Archana Coates, twenty-nine-year-old, approximately twenty weeks pregnant.’