He didn’t say anything, but his hand dropped to her stomach, and the warmth helped a little. It wasn’t the end of the world, that she couldn’t have a baby. Sometimes it felt like it, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
She sniffled, and Nev’s arm tightened around her.
“When I was at school, I hated the bank holidays,” he said after a while. “I hated all the holidays. I dreaded having to come here to see my family. I felt terrible about it, because I knew I ought to look forward to it. I ought to like them. But they didn’t make it easy. My mother would spend the entire holiday discovering my most recent faults and nagging me to correct them. Winston was so much older, I admired him terribly, and he’d take advantage, flattering me whenever he wanted me to do something and then ignoring me or, if he got bored, teasing me until I lost my temper.
“The only one whose company I enjoyed was Dad. He would take me out with him to paint. He likes to do landscapes, and he would put me in charge of setting up the easel as he sketched, choosing and mixing the colors for him. It was my favorite thing.”
Where his hand wrapped around her rib cage, she’d covered it with her own, and it rose and fell with every breath she took. There was so much power in his body, it pained her to think of him young and vulnerable.
“I suppose Mother loves me in her fashion, but she wants me to be someone in particular, a son who’s never existed except in her own mind. When I was younger, I wanted that, too, because I thought she would love me better if I could just manage not to disappoint her.”
Cath shut her eyes in the dark, not wanting to have to think about what he was telling her. They had something in common after all. She’d always thought if she’d tried harder to be good, she might have won her mother’s approval. But Nev was wonderful, and he’d tried, and it hadn’t worked for him. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked for her, either.
His lips brushed the side of her neck, and she snuggled closer in response. Breathing with him.
“When I went off to university, I made a lot of resolutions. I’d stop visiting Leyton on the holidays. I’d make a serious study of art. I’d become independent, do whatever I wanted. But I couldn’t stick to it. I spent one holiday alone and missed my horrid family. Even Winston, the bastard. So I visited, and I let my mother pressure me into taking my art less seriously, and I ended up going to work at the bank. The only thing I’ve done on my own is buy the flat, actually. And fall in love with you.”
Burrowing against him, she let his words sink in slowly, like whiskey on her tongue. He loved her. The warmth bloomed inside her chest. It felt good, but she couldn’t trust herself with it. Drink too much, and she’d lose her head.
She didn’t deserve Nev’s love. She’d been waiting for him to figure that out, but now she understood he might not. She was the weapon he’d chosen to wage a very civil war against his family. She and Nev had been playing house in Greenwich, falling in love for all the wrong reasons. Her because she could never resist the lure of a big, messy mistake, not when it came packaged with passion and fun and the potential for heartache. Him because being with her allowed him to thumb his nose at his mother without actually taking any risks. He didn’t have the guts to be a black sheep. She didn’t have the willpower not to.
They brought out the worst in each other. No wonder it felt so good.
“I had a baby,” she said. “I called her Wren.”
The words came out effortlessly, as if she’d already told him weeks ago, making this declaration a mere formality.
He pulled her closer. “The tattoo?”
“Mmm-hmm. She didn’t live. I never saw her. I never even gave her a real name. But I had her, for a while.”
“I’m sure she was beautiful.”
She took a deep breath, then let it out. Let all of it out. “That’s why I can’t get pregnant. Because of how she was born. I had this thing where the placenta detaches, and I needed an emergency C-section. They couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. I bled and bled, and finally they had to do a hysterectomy to save my life.”
Nev leaned forward and kissed her temple.
She wondered if she ought to tell him the rest of the story. Would he want to know about Jimmy? About the dark months afterward, when she could hardly stand the sound of her own breathing? Would he want to know what a mess she’d made of everything?
Maybe he would. But what was the point? When they got back to Greenwich, she would end it. He needed to find someone better suited to him, someone who could commit and mean it. A wife with long, straight hair and linen trouser suits who could have his children and sip tea in the parlor with his mother. Cath couldn’t be that woman. She could only be who her past had made her.
But at least she’d learned something from him. She knew the difference now between infatuation and love. Their love was a mistake, but it was real. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone else.
She turned in his arms, putting them face-to-face in the blackness. “Kiss me.”
He cradled her head in his hand as he brought his lips to hers, smoothing the other hand down her back to rest at her tailbone, where her daughter spread her wings. There was no urgency in his mouth, but their bodies touched in a dozen places, and all of them ignited.
Her fingertips didn’t need the light to find their way along the familiar path to his shoulder blades, down the column of his spine, tracing the shape of his collarbone, seeking out the hollow of his throat. She knew this body. She loved this man.
They breathed together, moved together, skin sliding over skin that soon became slick and hot and combustible. Everything was the same, but it wasn’t. Each time his mouth met hers, in every movement of his hands, she could feel it. He loved her. He’d loved her for a long time. Maybe from the beginning.
Knowing that what they had was a mistake didn’t make it any less real or any less beautiful.
Cath spread her legs and pressed her hips up, inviting him in. Patiently, he kissed her neck, her throat. His hands wandered, fingers lingering at her nipples and catching on her hipbones. Cupping her breasts. Counting her ribs. Slowly, thoroughly, he claimed every inch of her, branding her with lips, tongue, palms. Mine.
When she could no longer stand it, she took him in her hand and guided him between her legs. “Please, Nev.”
Poised at her entrance, he paused to kiss her again. Then he moved into her with torturous languor, a protracted possession that stole her breath and her reason. She gasped against his lips, arched into him, and heard him say her name.