Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

He ground his teeth, waiting.

Oh, to hell with it. He pushed in.

She’d pulled on an ivory robe and stood at the sink, a plastic stick in her hand. It quivered in her shaking grip.

He moved to look over her shoulder and saw the blue plus sign as clearly as she did. Positive.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE VOLUME OF emotions that detonated in Adara was more than she could cope with. Dark and huge as a mushroom cloud, the feelings scared her into falling back on old habits of trying to compress them back into the shallow grave of her heart.

“The test is old, maybe. Faulty,” Gideon said behind her.

“It was the second one in the box from when I tested myself a few months ago.” She threw the stick away and washed her hands, scrubbing them hard, then drying them roughly before she escaped the bathroom that was luxuriously cavernous, but way too small when her husband was in it with her.

And she was pregnant.

Again.

Shock was giving way to those unidentified emotions putting pressure on her eyes and rib cage and heart. She didn’t want him watching as they took her over and she had to face that it was happening again.

“You should go,” she said briskly, keeping her back to him. “Make my apologies. Tell people I came down with the flu or something.” She was distantly aware of the cold, slippery satin on her arms bunching under her fists, her whole being focused on listening for Gideon’s footsteps to leave the room the way she was silently pleading for him to do.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not in the mood to go out right now,” she said sharply, grasping desperately for an even tone to hide how close she was to completely breaking down.

“Adara, I’m—”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry!” she whipped around to cry. Distantly she was aware of her control skidding out of reach, but the storm billowing to life inside her was beyond her ability to quell. “Maybe this is all the time we have with our children, but I won’t be sorry they exist!”

Her closed fist came up against her trembling lips, trying to stem the flood that wanted to escape after her outburst.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with quiet ferocity, moving toward her with what seemed like a wave of equally intense emotions swirling around him.

Their two force fields crackled with condensed energy as they met, heightening the strain between them. Adara looked into his face, really looked, and saw such a ravaged expression, such brutally contained anguish, her insides cracked and crumbled.

“Whatever happens, I’m staying right here.” He pointed at the floor between their feet. “I won’t leave you alone again. This is happening to us.”

Emotion choked her then, overspilling the dam of denial to flood her with anguish and insecure hatred of this body that didn’t know how to hang on to babies. Futile hope combined with learned despair to make her shake all over. She couldn’t hold it back, had to say it.

“I’m scared, Gideon.”

He closed his eyes in a flinch of excruciation. “I know,” he choked out, and dragged her into his protective arms, locking her into the safety of a hard embrace. “I know, babe, I know.”

It all came out in a swamping rush of jagged tears. She clung hard to him as the devastating sorrow she’d never shown him was finally allowed to pour out of her. Every hurt that had ever scarred her seemed to rise and open and bleed free, gushing until it ran out the toxins, gradually closing in a seal that might actually heal this time.

As her senses came back to her, she realized he’d carried her to the bed where he’d sat down on the edge to cradle her in his lap. He gently rocked her, making comforting noises, stroking her soothingly.

“Sorry,” she sniffed, wiping her sleeve across her soaked cheeks. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that.”

“Shh.” He eased the edges of his jacket around her, cuddling her into a pocket of warmth close to his chest. When she looked up at him, she saw his eyes were red and glassy, his mouth twisted in frustrated pain.

“I wish—”

“I know. Me too.” He steadied his lips in a flat line, the impact of his one sharp glance telling her he knew deeply and perfectly and exactly what she wished for.

When his hand moved into the folds of her robe and settled low on her abdomen, she covered it with her own, willing their baby to know that Daddy was here too. Her heart stretched and ached.