: Chapter 15

The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and I was hardly awake, but I got up on the morning after I hadn’t gotten my period and did a pregnancy test. I paced the bathroom as I waited for the results. I could hear Maximus getting up and grabbing a shower down the hall. Our interactions since our intimate encounter had been sparse… I felt like he resented me for wanting a child. I didn’t like to recall our last sexual encounter. Maybe that was why he was so angry too. I knew I needed to talk to him and salvage our marriage somehow, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me to take on this battle right now.

When the ten minutes had passed, I picked up the test. Holding my breath, I risked a peek. The air left my lungs in a tight whoosh. Only one line.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d felt different these past few days, and I hadn’t gotten my period, so why wasn’t there a second line?

I took two more tests—one digital and one like the one I’d already done. Ten minutes later, tears filled my eyes when both of them confirmed the first test’s result.

Not pregnant.

They were supposedly 99 percent accurate.

I called my doctor and asked to come in today. As usual, she accommodated me right away. I had an hour to get ready. I took a quick shower, then hurried into the kitchen to grab a coffee. Maximus leaned against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee. His gaze was far away even though he stared straight at the fridge. He wore jeans and a tight T-shirt, his usual work outfit. He snapped out of whatever memory he had been caught up in and scanned my face, his expression tightening with concern. “What’s wrong?” He grabbed a long-sleeved black shirt that hung over the backrest of a kitchen chair and began to pull it over his head. His shirt rode up, revealing a sliver of his six-pack and the hint of a tattoo—a meadow and tree trunks.

“Oh nothing. I just need to leave for a doctor’s appointment in fifteen minutes.”

He paused with one arm inside the shirtsleeve, worry filling his face. “You didn’t tell me you needed to see a doctor. Do you need me to come with you?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

He froze in his tracks. “Are you pregnant?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m going,” I lied. Deep down, I knew the doctor would only confirm the bad news, but I couldn’t admit it to Maximus.

He nodded and finished putting on the shirt. “Are you sure you don’t want me there?” His gaze perused the kitchen counter until he found what he was looking for: his phone. His screen saver was an image of Bacon as a puppy sitting in the snow. Only his black nose and dark eyes stood out. Messages kept popping up.

“You should head to work. I’ll take Isa.” I hadn’t asked Isa to come along. I knew she would have joined me if I’d asked, but I preferred to be alone.

Maximus grabbed his phone, scanned the messages, and slipped it into his jeans pocket. “Sure. Will you give me a call afterward?”

“Of course,” I said distractedly as I began to pack my purse and left the kitchen to grab my wool coat and put on my shoes.

My two bodyguards waited in the waiting room as I entered the consulting room. I was glad I didn’t have personal guards, but I changed men depending on who was available. If I’d had someone who knew me for a while, they might have felt obligated to inquire about my welfare.

After a quick examination, it was clear that I wasn’t pregnant.

Seeing my face, my doctor said, “It’s quite usual for it to take six to twelve months to get pregnant, so this is perfectly normal.”

“Last time, I got pregnant right away,” I said softly, trying to keep it together. I’d put so much hope into the one time Maximus and I had been intimate. I hadn’t dared to consider that it wouldn’t be enough, even if I knew better.

She nodded, her face kind but professional. She was a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point person, which was reflected in her practical, short pixie cut and no makeup. “Do you get your period regularly?”

“I used to, but it’s been less consistent in the past year.”

“A miscarriage and the hormonal changes shouldn’t still cause you trouble, but I noticed that you’ve lost some weight. This might be a reason your body isn’t ready to conceive. But again, this is still perfectly normal.”

“So if I eat more and gain some weight, it might help me get pregnant?”

“Being as healthy as possible, physically and mentally, is always a good start for a pregnancy.”

I could do something about the physical part. The other wouldn’t be so easy.

Despite my doctor’s encouraging words and a solution for how to improve my chances of getting pregnant, I felt crushed. I asked my bodyguards to take me to my parents’ house.

Only Mom was there when I arrived. One look at my face, and she led me toward the sofa and sank down beside me. Her compassionate gaze hit me like an avalanche, and I began crying. When I’d calmed down, I told Mom everything, only leaving out the details of our sexual encounter. Mom touched my cheek. “Sara, I understand you long for a child, and I want nothing more than for you to be happy, but there’s still so much trauma in your and Maximus’s life. Maybe it would be good if you tried to work on that first. A child won’t make everything better. Raising a child requires strength. If you and Maximus don’t work on your problems, how will you work together as parents?”

Her words made sense. Too much sense. I’d spent the past year trying to ignore my trauma, which had been easier as long as I’d spent as little time as possible with Maximus. But Mom was right. A child deserved parents who were more than strangers, parents who weren’t haunted by their past.

Once back home, I took a long shower and cuddled up on the comfy armchair in my room with Isa’s newest book. She’d warned me of its gloomy nature, but I wasn’t in the mood to be uplifted or cheered up. I wanted to be as miserable as possible.

When I heard Maximus return home shortly after six, I forced myself to leave my room.

“You’re early,” I said, surprised when I spotted him kicking off his boots in the mudroom. One of them fell over, but he didn’t pick it back up. It didn’t bother me like it usually would. What did it matter that the shoes weren’t neatly put side by side?

“You didn’t message me after your appointment, so I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said, straightening and searching my face. His gaze lingered on my eyes. They probably still showed traces of my earlier crying. I’d removed my makeup and cleaned my face, but the puffy feeling remained.

I turned to avoid eye contact and considered what I should say.

“Sara?” Maximus stepped closer. Maybe if our marriage had been real, I would have leaned against him and sought his closeness and consolation, but as it was, I only wished for it. Why couldn’t I just take the first step? Why couldn’t I lean against him? “It didn’t work,” I said with a small, shaky smile and a shrug. “Maybe next time.”

Maximus’s expression remained perfectly controlled, no sign of approval or disapproval. He took another step closer and lightly touched my shoulder. His touch was warm and gentle. I could smell the hint of curd soap on his hand and faint disinfectant. He’d never returned covered in blood since we’d been married and often wore black clothes so detecting blood was close to impossible. I appreciated that he made sure to clean up before he got home. Dad was the same way. He’d never brought signs of his work back home.

His thumb lightly rubbed my shoulder, bringing my attention back to him. The touch was nice, and I wondered why we didn’t try to have more of these small moments. “Have you eaten anything?”

I realized I hadn’t, not since the protein bar in the morning—despite my intention to gain some weight back. “No, I forgot.”

“You keep forgetting,” he murmured, his voice even lower than usual. My body warmed at the sound. “Do you want me to grab something?”

I quickly shook my head. I didn’t want Maximus to leave. Despite what had happened, I felt safer in his presence than with my changing bodyguards. “I’ll prepare a quick carbonara for us. We have everything we need.”

Maximus lowered his arm. My skin still tingled where he’d touched me. I headed into the kitchen, followed by Maximus, and I grabbed eggs, parmesan, linguine, and pancetta.

“I don’t have guanciale anymore,” I said regretfully as I put the piece of meat on a chopping board and took a knife from the drawer. “But pancetta should do.”

Maximus’s uncomprehending expression revealed he had no clue why it mattered. “It’s both delicious.”

“Mom taught me to prepare carbonara with guanciale, and I prefer it that way.” I got cooking, and the dish was ready to be eaten within fifteen minutes. I loved the easy nature of it. Not everything needed to be complicated and fancy. Sometimes beauty was in simplicity.

Sitting across from each other, Maximus and I dug in. Surprisingly, I managed to eat more now that it seemed to serve a purpose. Well, another purpose except to keep me alive…

“It’s absolutely delicious,” Maximus said as he filled his plate with another serving. I’d quickly learned that he ate for two, which wasn’t surprising considering the muscle mass he had to maintain.

I nodded. “Are you mad that it didn’t work out right away?” I wasn’t sure why I returned to the topic. Maybe because the eating-for-two thought had brought back the reality of my current situation.

Maximus put down his fork and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the situation.”

I pursed my lips, wondering if there really was a difference. “Because it means we’ll have to be intimate again.”

“Because I don’t want a repeat performance of last time.”

I flushed. It had been bad for me, but I hadn’t thought Maximus hated it that much.

I felt mortified, just like I had afterward in the cell when I’d seen Maximus’s disgusted expression. It had reflected the feelings I harbored for myself at that moment.

I ran my finger along the rim of the plate, trying to compose myself.

I really wished Sara wouldn’t have brought it up again. I wished she were pregnant and we could move on.

“Once I’m pregnant, you won’t have to touch me again.”

Half the time, Sara’s words didn’t make sense to me. I could tell she was upset, though. She couldn’t even look at me. Instead, she studied the plate in front of her as if it held the answer to all of our problems. “You make it sound as if I had a problem with touching you. I have a problem with how things are going, not you.”

“You couldn’t even look at me afterward,” she whispered harshly, casting her eyes up. I half wished she hadn’t because the hurt in them was a punch in the throat.

It took me a moment to realize what she was referring to, and when I did, my stomach tightened to a stone. She thought I had been disgusted by her? Why the fuck should I have felt anything but burning guilt when looking at her broken form?

“I couldn’t look at you because I felt fucking guilty. Because I felt like a fucking rapist. Fuck, because I was one.”

She froze, her finger still resting on the plate. “You didn’t want to do it.”

“What kind of difference does it make?” I roared, pushing to my feet because I felt ready to combust. I had left work early and handed the debtor off to my father for further handling. Now I wished I had just kept kicking his sorry ass. “My actions speak for themselves, don’t they?”

“It makes a world of difference, Maximus!” Sara said, slapping the tabletop, suddenly angry for some reason. “We were both victims.”

I gripped the backrest of the chair. I wanted nothing more than to throw it across the room. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same event. I had to force myself on you.”

“You had to. And I gave you the okay because I knew you didn’t have a choice, just like I didn’t.”

I stared at her, at a loss. She seemed to believe everything she had said. How could her version of the events be so different from mine? “But you’ve acted like you don’t want me close since we got married.”

“Because you reminded me of what happened and of my helplessness. You could do something to work through the trauma. You hunted those men and killed them. You acted. I felt like I did nothing, or at best, reacted.”

Did she really think I had gotten past the trauma of that day? “You survived a horrible thing. That’s not nothing, Sara. And you had a lot to process, even afterward. The pregnancy…” I still didn’t like talking about her losing our baby because that too felt like it was my fault. I hadn’t wanted the child, hadn’t wanted a reminder, and our unborn child had died, almost as if my thoughts had been strong enough to kill it. I’d avoided the oak tree for that very reason, to avoid being faced with memories. Like a coward. I hated being one, so I had begun the process of having the tree tattooed into my back. That way, I’d never be able to escape again.

“Sometimes I think that it’s my fault our baby died…” She swallowed thickly. “That because I was so caught up in my trauma, I couldn’t show it that I still wanted it. That I didn’t love it enough because of what happened and that it just left because of that.”

I shook my head, feeling completely at a loss. I leaned more heavily on the backrest. I couldn’t believe that she’d harbored the same feelings of guilt as I had. Hearing those thoughts aloud from her lips made far less sense than in my head. “Nobody would have blamed you if you’d not chosen to keep this pregnancy.” She gave me a look that made it clear that wasn’t true, and she was probably right. “But you did choose to keep the pregnancy, so even if you were struggling with what happened, the baby knew you wanted it. And pregnancy losses are common. It’s rarely anyone’s fault, Sara. You heard what the doctors said.”

“I know, but it can be hard to see facts if it’s your baby. If I ever get pregnant again, I’ll do everything right.”

I bridged the distance between us and touched her shoulder. Fuck, I wanted to pull her into my arms. She peered up at me with those soulful, always melancholic eyes. “You did nothing wrong last time either. Maybe you should consider talking to someone professional about your feelings.”

I was the last person who’d ever go to a psychiatrist to work through the traumatic shit I’d witnessed and done in my life, but maybe they could help Sara. I didn’t want her to carry this kind of guilt.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to move on,” she said. She looked at me as if I could make it happen, as if I held the key to her happiness in my hand.

“I’ll do what I can to make that happen.”

She briefly touched my hand still resting on her shoulder. Her smooth, small hand on mine made my heart speed up. “You know what I want more than anything else.”

I fucking dreaded our next sexual encounter, but I wasn’t a coward who ducked away when shit hit the fan. I’d make Sara a baby even if it cost me the last shreds of my sanity. I’d make my wife happy, and if a baby was the only way to do it, then she’d get her baby.

Two weeks later, Sara and I shared another sexual encounter that was hardly any better. She still wanted to get it over with as fast as possible, only concerned about the technicalities—me getting my sperm into her. Even with a ton of lubricant, which I’d insisted we use even though Sara was sure it would lower the chances of pregnancy, the ordeal was painful for her. I was so fucking done with it. If she didn’t get pregnant this time, I wasn’t sure what I would do. Maybe we simply needed to use medical help even though Sara wanted things to happen naturally for some superstitious reason. As if anything about our sex life felt natural.

Sara didn’t get pregnant yet again.

We didn’t talk about what that meant. I was half tempted to insist on a visit to the fertility center. I didn’t want a repeat performance. I didn’t want to keep feeling like I did that first horrible time. I was fucking done.

But I also wanted to salvage our marriage. I wanted us to become more than what we were. With how things were progressing, that would never happen.