She was starting to realize that she wanted to do something with her life. She was no longer living it for the pleasure of someone else. It wasn’t like that with Diego. She brought that up with him one night while they were sitting by the fire. She wanted to find her passion, and he had spent the next hour making increasingly ridiculous suggestions about what she might do for a career. And then he had kissed her, brought her down to the ground and told her that of course she didn’t actually have to do anything if she didn’t want to. She could make her passion his body.
She had told him that of course she was quite passionate about his body, but perhaps needed something to occupy her day.
The next morning at breakfast he had spoken to her about the possibility of her doing freelance editing.
“You love books,” he said. “You love to read. Perhaps that would be a good place for you to start?”
“It’s more than just reading. With my limited knowledge about how things work, even I know that.”
“Certainly, but you’re very bright, and I have no doubt you could learn what you needed to learn to accomplish the job.”
“Maybe.”
That had started her enrollment in some online classes, in addition to a hefty amount of research.
It was exciting. To think that she was embarking on a whole new part of herself. Husband and a career... Doing something she loved. She had never imagined that she might have those things.
Still, as happy as she was, she found herself feeling weepy and shaky at strange moments. She wondered if it was that impending sense of disquiet that came whenever she thought of them leaving their bubble. Then she wondered if it was nothing more exciting than a little PMS.
Except that was the thing. She was actually quite overdue to have her period.
The realization hit her while she was standing in the middle of her library.
She might be pregnant. And she had no way of finding that out without letting Diego know, because they were the only two people in residence.
She swallowed hard. He would be happy. He had wanted a baby. She worried that it would unearth some bad memories for him, some old grief. But if it did, she would be there.
It was funny that she thought of him, because when she paused for a moment, her own eyes prickled with tears.
She had never known her mother. Her mother had died in childbirth.
She waited for fear that the same fate would befall her, but it didn’t come.
She wasn’t scared. She never had been, really. Childbirth was dangerous, but with modern medicine, everything should be okay. The odds of something happening to her were low, not higher than they were for any other woman, she was sure.
No, she wasn’t afraid. But thinking about being a mother when she had never had one...
It was her chance. She could never be the daughter in a mother-daughter relationship. But she could be the mother.
The thought filled her with awe. She pressed her hand to her womb, hoping.
She had been thinking that she and Diego wouldn’t have a baby yet, but they were frankly not overly careful with birth control. And with the frequency they made love, it wasn’t terribly surprising.
She was happy. Genuinely and truly happy.
She just had to hope it was real.
She walked down the hall quickly, toward Diego’s office.
She pushed the door open without knocking, and saw him leaning back in his chair, his feet propped up on the desk. She smiled. She could watch him like this all day. With him not knowing. She loved him. And now they were going to have a family.
“Diego,” she said softly.
He turned, a smile on his face, the kind she had been seeing from him more and more. Not those cruel, dark smiles she had seen so often in the beginning. But happiness.
“I’ll have to call you back,” he said, hanging his phone up. “Tesoro. Come in.”
“I...I have something to tell you. I think... We’ll have to go get it confirmed. But, Diego, I think I’m pregnant.”
She couldn’t trace all the emotions that flashed through his eyes. “We have to leave,” he said. “We need to get you to a doctor.”
“I can just have a pregnancy test brought here,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“That isn’t good enough,” he responded. “We must get you to a doctor, and we must do it now.”
“Diego.”
“Your mother died giving birth,” he said. “I think that means we should go to a doctor and get you seen.”
“You clearly weren’t worried about that enough before to use a condom every time you had sex with me.”
“I...I didn’t think of it.”
“You didn’t think of pregnancy?”
“I didn’t think of your mother,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Most women have babies and they’re fine.”
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he picked up his phone and began to make calls in rapid-fire Spanish, and before she knew it, she found herself bundled up and back on his helicopter, headed toward Spain.
Only a few hours later, she had the results to the test.
And Diego’s reaction told her that things between them weren’t going to go back to how they were.
She worried they might be broken. Irrevocably. Forever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE SLEPT IN his own room that night. He could not possibly sort through all of the feelings in his chest. Liliana was having a baby. His baby.
It was not the first time a woman had carried his child.
But this... This was different.
Part of him had wanted this. Had wanted a way to bind her to him. He’d been lax with birth control and he knew it. But it had seemed like a good thing, a way to keep her. But now...
Now something had changed. Something in him, and nothing could have prepared him for the reality of it. He was having all manner of thoughts that hadn’t occurred to him before, and they were running through his head on a loop he couldn’t stop.
Liliana’s mother had died giving birth, and he could not get that out of his head.
His mother had died because of his father.
Liliana’s mother by extension had died because of hers. And he just knew. From the moment he
had found out she was pregnant he had been gripped by this terrible, awful sense of knowing. He would not be able to keep her. There was no possible way. He had convinced himself that it might be. Had told himself that they could make an arrangement that worked for both of them. And so far, it had been so.
But then there was reality. It was the other shoe, and it had dropped hard.
A child. His child and Liliana’s.
After enduring the terror of her being pregnant, the uncertainty of her giving birth, then there would be a child.
And all his past fears rose up around him. The loss of Karina. Of the baby she’d carried.
He couldn’t think. His brain was screaming, but it wasn’t words. It wasn’t anything other than a dark terror that he felt utterly and completely strangled by.
Liliana was having his child. His baby. There was no power in the world he could call upon to protect her.
Because the men in his family lived. They lived and endured, and the women they cared for suffered endlessly.
He knew that she was upset about being sent to her room alone, but it was a kindness, given how he felt.
He couldn’t touch her. Not now. Her body was so fragile at the best of times... And now...
He swore, and stomped over to the liquor cabinet, taking out a bottle of vodka and tossing back a solid amount without bothering to pour it into a glass.
That had been his life before Liliana. Drinking. Doing whatever he felt like to keep the demons at bay. To keep the darkness around him a little bit more bearable.
Liliana had given him hope. A hope that he had never deserved.
It was all far too much.
“You’re still awake?”
He turned and saw Liliana standing in the doorway. He paused, the bottle poised at the edge of his lips. “Yes.”