“Look at me,” she demanded, her expression grim.
For a moment, she thought he was going to refuse, but then, he dropped his gaze to hers, his face bearing a mask of absolute coldness.
It was galling, because she knew it wasn’t how he felt. “I’m your wife,” she said. “And this is our baby.” She reached for his hand, and almost wished she hadn’t when the spark of electricity that jolted through her at this physical contact almost knocked her sideways. Her breath grew rough. She lifted his hand anyway, hovering it over her stomach before curving his palm over the roundness there.
He closed his eyes and inhaled, and she stared at him, hoping for some kind of miracle. Hoping that when he looked at her once more it would be with a dawning realisation. An awakening. An acceptance of the truth of this – of the importance of reaching for what was right in front of them.
He looked at her, piercing her with his eyes, and then smiled. A perfunctory, banal, dismissive smile before he pulled his hand away and walked clear across the room.
Something inside of her burst.
“This is your child,” she said softly but the words rang out with the weight of her pain. “And I am your wife. You don’t get to walk out on us.”
“I am right here,” he demurred stiffly.
“You’re nowhere,” she said, shaking her head. “Did it occur to you that I miss you? That I need you in my life?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw and he shook his head. “You need my brother.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she lifted a hand and pressed it to her brow. “Yes. I need Addan. You don’t know how much I’ve wished I could talk to him, these last few months.” She didn’t flinch away from his gaze. “That’s a part of how I feel. He’s a part of me, a part of my heart. I loved him. He was my best friend. You have to accept that reality and still open yourself up to what’s happening between us.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“So you’d rather live your life like this, Malik?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “This life is… none of this is what I would rather.”
She swallowed, the bitter truth of that impossible to avoid. Malik sought freedom, and always had. He’d run from this palace, from the rigours of royal life, preferring to be an individual rather than a prince. And now he was King, and married to a woman he couldn’t ever admit to wanting.
“I will never say I didn’t love him,” she said quietly. “But I’ve realised something about you and me, Malik. I don’t know when I first came to understand it, but these last months, not seeing you, not having you near me, how could I fail to realise what this pain is?” She pressed her fingers into her breastbone, her heart rabbiting hard beneath it. “I don’t know when I fell in love with you, but somewhere in this marriage, I did. I love you, and I don’t want to do this without you.” She crossed the distance between them, lifting her hands to his chest, pressing them to his heart, hoping he would feel the urgency of hers even when he was standing there as a man of steel.
“Don’t.”
The word was like a whip. It cracked against her spine. She ignored the blinding pain. She had to fight for this, for him. She had to wake him up, to make him understand that what they were existed in a bubble that w
as completely separate to everything else.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was over the moon. I was so happy. Not because it meant we’d achieved what we set out to, not because I thought it would somehow terminate what we’d been doing… I was thrilled because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to have a baby – to have a baby with you. No one else was in my mind; no one. This is about you and me, and the life we’ve created.”
His head jerked back a little and his breathing was rough, his chest moving with the force of his exhalations. “Please stop.”
It was the ‘please’ that got through to her. He was begging her. He was hurting, and she was rubbing his wounds raw. But god, she needed him to understand!
“I can’t forget what you were to him. I can’t forget that all of this is because he died – my brother. I am sorry, Sophia. It isn’t fair to you, but I will never let this be more than a convenient marriage. You cannot speak of love to me –don’t do it. It only makes me grieve for my brother, that your affections could be so easily transferred.” His eyes were kind, even when his words were like bullets, exploding just under her skin.
Her pulse ratcheted up a notch and she shook her head, about to launch into another tirade, to explain that her affection hadn’t been transferred, that it was different for each brother. There was no comparing how she felt. Addan had made her feel like she could rest, and Malik had pulled her back to life, he’d woken her up, every cell in her body, and she couldn’t imagine ever not loving him.
But he was looking at her with cool dispassion once more. “The doctor wants to speak to you.” He lifted his eyes over her shoulder, and she heard the door clicking shut.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, your highnesses.”
Sophia had only a moment to rally her emotions, to pull them together, and then she turned to face him, her expression bearing a mask of calm that she was so far from feeling.
“The results look excellent, at this early stage,” he said.
But something in his voice had Sophia’s panic levels rising. “At this stage?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to double check the scans to be certain. Your highness,” he addressed Malik and Sophia tried not to let it bother her. “There are two heartbeats.”