CHAPTER FIVE
OMARSTAREDDOWN at Delphi. The confusion of anger and tension that had been driving him forward since she’d walked out of their home six weeks ago had dissolved, and in its place was—
Nothing.
No reply. No response. No reaction.
It was as if her words had hollowed him out, stolen not just the breath from his body but his understanding of the world, and in its place was the static rush of the ocean, like the sound when you held up a shell to your ear.
Only this rush was so big and so loud it was a roar, swallowing him whole.
He was in shock, obviously. That was why he couldn’t swallow or speak. And why, despite the warmth of the evening, he felt as though his body was encased in ice.
Shock on top of shock—because just a few moments earlier he had assumed she waspregnant.
All the evidence had suggested that. Her sudden tension when he held Khalid. Her refusal to drink alcohol. The way she had touched her stomach.
Only he was wrong, and the opposite was true.
His gaze dropped to where Delphi stood now, in that astonishing glittering gown, her hand clutching the sequinned fabric, her lips parted as if she was having to take in extra breaths through her mouth.
She had been pregnant but had lost the baby. Not the baby, he corrected himself. Their baby—his baby. And now his heart was thumping violently against his ribs, so that even though the flagstones beneath him were literally made of rock, it felt as though he was standing in the epicentre of an earthquake.
‘You were pregnant.’
He didn’t know why but he needed to hear the words in his own voice to make it real. She nodded, her face taut, her gaze steady and unblinking, but beneath the stillness he could see she was fighting to hold something in, or back, or together.
‘But you lost the baby. Our baby.’
From inside the house, he could hear the faint but clear clink of glasses and the hum of conversation. It all sounded so reassuringly normal—only how could anything be normal when there was this terrible, unalterable truth?
Delphi nodded again. Only this time as she did so her hand slipped away from the front of her dress.
It was such a small gesture, but there was a hopelessness and a hurt in it that wrenched at something inside him. He reached out unthinkingly and took her hand, because surely this was the moment when she would bring down her drawbridge and let him in? When finally, she would choose to share her loss and pain?
She was standing in front of him, straight-backed, body braced, and then she made a small choking sound and swayed forward, just as she had in the hospital.
He pulled her against him, his arms curving around her as her body crumpled. And then, so suddenly that he almost lost his balance, she was pushing against his chest, pushing him away.
‘No!’Her chin jerked up. ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you touch me. I don’t need your sympathy.’
He stared at her, a hot lava of primaeval emotions coursing through his veins.
She didn’t need it, and more importantly nor was she offering any in return. His heart was beating slow and hard. Not only had she just tossed a grenade into his life and blown everything up, but she was also willing to let him stagger alone and maimed around an unrecognisable landscape.
He stared at her, his breath quickening, almost as shocked by the uncompromising and unexpected ferocity of her rejection as he was by the discovery that he had been, briefly at least, an expectant father.
The muscles in his shoulders locked painfully. In the past when Delphi had clammed up, he hadn’t liked it, but he knew that she had trusted people before and been hurt, and that was why she found it so hard to lower her guard and let people in—even him.
But this was different.
This wasn’t just about her. Her feelings, her needs, her wishes, her past. This was about him too. How could she keep something like that a secret from him?
He thought back to when she’d swayed forward, and he had caught her. For those few half-seconds, just like in the hospital, he’d forgotten his fury and his pain. He’d simply been relieved to have found his wife...to have found her. His Delphi.
His chest was tight, his lungs on fire. Only that implied she had been his to lose—and she had never been his. All of this proved it. Proved that he had never known what was going on in her head...never known her.
‘I had a miscarriage.’