I trace the scars under Anubis. They are smooth and defined -thin.This part of his skin forever weakened.
I feel weak too, imagining how I almost lost him to those flames as well, how I nearly lost both my boys the same day. Grief makes me frail, consuming my mind and body, stripping me of power and strength, leaving my entire being unwilling to work.
Unwilling to work. . .
Did my years of grieving the loss of him and our son cause my body to break? Too frail, too weak with sadness to give me another chance at making life. I know that’s not true. Not medically substantiated, but not all things are. . .
I swallow hard. “I’m not sure I can have another baby, Bronson.” He sits up, staring straight at me, caught completely off guard by my declaration. I sit up too, forcing down the shudder in my breath. “They told me a little while ago.” Uncertainty flitters through me. I feel as though I’m putting a fresh flame to the foundations of our new relationship, to the pretty picture he has in his head. “My body just isn’t producing enough eggs.”
Slowly, he reaches for my throat, circling it. He pulls me down beneath him so he can lean his body weight on me. The intensity of his glowing green-blue eyes commands my breath. Leaning in until his lips touch my ear, he rumbles, “Are you okay? Have you checked for other issues?”
I blink at him, confused by the question. “Yes. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, nutcase.”
He nods, his brows set seriously above penetrating eyes. “So, are you saying you want to have kids with me?”
I breathe out fast. Smiling through a few gentle tears as we agree to a life together, as we make our first new plan, our first new promise, as adults, I say. “Yes.I’m just not sure that-”
He squeezes my throat, sealing my words within the slender column. “We’ll try everything. I’ll be fucking you until you can’t breathe, baby. And then we can try IVF orfuck. . . you want to have a baby with me! We’re going to give him a sibling. A bit of you. A bit of me. So close to him in every way.”
“We’re going to try,” I promise him.
A mischievous grin spreads across his cheeks, a provocative curve that threatens me with indecency and all kinds of rough and fun things. “Let’s start right fucking now.”
Shoshanna
Present day
My mind is content,the sheets are soft and smooth beneath me and I’m happily between two states, floating somewhere between reality and a dreamy sleep.
Dreaming about our closure.
Dreaming about our future.
An explosion. . .
I sit up, reality reaching in and dragging me from my slumber. The noises are real, deafening and everywhere. My heart lurches, awakening every cell in my body, provoking my pulse to thrash violently around within my ribcage, the sensation near bruising.
I scream, but the sound of my own voice is drowned out by the endless gunfire. This is real. This is really happening.
Squeezing my eyes shut and covering my ears, I continue to cry and scream through the bellowing racket.
Within seconds, I’m dragged from the bed. My body hits the floor, but the feel of the drop is numb. It’s unable to compete with the perpetual roll of ammunition penetrating the walls and windows.
I’m shoved beneath the bed, the mattress and metal frame surrounding me - a cave of feigned security.
I tremble with fear.
Glass breaks, the shattering cadence warning me of the ominous metal bullets propelling through the space. Through the walls. The window.In the house.
My brain isn’t working the way it should. I reach for action in this situation but come back with nothing. Only the need to make myself small and hold my ears through this torturous chaos, wish it away, wish for life.
Alone. I’m alone under the bed.
Then I realise.
No.No.
He’s out there in this.