“Giovanni?” Freja burst in and pulled up short in the doorway, backlit by the hall light.
He could only see the top half of her since he was on the floor on the far side of the bed. She wore a slinky nightgown as pale as her limbs. She came in a few more steps.
“Where are you?”
How humiliating. “Here. On the floor.”
“What happened? Are you hurt?” She came around the end of the bed.
“Sir?” Now Kurt was here. Fantastic.
“I’m fine,” Giovanni growled. “Go back to bed.”
“I’ll call you if we need anything,” Freja told Kurt as she shooed him from the door and closed it. “Do you want help?” she asked.
“I don’t need help getting back into bed, Freja.”
“I didn’t ask if you needed help. I asked if you wanted it. You did call me,” she pointed out in a huffy voice.
“And you came?” His scathing tone prompted a profound silence.
“So you don’t want me.”
“That is a loaded question and you know it.” He dropped his head against the mattress. “Do I want you in my bedroom? Yes. A thousand times, yes. Do I want you witnessing my clumsiness? No.”
There was a long silence and he sensed her hovering by the door as though trying to work out how to react.
He hadn’t moved off the floor. The hardwood was unforgiving through his boxer briefs, the bar of the bedframe digging into his back. Nothing about this moment was comfortable, so he made it even less so.
“I dreamed you were running away. I was trying to come after you.”
He heard her swallow. She moved to perch on the chair in the corner.
“I was lying awake thinking about it,” she admitted. “I’m so angry with you, I don’t know what to do with it all. I’ve never been a person who wants revenge, but you’re right. I want to hurt you in every possible way.” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded profoundly sad.
He closed his eyes, defeated by a circumstance that had snowballed so far beyond his ability to control, it was no wonder she’d been flattened by it.
“Do you want me to put on the light?” she offered.
“No.” This was safer. He quit sulking and rolled onto his good leg, able to lever himself up enough he could grab a handful of blankets and drag himself back onto the bed. He adjusted his briefs and sat on the edge of the mattress, trying to read her pale expression in the faint glow from the nightlight in the bathroom.
“You’re never clumsy,” she murmured. “I’m always amazed at your strength and agility. You’re like a gymnast.”
“Will you come here?” He pushed aside the bunched blankets and patted the edge of the bed. “It’s not a trick. I just want to ask you something.”
She rose and drifted toward him like a wraith, unafraid despite the swamp of percolating emotions between them.
“So trusting,” he murmured as she lowered to sit beside him.
“I’ve always felt safe with you. That’s why I’m so angry. I didn’t believe you would hurt me, but you did.”
“Is that why you’re angry?” He picked up her hand and threaded his fingers through her slender, twitching ones. “Or is it something else? Tell me what happened, Freja.”
She gasped and tried to jerk back her hand, but he held on even when she rose and tried to pull away.
“Is that why you called me in here?” She gave her hand a firmer tug.
He kept his hold gentle, using two hands to trap hers in a careful cage, but, “I have to know, Freja.”
“You didn’t want to know when it happened,” she choked, roughly trying to shake him off. “I don’t owe you any explanations now.”
“No, you don’t. But I’d like to understand.” His heart was throbbing, the dull ache that had been in him for months pounding like hammers of fire driving icy spikes into his heart. “Sit,” he coaxed. “Take your time.”
She stood with her hand limp in his, face turned to the window, her profile ashen and still. For a long time, there was only the faint sound of their unsteady breaths.
Finally, she said in a voice that echoed with loss, “I went for a scan and they said she wasn’t developing properly.”
“She.” He had to consciously keep himself from crushing the fine bones of her hand, but his hold on her firmed, as though he could keep her from being dragged into the pit of pure agony he heard in her voice. She was pulling him into it with her, though, and he feared they would never emerge because he had to ask, “Was it anything to do with me? Because of—”
“No.” Her voice was shredded with pain. “I asked if it was because I’d been under stress and they said it was no one’s fault. Just bad luck.”
There was no comfort in that. It was still an abysmal sorrow.
“They said I could terminate or let nature take its course. They sent me home to think about it, but that night it started to happen and I went to hospital until it was over.”
“I’m so sorry, Freja.”
“No, you’re not.” She bitterly tried to shake off his grip again. “I cry every day and you’ve never once—”
“I cry,” he said raggedly. He pressed the back of her hand to his wet cheek, so wrecked he didn’t know how to deal with it except to work out harder, lose himself in books about her as a healthy, curious child. He compiled reports and translated documents and stalked her online. Anything so he didn’t have to think about what they’d lost.
With a sob, she pivoted closer. Her other hand came up, feeling his cheek, finding the damp track running into his beard. She made a choking noise of surprise.
“It was such a miracle that she even happened.” He could barely speak. His lungs were filled with acid. “It’s like I’m being punished for what I’ve done to you, but it shouldn’t have cost her. I keep thinking if I’d been there, maybe I could have done something—”
She pressed his face into her stomach. “I think those things, too. There wasn’t.”
He wrapped his arms around her and she cradled his head, and they shuddered under the grief that rocked them. They keened and shook and shared their anguish. After a time, she crumpled weakly into him.
He rolled her onto the mattress and they fit together like the complementary puzzle pieces they were, the way they always had.
“I don’t want to make love. I just want you to hold me,” she said between sniffles.