The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  I understood what he was saying. I nodded and then burst into tears. He wiped the tears away with one finger, and then I lifted my hand for him to slip the ring on. He hesitated, his gaze searching mine, asking the question.

  I nodded, and he slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of my left hand. We weren’t married, and we weren’t engaged, but I realized that he needed the illusion, he needed to have something definitive, and he needed the world to know what we had. It would cost me very little to have the ring sit there. I loved him too much to hurt him.

  “I love you,” I promised him, and he groaned low in his throat and molded his body against mine, our unborn child cocooned between us. His eyes were filled with love and happiness, which was mirrored in my own. I found myself finally, truly happy with a man who understood and accepted me.

  What an astonishing thing.