“You knew?”
I wished I had, simply because it was rare that I had the opportunity of surprising my husband. Except I didn’t really wish that, because I hated that I knew it now. Hated how much her part in this had to have hurt him. How much it must have felt like a betrayal.
On top of my betrayal.
Yes, he’d had a very, very bad day indeed.
“I didn’t know,” I answered truthfully, aching to say something more comforting. “I’d heard a mention that they knew each other, and the pieces sort of fell into place.”
“She sold the idea rather brilliantly. In other circumstances…” He turned back to look at me. “I couldn’t bear to let her think she hadn’t masterminded a good thing. I told her you were crying, begging to go back to London.”
“You’re as good at playing games as I ever was.” I smiled weakly. He almost smiled back. A beat passed. “Then we’re headed back to London?”
“Do you want to go?”
Our conversation was painfully stilted but vitally important, so I stuck with it in earnest. “Cornwall Terrace is my home now. I want to raise our baby there. Turn my office into a nursery. Redo the playroom.” Imagining us in London made my sides ache with longing. “But I’m attached to my doctor here. And the trial is about to start there.”
“We’ll stay then,” he said, resolutely. “I’ll get us a connecting suite for when the baby comes. We’ll go home when you’re ready, after she’s here.”
After she’s here. I couldn’t bear to think we’d still be this awkward with each other when she arrived.
I had to keep him, had to pull him back before we lost this moment entirely, but I didn’t know quite how. “Genevieve and Chandler, then,” when I couldn’t think of anything else.
“Genevieve and Chandler.” He seemed less dismayed than I thought he would be.
“I’m sure that has Hudson mortified. Though, could you imagine? If they stayed together?” It was comical, so I laughed. Then reality sank in. “Even more tied together.”
“Perhaps that will work out in our favor.”
I gave him a stare that very blatantly said I just can’t possibly see how.
“It’s a wonder what being family can do to a business relationship. Your father would never have agreed to a joint venture let alone a merger before we married. Maybe Hudson would finally feel comfortable about selling us those shares.”
“You still want Werner.”
“I’ll have Werner. Eventually.”
Of course he wanted it. He always wanted, wanted, wanted. There was nothing ever enough to satisfy him. He would get it too, as he always did. I had no doubt. It was something I both admired and resented about him. His hunger and avarice made him powerful, powerful enough to succeed, and that was a major turn-on.
Just, it would be nice to believe he had all he needed in loving me.
Way to dream, Celia.
And since the dream couldn’t be reality, I had to fight for what I could get, for our baby. “I’m guessing this will be a long game. May I propose a truce?”
He raised a brow, intrigued.
“You keep your secrets, I’ll keep mine. Whatever you pursue in business is, no pun intended, your business.” I wished he were closer, that I could reach out to him or that I had the nerve to go to him and throw myself in his arms. Since I didn’t, I put my hand on my belly for reassurance instead. “Until she’s born, at least.”
His eyes went from mine to my hand resting over our child. A split second later, he was in front of me again, wrapping himself around me. “Yes. A truce. It would probably be best. For both your sakes.”
I blinked back tears, wary of asking for too much, but wanting more all the same. “For your sake, too?” I asked, hopefully.
“Definitely for my sake, too.”
I relaxed into him, feeling like we were finally on the same side, even if we weren’t really. We were for now, united in our love for each other and our baby and our determination to stay together no matter what.
It would be hard, though, when the truce was over. When the secrets pushed their faces up against the windows, demanding to be let in.
He was thinking it as well, he had to be.
I knew for certain moments later, after he’d suggested a bath to clean us up and soothe my tail end and after I’d cooed about his desire to take care of me like he once had so routinely and after he’d promised he would again from now on. He cupped a dominating hand at my cheek and brushed his lips over mine, hot and possessive and open-mouthed.
“It’s not just Werner I want,” he said. “I’ll want all of you, too. Eventually.”
And like everything, he’d get all of me. Eventually.
I was a fool if I believed anything else.
Seven
Edward
Nothing could have prepared me for this moment.
Not the birth of my first two children, delivered so long ago in another country, when newborn practices varied in small but significant ways, when infants were immediately carted off to a nursery to be weighed and measured and cleansed instead of placed, all coated in white, waxy vernix, on the mother’s bare torso to stretch and squint and whimper and root.
Not the childbirth class that Celia had requested I take with her, and I, in an attempt to honor the truce we’d made in good faith, had humbled myself to concede—a twelve-week course that had consisted of labor rehearsals and relaxation techniques and a thorough tour of our birthing facility and guidance on how to coach and instructions on how to give a good massage, that I, thank you very much, did not need.
Not the hours of late night talking when Celia should have been getting her rest but, instead, curled up next to me with a baby book on her e-reader as I caressed the expanding swell of flesh that housed a tiny human forming in our image.
Even through the preceding fourteen hours of labor—as my wife had, despite growing weary from contractions that squeezed and wrung her like she were a sponge, soldiered and triumphed while I’d made poor attempts to guide and support her—I hadn’t quite grasped what we were headed for, what the end result would be. That I would eventually be looking through glassy eyes at the most beautiful scene witnessed in my forty-five years of life—my daughter in the arms of a tear-streaked goddess, a woman so evidently made to be a mother that I suddenly wondered what importance I could possibly be in her life.
How had I ever thought to keep this from her?
I was thoroughly convinced this child was more than just a blessing of joy. She’d been fated.
“Ten on the second apgar test.” The nurse folded the blanket back over the baby then pulled the tiny hat farther down on her head. “Make sure she stays warm now. Skin-to-skin is best for that, but you’ll want to keep that heat trapped around her.”
Celia nuzzled our daughter closer. “She’s doing okay, then?”
I didn’t know if the nurse noted the hint of worry in her tone or not, but she was sufficiently reassuring all the same. “Her color’s good, she’s breathing well. She’s perfect.”
“Oh, thank God.” More tears leaked from her eyes as she bent down to kiss our baby’s head.
Without leaving her shoulder where I’d been firmly planted for the last ninety minutes, I peeked over at the hospital team still working down below. Knowing our daughter was in good health was a relief, to say the least, but I wouldn’t be able to relax until I knew my wife was as well.
“Everything routine?” I asked, afraid I sounded far more on edge than Celia had.
“Placenta’s just been delivered,” the obstetrics doctor said, not the one we’d met with over the course of pregnancy, but the one that had been on call when Celia’s contractions had begun in earnest the night before, sending us to the center with her packed bag. “There’s been no tearing. Nothing to stitch. We should be out of here shortly.”
That hadn’t quite been an answer to my question, and I teetered between asking again and forcing myself to accept that al
l was fine.
Before I made up my mind, the baby nurse—or pediatrician or delivery assistant, I didn’t know who was whom anymore, the room having got crowded—called me over. “Would you like to cut the cord?”
“Uh.” I blinked, having forgotten about that tradition. I’d assumed the job had already been done. “Sure. What do I…?”
A pair of scissors were placed in my hands, and a spot on the cord between two clamps offered up for me. I brought up the instrument and made the cut and the whole thing took a matter of seconds and, especially compared to everything Celia had done to deliver our baby, was nothing, yet I felt quite smug in that moment.
My wife called me. “Edward?”
Frankly, I’d thought she might have forgotten I was here in the midst of her elation, which was more a reflection on my feeling of insignificance than of her preoccupation with our child, and I returned to her side at once. “I’m here.”
“Look at her. She’s beautiful. Isn’t she so beautiful?”
I picked up a miniature hand as it curled reflexively in the air. “She’s exquisite.”
“I know this pregnancy was uneventful for the most part, but I can’t stop feeling like she’s a miracle.”
“She is,” I agreed. “And meant to be.”
Celia’s head spun toward me. Her surprised eyes also held a question that she didn’t have to voice to be understood. I’d been so vehemently resistant to conceiving. Of course she’d be confused about how much I wanted our child now that she was here.
I didn’t get a chance to respond, though, before Talyse, the nurse who had been with us for the past several hours, put a comforting hand on Celia’s shoulder. “We’ve done the immediate clean up needed. I’ll be back within the hour to give her eye drops and Vitamin K. Meanwhile, we’ll give you three a little bit of time to bond.”
Panic registered on my wife’s face. “You’re just going to leave her with us?”
Talyse managed to hold her laugh. “She’s yours now. You’ll be just fine. I’ll be a click of a button away, if you need me. Let her try to nurse if she wants to, or if that seems to not be happening, you can just hold her close. Let her hear your voice. She already knows you, and that will make her feel right at home.” She paused to make sure Celia had really heard her before going on. “Does this precious little thing have a name yet?”
“Cleo.” Celia glanced at me. I’d been charged with deciding on a middle name, which I had, but I’d yet to share it.
“Cleo Wren,” I said now.
Celia’s expression lit up as she put the meaning of our daughter’s full name together. “Small bird of glory.”
I suddenly worried it was the wrong choice. “Is it...okay?”
She nodded. “I love it.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Talyse said. “And it fits her, as this small thing is definitely glorious.” She ran her thumb across Cleo’s cheek. “Now enjoy yourselves.”
The door shut quietly behind her as she left, and we were left alone, a little family in awe.
My own alarm began to rise. It had been so long since I’d been around a child so small, and even when I had been, I hadn’t done a whole lot of engaging. Mostly because I’d been a fuck of a father, and here we were with this sweet child, sure I was about to fuck up again.
Before the panic took hold of me entirely, Celia set down an anchor. “Sit by me?” She wriggled to the side to make me room, which wasn’t much, but turned out to be just enough.
I sank onto the bed beside her, throwing an arm around her shoulders, then peered down along with her at the wiggling bundle pressed up against her chest. “You did it, bird. You did this. You grew a person and brought her into this world. I’m so unbelievably amazed by you.”
“I know I complained a lot this last month about my feet and my back and my bladder and, well, everything, really, but it kind of feels like all that was nothing right now.” She considered for a second. “Okay, that’s not true. The last few hours were the worst. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“I knew you would.”
She looked up at me earnestly. “You did?”
I tightened my hold around her. “Never a doubt in my mind.”
Her complaints about pregnancy hadn’t been much either, to be honest. Marion had been quieter, of course, as I suspected she found a certain joy in her suffering. Celia, on the other hand, had been downright miserable, and it showed, even without her saying a word. The way she moved like it took a lot of effort, the way she tossed and turned every night trying to find a comfortable position, the way her feet had swollen up to the size of logs—I’d been astonished she hadn’t carped more.
I’d done what I could for her, taking care of her in the manner I had before we’d fought so terribly as well as in new ways, and none of it had seemed enough. Of everything I was able and willing to bear for her, this had been the one thing I simply could not, and it had infuriated me almost as much as not being allowed to seek vengeance in her honor.
It was funny how that had begun to mean both less and more to me.
I much preferred loving her to bickering. And the glow she carried throughout her pregnancy had made me truly doubt whether she needed the closure to her past that I believed she needed.
At the same time, as the weeks turned into months, as Celia carried the burden of pregnancy and our child became real and inevitable, my sense of purpose became more primal and fully rooted. Wasn’t I supposed to be the caretaker? Wasn’t I supposed to look out for her in everything? There existed a natural instinct for her to be a mother, a need that she had desperately required be met. Wasn’t it natural that I possessed a similar instinct to protect and defend?
Her denial to let me be that for her, primitive as the notion might be, seemed as oppressive as I’d been in trying to keep her from having a child.
There.
I could admit it. I’d been wrong. It was impossible not to acknowledge it in the presence of the creature suckling at Celia’s breast.
“Hi, Cleo. It’s your mom. I’ve been waiting so long to meet you.” She let out a giggle as the tiny mouth closed around her nipple. “Wow. That feels so weird.”
“It can’t be that odd,” I teased. “I’ve sucked your tits on plenty of occasions.”
She gave a glare that was hardly effective with the grin that accompanied it. “It’s not the same. At all.”
“I probably shouldn’t find that so mollifying, but I do.”
“You’re such a man.” Her smile lingered as she cooed again at Cleo. Then it disappeared entirely, her brow knitting ever so slightly. “Our truce has expired.”
I winced. It shouldn’t be the thing on her mind right now, and I felt entirely to blame that it was. “This isn’t the time for that discussion.”
“Actually, I think this is exactly the time for that discussion. Everything changes now, with her. We have to get used to a whole new rhythm of life, we have to develop new routines, and I can’t do that if I don’t know where you and I stand.”
“We stand exactly where we’ve always stood, bird—I love you, you love me.” I reached across her face to sweep a piece of hair behind her ear. “That should be all that matters.”
My hand remained there, cupping her face, and I don’t know if it was me or her that tilted her chin up, but soon her eyes were locked with mine. “If that’s all that matters, then you don’t ever need to know all my secrets.”
The room felt suddenly colder, like the air had just kicked on, which was definitely not the case seeing as it was early in February with a snowstorm predicted in the coming days. What she’d said may have been a casual statement, one of her barbed jabs she was so fond of pointing in my direction, but it had the heaviness of an ultimatum.
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
She shook her head against my palm. “You can’t drop it, can you?”
“This does not need to be decided right now,” I insisted, rubbing my thum
b across her skin. “I’m certainly not going to begin efforts to find out what I want to know anytime soon.”
“Then when?” Her voice was as sharp as her gaze. “Will you wait until she’s a year old? Five years old? How about until she’s eighteen?”
“Celia…”
“If you can’t let this go permanently—”
I cut her off, dropping my hand from her face at the same time. “You better not be headed where I think you are. Not ever, but certainly not right now, of all occasions.”
She swallowed, her eyes dropping back to Cleo who had fallen asleep at her breast. When she looked up again at me, her expression was both softer and more resolved.
“Here’s the thing, Edward—this isn’t just about us anymore. Our battle doesn’t just affect you and me. I could live with your distance and your resentment before, but not now. She doesn’t deserve that. She deserves parents that are partners, not rivals. I won’t be that for her.”
“Then we won’t be that for her. We are far from rivals. Just because we don’t agree on everything doesn’t mean we aren’t a good pair.”
Abruptly, she seemed to switch gears. “Do you love her?”
It gutted me that she had to ask. I had to take a moment before I could answer. “Of course I love her. How can you not know that?”
“You didn’t want her.”
“I wanted her. I just…” I sighed. I’d been scared, in truth. Also, I’d been a bully. “I shouldn’t have leveraged a baby to try to get what I wanted. I know that. But you see, don’t you, that you were also not fair in how you went around that?”
“I do see that. And I refuse to be like that anymore, a person who has to scheme to get what she needs. So if you can’t give me what I need then—”
“Don’t say it.” She stopped at my command. Momentarily, anyway. Then was about to say more so I said it again. “Don’t. Please. Please, don’t.” I couldn’t bear to hear how the sentence ended because if it went where it so definitely seemed to be going, I didn’t know if I could continue drawing air into my lungs. I’d been through one divorce, and it had nearly killed me. I couldn’t imagine what it would do to me to lose Celia when the way I loved her was so much more than the way I’d loved Marion.
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