Page 55 of 10 Days to Surrender

“Then catch me.” There’s a ghost of her old teasing in her voice. “You’re good at that, when you’re not the one pushing me.”

She’s all sharp angles under the thin gown—hip bone jutting into my thigh, IV cord tangled between us. I settle on my side, hand hovering over her stomach. The bed wasn’t built for someone my size, let alone two people, but we manage.

Her head finds the hollow of my shoulder, breath warm against my throat. My palm stays pressed to the swell of her stomach,protective and possessive. Through the thin hospital gown, I can feel the flutter of movement—our children, safe and alive despite my mistakes.

“They always settle down when you touch them,” Ariel murmurs, already heavy with exhaustion. “Like they know their papa is keeping watch.”

Papa.Two syllables shouldn’t be that heavy. I’m going to be a father.

Not a father like him, though. Never like him. These children will never know the taste of fear or the sting of betrayal or how it feels when barbed wire tears your throat in two. They’ll never have to learn how to hide bruises or hold their breath when footsteps approach their door.

After a while, Ariel’s breathing evens out into sleep. I press my lips to the crown of her head, breathing her in. Memorizing the weight of her leg hooked over mine, the prickle of her lashes against my pulse. This—us—is a shooting star I’m cupping in bleeding palms.

Please. Let me keep it. Just this once.

“Marry me,” I whisper to her.

She won’t say yes. She can’t. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop asking. I’m going to keep asking, again and again, until she believes that I mean what I say.

I can wait.

22

ARIEL

ONE WEEK LATER

How many hours of staring at the same ceiling does it take for a person to go insane?

Asking for a friend.

I’m lying on my back because that’s all I do these days, looking up at shadows dancing across the stucco as another storm rolls in. The ceiling has exactly one hundred and forty-three cracks, in case anyone was wondering. I’ve counted each and every one of them. The particularly interesting little fellas get names.

Crack Johnson.

President Andrew Crackson.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

The lights flicker again. Storm number four this week wails against the window. It feels like they’re getting worse. Each storm inevitably knocks out the power for a minute or two, dropping us into a breathless dark until the generators perk back to life.

Not that it changes much for me. I’m stuck here whether we have power or not.

Sasha took the doctor’s orders to heart. He wasn’t kidding about not letting me lift so much as a finger. Since we got back to the villa after one night’s stay at the hospital, the man who once ordered hits without blinking now fusses if I so much as reach for a glass of water. Yesterday, I caught him arguing with Jasmine about the proper way to fluff my pillows. It would be funny if it wasn’t so surreal.

Almost as surreal as him being here at all. I’d wondered for six months how it would feel for the husband chair in every exam room to be filled.

It’s filled now.

Sasha shows no signs of vacating it.

I, surprisingly… don’t hate it? It’s hard to hate something you find yourself longing for in idle moments. Sure, I tried to replace Sasha’s face with someone else’s in my fantasies, but I dunno—Chris Hemsworth’s jawline just never quite looked right when I superimposed it onto Sasha’s body.

I guess I’m just scared of letting myself start to rely on it. On him. On that chair being filled, every time I look.

You emotional little dreamer, I tell myself when the monitors sync with his snoring.You’re pathetic.

Right on cue, there’s a knock at the door. “Lunch,” Sasha announces.

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