Page 85 of Bloom
“Hmm.”
“What about you?”
Aleric immediately looked away. “Um…if you want to go, you can.”
“We’ve already been over this. I’m not running off while you’re stuck here in limbo.” Why would he say that out of the blue? He wanted Jaime to do something and then tried to push him away again.
“Well, I’m…” Aleric furrowed his brow while still staring at the empty fireplace.
“What? Did something happen while you were out?”
He’d mentioned his wife might come back later. Perhaps she’d returned earlier in secret, and he’d gone to meet her, but there was bad news…
“Is this about Clementine?”
“No.” Aleric shifted to rest his forehead on his hands so his eyes were covered. “That day with the heat fever-the cramps started last night…”
“Huh? You had heat fever again?!” Why hadn’t he said anything?
“No. I had the cramps that mean I’m pregnant…I’m still having them.”
Jaime almost laughed while at the same time, a part of his mind went blank. Was this a joke? It had to be a joke. He’d seen Aleric taketwoherbs. He couldn’t be pregnant.
Aleric said something as he lifted his head, and Jaime could still barely get his mind wrapped around the fact to form a coherent sentence. If he was correct, the cramps always came four weeks after conceiving.
Not only had they fucked four weeks ago, Aleric had also been severely injured.
Suddenly, all he could picture was Aleric slamming into the ground with a spear and arrow sticking out of him. He’d been so ill afterward too.
Jaime had always wanted to be a Father, although not quite so unexpectedly.
“Are you listening to me?” demanded Aleric.
“Are you joking?”
“No, I'm not fucking joking. I said you can leave, and-”
Jaime shoved the book under a decorative pillow before he got up and hurried around the armchair although he had no idea of what to do. Aleric stiffened and took a step back with a guarded expression that was rather hurtful. Jaime wasn’t to be swayed from his concern.
“How do we know if the baby is all right?” he asked in a rush as he glanced down at Aleric’s midsection even though there wouldn’t be anything to see for a while. “You were injured and-”
What if something was dreadfully wrong, and Aleric would miscarry in a few weeks? It might even happen within a few days. He didn’t want to think of Aleric bleeding and passing it like that because it was surely painful and traumatizing. It'd be Jaime's fault and nothing he could fix.
“My uterus wasn’t hit, and I was healed,” Aleric said after a second.
“You also fell, and what if that killed it? I know the baby is too small to even see now, but they can die in the womb. You were thrown from a horse! Olivier poisoned you too.”
Aleric stared at him. “If it died then or in the next couple of days, I would have passed it already. When it’s first conceived, the baby is practically…you can’t even see it yet. I might not have noticed blood in the privy. Even now, I don’t think you couldn’t see it. It’s less than a speck.”
“But you were sick too, and we have no idea what exactly Olivier was giving you. You’d also lost a lot of blood, and you weren’t eating much at first. What if something is wrong, and it stops growing or-”
“It’s fine. For Elira’s sake, why are you so worried about this?”
“Because it’s my kid too, and if anything happens to it, it’s you that has to feel everything, and there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Aleric took a deep breath. “I went to see Delphine. She said my symptoms all point to pregnancy, and I’m likely fine. Plenty of people have had accidents or illnesses before they knew they were pregnant, and nothing is wrong. It's not the same as being ill or falling off a horse when you're much farther along and likely to hurt it. I’ve had the cramps, I haven’t noticed any blood down there, and I haven’t had any odd pains, so everything is likely fine at the moment.”
“You were dizzy, and you fainted for a couple of seconds.”
