Page 49 of Before I Let Go

“Die?” It’s ejected from my soul, bounces off Henry’s nursery walls. “Yeah, is that what you want this family to go through? Another death?”

She ignores that, presses back into me. In the set of her mouth, in the sureness of her hand reaching between us to grab my dick, there is a confidence that my desire, the way I always want her, will override everything else, will obliterate my objections. And there was a time when the soft femininity, the perfect weight of her against me, would have been enough, but when she reaches between us, I know what she’ll find.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, the smooth, beautiful face lined by consternation. “You want this.”

I haven’t been hard this whole time. Haven’t been hard in a long time. The hungry kisses and searching tongues and ragged breaths—all real. All a cry for closeness, for intimacy, for contact we haven’t had since the day she returned from the hospital with empty arms. I wanted to want it, but my body didn’t respond. We’ve always hadthis, the fire that ignites at the slightest touch. At a glance. We’ve lost even that.

We are a disaster. Her, plotting to seduce me to get a baby we can never have. Me, reaching for the fire that used to spark between us, and finding only ashes. Whatever exists between us now is dry and flaccid.

“Why would you want another?” she asks, her voice climbing. “You didn’t even want Henry.”

“That’s a lie.” My anger flares at the injustice, at her well-aimed arrow. “What the hell, Yas?”

“What am I supposed to think? You weren’t even there.”

“That’s not fair. You—” I cut myself off, draw a deep breath. “You told me to go to that convention, and you know it. You weren’t due. We couldn’t have known—”

“That I would almost die alone? That I would lose him on the floor?” Hysteria colors her voice in shades of sorrow. “That I would—”

I pull her close, hold her the way I wasn’t there to do when it counted. She hates me for not being there when she needed me? Not as much as I hate myself.

She jerks in my arms, struggling like I’m constraining her, not comforting.

“Let me go. I don’t want you to touch me.”

My arms abruptly fall away. “That was fast. A minute ago you were begging me to fuck you.”

“I want a baby, Si.” Tears water her words even as they grow louder. “Just give me another baby and we—”

“And so I’m what? Your stud horse or your husband?”

“You’re being unreasonable. You want to fight. I just want to—”

“To fuck, I got that. So you can have a baby, no matter what I want. No matter the risk. Despite what the doctor said.”

“I’ve talked to the doctor again and she—”

“Without me? You consulted the doctor about having another baby without even discussing this with me?”

I grab her hand and pull her from the nursery, down the hall, the stairs, through the living room and kitchen to the garage. Away from our kids’ curious ears, this has become our boxing ring. Where, when our icy silences crack, we come to scream and screech. Yasmen’s Acura MDX sits prettily beside my Range Rover in our garage, in our elite zip code, and it should be the stuff of our dreams. But it’s instead a deep freezer, stuffed with metal monsters whose headlights glare at our inadequacies and scowl at how naive we were to think this would ever be enough.

“We’re not having another baby, Yas.”

My voice comes out hard, unyielding. I can’t lose one more thing. One more person. I can’t loseher.I wouldn’t survive it.

“It’s not happening,” I snap. “And I can’t believe after all this family’s been through, you’d even consider it.”

“We said we wanted a big family. You don’t want that anymore?”

“We can have as big a family as you want.” I take her hand. “We can foster, adopt—”

“No.” She jerks away, removes herself from me, walking around to the other side of her car, staring at me over the roof, incongruous in her gown, surrounded by the leaf blower and the water hose and the lawn mower. “I want…I need…”

She shakes her head, her expression frustrated. I know what she wants. A do-over. A chance to feel a baby kicking, moving inside of her. To see that baby leave her body alive. Not the way Henry came. Still. His soul already fled.

“Having another baby won’t fix what’s wrong, Yas.”

“What’s wrong?” Her laughter bites into the chilly air. “You mean what’s wrong with me.”

---