Page 55 of Savage Love

“It’s just as bad, living half-in and half-out. How do you not see that?”

“If that’s really how you feel, then I can give you your space. Not until Diego is taken care of—I’m not leaving you alone until I know that threat is over—but afterward, I can give you more distance, if that’s what you need. I can split my time between Boston and New York—you can have whatever arrangement you want.” He breathes in, his shoulders tightening, and I can see the resolve in his face, hear it in his voice. “But I can’t lose someone I love again, Elena. I can’t let myself close enough to even make that an option. And I’m not going to change my mind. I told you that before Rio, and in Rio, and in Boston before I left. I told you when I came back, and it hasn’t changed. Itwon’t. So however you need to live with that, tell me, and I’ll make it happen.”

There’s such absolute surety in his voice that I feel like it’s going to break me. He sounds so fuckingcertain, and hearing him say that he’ll give me space, that he’ll split his time between New York and Boston—essentially just being here when he needs to be for our child, makes me feel as if all the wind has been knocked out of me. I sink down, sitting on the edge of the tub as I struggle to fight back the surge of emotion that makes me want to break down just at the thought of it.

“That’s not what I want,” I whisper in a small voice. “I want you here. I do. I just—”

“Then we have to find a way to live with the way things are, Elena.Youhave to find a way.” Levin looks at me, that exhausted expression lining every inch of his face. “I will be sorry for the part I’ve played in putting you in the position for the rest of my life. If that suffering makes it easier for you—and I hope it does—I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it. But I can’t be more to you than this.”

He pushes away from the counter, still favoring his injured leg as he looks at me. “All you have to do is tell me what will make it easier for you, and I’ll do it. If you want me to stop trying to do things to make you happy, if you want us just to live in each other’s orbit, I’ll do that. If you want me to live separately from you—in another house or another state or whatever you want—I’ll do that. I will doanythingto make it up to you, Elena. But I can’t give you what you’re asking for.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I say softly, and it’s true. I don’t—because none of the things he’s offeringwillmake it easier. I don’t want him gone. I don’t want him to stop doing all of the small things that he’s done for me in the weeks since we moved in. I don’t want to live in this house and wish he were here. I don’t want to long for him every day for the rest of my life.

But I also don’t want to long for someone who’s standing right next to me.

There’s no solution to it. And so I have no idea what I could possibly say to tell him what to do.

“I’m going to bed.” Levin looks at me tiredly. “I’ll manage to get upstairs. If you need me—”

“Please stay down here with me.” I look up sharply at him, feeling a sense of panic at the idea of him going to a different room to sleep. It feels like a turning point, like us going to sleep in separate bedrooms is another wall between me and any chance of the future I want with him. “I don’t want to be alone. Please—”

Ihatebegging him. I hate the feeling that I’m pleading for him to stay. But I feel everything that I’ve hoped for slipping through my fingers, and the pain of having him next to me when he won’t touch me or hold me somehow feels better than taking that next step into separation.

Levin looks as if he’s considering refusing me. If he does, I have a terrible feeling that we won’t come back from that. Even in Rio, even when he was insistent that nothing could ever come of what we had together, we still shared a bed for most of it.

But finally, he lets out a breath, and nods. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll stay down here to make sure I’m there if anything else happens.”

If that’s the excuse you need.I don’t say it out loud. I just give him a small, watery smile. And then I get up, and walk past him, back to the bedroom.

Elena

For the second doctor’s appointment, Levin is running late.

It feels like another symptom of things going wrong. Of them getting worse. Nothing has been the same since the morning after we went to the emergency room.

With me on bed rest, there’s been no question of going out. The dates to the museum, the movies, out to dinner—all that stopped. And Levin had a perfectly good excuse—I wasn’t supposed to strain myself or even really leave the house unless I absolutely had to. Flowers still showed up in the bedroom, and Levin made sure that I had all of my meals—that I didn’t have to get anything for myself. But it lacked something that there was before.

Before, I couldfeelthat he was trying to make me happy. That he spent time trying to think of what he could do to make me smile or laugh. There was an earnestness to all of it that was especially sweet coming from a man like him.

Now, it’s felt detached. I feel a distance between himself and what he does, as if he’s acting on autopilot. It’s made me feel like an invalid, and there’s a certain small resentment that I’ve had to struggle against.

This feels like another nail in the coffin. I sit there in the waiting room alone, feeling like an idiot for asking Isabella not to come because I wanted to share this with Levin, just him and I—and now he’s not even here.

When he does show up, it’s halfway through the appointment. The doctor raises her eyebrow but says nothing, waiting for him to give me an apologetic kiss on the cheek—the first time he’s touched me since we argued in the bathroom—and then fills him in on what we’d just been talking about.

“I told Elena that there seems to be no issues with the baby that I can see. You’re cleared for all normal activities, and although I’d recommend being cautious, I see no reason not to resume the same sorts of things you were doing before the incident—just don’t exert yourself past that…don’t take up a new workout routine, for example.” She smiles reassuringly at us both. “I know it was terrifying, but I truly see no reason to worry. You both can rest easy.”

I don’t say anything to him until we’ve checked out and we’re back in the car. I sit in the passenger’s seat next to him as he drives us back to the house, trying to find a way to be rational in the midst of the emotions churning inside of me.

I decide to go with the simplest question to start.

“Where were you?” I ask softly as I sit there, my hands knotted together in my lap. “Did you forget?”

Levin shakes his head silently. I see it out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t say anything. I let him figure out how he’s going to deal with this.

“I had a meeting with the Kings,” he says finally. “That’s why I was gone earlier this morning, before you got up. It went long. I’m truly sorry, Elena—I told Connor and Liam you had an appointment, but they said it could wait. That part of being married into this life is dealing with some things on your own that you’d rather not, and that you should know that—Connor said that, by the way, and not Liam,” he adds quickly. “I got there as quickly as I could. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I wanted to be there for all of it, especially after—”

I don’twantto believe him. I want to be angry at him. I want areason, a genuine, concrete reason to be angry, to have something that could eat away at what I feel for him, something that doesn’t always circle back towell, he told you it would be this way. You were warned.I want a reason to think that he’s not as good of a man as I’ve seen over and over that he is.

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