He looked at me, exasperated and a little angry.
“I’m sorry it didn’t even occur to me. That was dumb. I didn’t buy any. ”
His mouth thinned. “Under the sink in the bathroom. ”
I did not want to know why he had condoms in the house. I’d seen the box there before, when I lived here, and assumed they’d been from his swinging single days. He’d told me he hadn’t been with any other women since before we got together but sometimes the uncertainty of those days when we were apart got to me. Adam had never lied to me and I trusted him. But often it was easy to let my own insecurity whisper doubts into my ear.
I slumped, got off of the bed and went to the cabinet he referred to and saw the box. It was one of those jumbo packs with a hundred or more inside. And it was half empty. Shit.
Don’t think about it, Mia. Don’t think about all the women he’s been with before—about how much prettier and healthier and more experienced they were.
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Adam hadn’t been with another woman in over a year. Why should I still care? The thought still stung but I willed myself to build a bridge and get over it. I plunged my hand into the box, grabbed a handful and came back. It occurred to me that I’d never used one—never learned how to use one—and his hands were tied up.
I put the handful on the night table and grabbed one of them. Glancing down, I saw that he was still erect. I bent over and kissed his mouth. He enthusiastically returned the kiss. I peppered some more kisses on his chest and leaned back, tearing at the foil wrapper. “Here goes nothing…” I murmured and he watched me carefully.
I pulled out the condom and put the wrapper back on the nightstand. “Wait—” he said. “What does the date say? That box is at least two years old. Are they still good?”
“Do condoms come with an expiration date?” I said and he only answered me with a glare so I shrugged and looked at the wrapper. The date on it was sometime next year. “Yep, we’re still good. ”
“Let me see it. ”
Puzzled, I held out the wrapper for him to see. Apparently he didn’t trust me to read the date? I’ll admit that sometimes I forgot things or said stupid things due to chemo-brain but I wasn’t that far gone…
“Okay,” he finally muttered. He didn’t look happy. I frowned at him. The look in his eyes could only be described as…intensity tinged with a little fear. What on earth did he have to be afraid of?
I took the condom and placed it against the tip of his cock, hoping the thing would unroll easily because doing this now was turning me on again and I really wanted to get to it. Adam watched every move I made—like a hawk—and not with an expression of arousal but as if he was afraid I’d make a mistake.
I was aware of my first mistake when it wouldn’t unroll as easily as I thought it should. I put my other hand to the task. I could see why many couples didn’t like using these things…they certainly killed the mood and the spontaneity of being together. I sighed, beginning to feel frustrated.
“You’ve got it upside down,” Adam observed. “Flip it over. ”
I did as he asked and it unrolled easily, I pulled it down, all the way against the base of him. Then I ran my hand up and down his length. I could tell it turned him on, but he didn’t take his eyes off what I was doing. “Be careful, you don’t want to tear it. ”
“Do they tear that easily? What’s the point if they do?” I got up to swing my leg over him again when he moved his hips away. “Wait…”
“What now?”
“I don’t want to take a chance with that one tearing. Put another one on top of it. ”
I paused. I’d never heard of that before. But again, I was so inexperienced. I’d only ever had sex with Adam. So what the hell did I know? Apparently he was all kinds of experienced—even with some of the kinkier stuff, too. My pointless jealousy rose up again. This was starting to piss me off.
“Will that work all right?” I said, reaching for another condom and pulling it out of its wrapper.
“If one tears, the other will hold. The odds of them both tearing are much less. ”
“But…won’t they just rub against each other and cause more friction?”
He started to tug against the ties holding his arms. “Untie me. Let me do it. ” He gave another jerk, almost frantic to be untied.
“Hold on…wait. Let me get it. ”
But he was yanking again, almost panicked now.
“Wait, Adam. Let me untie it. Hold still. ”
He visibly swallowed as he watched me and it was the first moment where I realized that it was more than that small fear I had detected in his eyes earlier. He was downright terrified.
I untied him and he sat up, rubbing his wrists. Judging from the marks around them, he had pulled pretty damn hard to get out of his bonds. I sat back, suddenly too worried about him to care that we probably weren’t going to go through with this now.
He pulled off the condom and wrapped the towel around himself again. Tears clogged in my throat. “I’m sorry…I screwed that up, didn’t I?” I said in a quiet voice.
He shook his head. “No. ” He leaned forward and put his face in his hands and I watched him for long, silent, tension-filled stretch of minutes.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked, my throat tight.
He didn’t answer, just ran a hand through his dark hair, focused intently on some spot in front of him on the bedspread.
He’d actually been afraid, panicked, terrified of something. I thought back through it all. His reaction when he thought I was going to proceed with sex without a condom—then the insistence on looking at the date to see if they were still good. Then the suggestion to double the layers. I sucked in a long and painful breath.
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When I spoke my voice was trembling. “You’re afraid I’m going to get pregnant again. ”
He abruptly stood up from the bed and went into his closet. When he came out, he was dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt. I hadn’t moved. And when we looked at each other, I knew that I had hit the nail right on the head. He didn’t deny it.
My breath rushed out of my lungs and I wasn’t certain I’d be able to draw another.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Adam
I watched as her face clouded, like a storm suddenly sweeping overland. Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked. But I had no words. And even if I had them, what could I say? She was absolutely right. I was fucking terrified to touch her. The thought that I might get her pregnant again not only petrified me, it made me nauseous.
Finally I looked away. I couldn’t watch as her heart broke—and know that I was the cause, however unconsciously.
The silence in that room was deafening—like a distant ringing that buzzed in my ears. I looked back at her. Her eyes were damp, focused somewhere in the middle distance between us. I clenched my jaw. There was nothing I could say right now to comfort her. And part of me didn’t even want to. This was the harsh reality of what she had tried to avoid earlier—when she’d insisted over and over again that she was fine, that she was tough, that she could get over this by herself.
It was best this came out now. But I honestly had no idea how we could possibly resolve it.
Suddenly she stiffened, as if she was tired of waiting for me to say something. Biting her lip, she stood up. “I’ll go sleep in my room,” she said in a shaky, quiet voice.
I watched her go and I didn’t move a muscle.
The minute she disappeared into her bedroom, I ran a hand through my hair and began to pace. My mind whirred through everything that had just happened, every thought that went through my head. The moment that everything had snapped for me—that minute when I thought she was going to initiate sex without even a thought about the lack of birth control.
Things slipped her mind a lot these days. She’d forget things or do things she’d just done over again without realizing
it. It was a side effect of the drugs she’d been on. I could have just as easily attributed that to this—her almost starting sex without even thinking about a condom.
But it had been reckless, dangerous. It could have killed her.
I could have killed her. Or brought her cancer back. Just by having sex with her. Just by getting her pregnant again.
I buried my face in my hands, a sense of helplessness smothering me. Then, I heard her walk down the hallway toward the stairs. I could let her go, or we could talk this out. I could convince her that she needed to talk to someone.
And who knows, maybe I did, too.
Because goddamn. The weight of our baggage was finally beginning to bury me and I could see no way out except to suffocate under it.
I moved to the stairs, half the length of the stairway behind her, calmly following her. She had changed from the silky nightshirt into some yoga pants and a T-shirt. Turning her head slightly, she seemed aware that I was behind her but did not speed up to avoid me as she moved to the side door, opening it and leaving it ajar for me to follow her.
As I was still approaching the water’s edge, I saw her sit down in the sand and hug her knees to her, burying her face against them. When I got closer, I could hear her quiet, weak sobs. Each one sliced right through me. I stood inches from the spot where, a few months ago, I’d kissed her so tenderly, where she’d questioned our future. I had silenced her then, so intent on one thing and one thing only—her survival.
Perhaps that moment had cost us our survival as a couple. I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling thick. I had no idea what I could say to her. So I let her cry until she calmed down. I slowly sank to the sand a short distance from her.
Finally, after an endless period of hearing nothing but her sobs, she quieted, rubbing her cheeks against her pant legs. Wearily she lifted her head and with a sniff and a hiccup, she spoke in a quiet voice. “I should go,” she said. “I should let you get on with your life. ”
That tightness in my throat threatened to strangle me. Because I was beginning to think that maybe that was the only solution to this.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mia
I waited in the weighted tension between us for him to respond. And as each second stretched on, it became more likely that he’d agree with me—that I should go. That this was the only solution for us. And that scared me most of all.
I’d finally had the cry that I’d been craving since that afternoon—since Alex’s pronouncement that Adam and I would only have one child and one child only. Because I knew—and he knew—that we’d already endured that secret, shameful loss. All I could feel was this void, like my chest had been ripped open, my eyes sore and my head aching. I breathed again, those painful, shallow breaths. I should let you get on with your life…
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He took in a shaky breath. “What makes you think I have a chance in hell of doing that without you?”
I gulped in air around a hiccup. “I’m starting to think we might be broken beyond repair. ”
He shifted beside me. “Sometimes I feel like there hasn’t been better communication between us than there is now. We talk about everything. We don’t keep secrets. Except the one. ”
“I’m not keeping a secret from you,” I said.
“You are. Maybe you’re also keeping it from yourself. ”
I turned and looked at him. He was looking out over the water, his hand sifting absently through the sand. “I have nothing to hide. ”
He tensed, jerked his head toward me. “Really? No self-loathing? All the blame you’ve taken on yourself. The guilt you’ve buried so deep it almost threatened your life—”
I stood up in a huff and looked down at him. “You’re projecting, Adam. I’m fine. ”
He didn’t move, kept his gaze out over the water while I stood looking down at him in the dim light. I crossed my arms over my chest. The cool sea breeze ruffled over my bald scalp, making me regret not having pulled on a sweatshirt. I clasped my upper arms tightly, growing impatient.
“You were practically catatonic—for days. No talking…you turned your face to the wall, hardly ate a thing…”
“How can you blame me for that? It was a shitty time—”
“I agree. But you wouldn’t let anyone in to help you. You deliberately increased your own suffering. You refused the pain medications…why did you do that?”
My breath squeezed out of me like I’d just been punched in the gut. Suddenly I was shaking…slowly I sank into the sand beside him again. I didn’t have an answer for him that he didn’t already know. I’d insisted on feeling every cramp, every ache, every bit of the pain. It had been my way of acknowledging the potential life that I was ending.
But Adam wasn’t about to let me off the hook. After minutes of silence he turned and pinned me down with his black eyes. “Why, Emilia? Tell me. ”
“You already know why, apparently. ”
“Do you?”
I leaned away from him. “That was months ago and I was going through hell…”
He looked away. “We both were, but that gets lost in the shuffle. ”
I reached out and touched his solid arm on which he was leaning. My hand closed over it. “I never want you to think I don’t acknowledge that this was your loss, too. ”
“What about the blame?”
My jaw dropped and my mouth worked. His eyes were hard, accusing. “I—I’m sorry I got pregnant. It was my fault—”
“Wrong. ”
I breathed in, a vice tightening around my chest. That pain was back and increasing. “I don’t blame you—you didn’t know I’d gone off birth control. I didn’t tell you. It is my fault. Everything is my fault. ”
“Why not blame yourself for getting cancer, too, while you’re at it? You’re going to punish yourself. Like refusing the meds, you’re going to keep this poison and darkness inside and never let anyone help you—because you never let anyone help you. You’re going to hide yourself from everyone—from me. Like the scars on your chest. ”
Tears sprang from my eyes and I shook my head. “You’re not being fair. ”
“Neither are you. It takes two people to conceive a child, Emilia. I was there too. I put you in that situation. And I know about the guilt and self-loathing you feel because I feel it, too. ”
I put my head in my hands, resting my elbows on my knees. Adam made no move to comfort me and I couldn’t tell if he was angry, frustrated or just scared.
“I’m sorry…”
“No. Stop it. I don’t want to hear that from you. Life happened. Shit happened. You made the decision that saved your life and now you torment yourself for it. You’ve built a prison for yourself and I’m afraid that you’ll never let anyone in to break you free. ”
I shook my head, denying his words.
“You have. You told me as much, that night you went to the hospital—” He cut himself off, as if he’d said something he instantly regretted. He jerked his head back and turned to look out over the water again.
“What did I say?”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight and then took in a shivery breath. He looked as if he was moments away from breaking down himself.
“Please…tell me. ”
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His jaw tensed and he didn’t look at me. “You said that…that you didn’t want to die but you were probably going to…that—” He straightened, tensing, as if he was fighting his own grief with everything that was in him. “That you deserved to die because of what you did…” His voice trailed off, swallowed in emotion. He reached up and angrily swiped the back of his hand across his eyes and I sat back, flabbergasted.
I’d said that? I stared at him, utterly overwhelmed, what he must have gone through, then. The feelings he must have felt—the thoughts that must have run through his mind when I’d said it. He’d been in fear for my life, carrying me, barely conscious, to
the ambulance, staying up with me all night in the hospital with my words running through his mind on repeat.
“Adam, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m so sor—”
“Stop it!” he practically shouted in my face and I jumped, pulling back. His fist slammed down in the sand. “Goddamn it, Emilia, if you say you are sorry one more time…”
I held my hand up. “I’m afraid…how about that? I’m afraid about what this has done to us. I’m afraid we don’t know how to fix this…”
“I’m afraid to touch you. ”
That hung in the air, thickening it with tension. My mouth opened to reply but nothing came out.
He shook his head and eventually continued. “I can’t go through that again. I can’t watch you go through that again. Every time I touch you—every time I want you, I’m scared shitless that I’m going to put another baby in you and it’s all going to happen again. ”
“It doesn’t have to happen again. We’ll be careful…”
“We need help. You need help. Professional help. ”
I sat back on my haunches and looked at him. “I’m not—”
“You said you didn’t deserve to live. You need help that I can’t give you. ”
“Will that make a difference?” I asked in a tiny voice. “Will it even begin to eliminate the baggage we are carrying?”
He looked away and shrugged. And that shrug did more to me than any of his words previously had done. My gut sank. I felt like I was suffocating. Adam had lost hope. He no longer believed that we could be fixed.
This realization shook me harder than anything because, since the beginning, he had always believed in us. Long before I had ever thought it possible, he’d believed. He’d pursued this relationship because he’d known we were right for each other. He’d known what he wanted. He’d always been so sure of us.
But, apparently, not anymore.
“You’ve lost hope…” I said quietly.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I just feel empty right now. We’re human. We can only take so much. And we’ve had more than our fair share. ”
“You said that life isn’t fair. That we don’t get to have everything. But does that mean we don’t get to have anything—that we’ve gone through all that together not to deserve to be happy together?”