A child. His child.
Growing inside her for three whole months through every cold silence and endless distance, through every morning he had watched her from across the table and every night he had lay awake on the other side of that wall.
He pulled the heavy wooden chair closer until his knees almost brushed the edge of the mattress, and sat down.
He stared at her hand resting over her stomach, then at her pale face. He sat with everything the night had delivered, quietly, the way he had always processed difficult things, only this time the person he most wanted to hold was lying right in front of him.
Isabella's eyelids fluttered open.
Slowly at first. Then all at once.
Her dark eyes found the ceiling before drifting to his face. For a brief, heartbreaking second, she simply looked at him, completely unguarded, and he looked back without saying a word.
Then memory rushed back in.
