accident,” he says in a gentle voice. “The reason you don’t ride horses anymore.”
I manage a nod.
“Where did it hurt you?” he asks.
My hand presses to my chest and a sob wrenches free followed by another and another. Telling my story has worn away the numb oblivion I’ve clung to. I’d stopped thinking about it, because it hurt. I’d told myself that enough time has passed that I’d healed—at least, as much as I could ever expect to heal. Now I know that was all a lie. I never healed. I pretended. I never accepted. I surrendered.
“Oh God.” I can’t breathe. I look to him wildly. Can’t he see it? I’m drowning in front of him. I’m dying.
“Inhale, Lucky,” he says quickly, grabbing my hand and breathing deeply as though to coach me. “Exhale. Okay, inhale. You’ve got this. Why don’t we take a break?”
I shake my head. The only way out is through. Out of the dark. Out of the past. We can’t stay here lost forever. We have to find our way out if we’re going to survive this. We have to face this together.
He’s here now. I can face anything. That’s what was missing before.
Sterling smiles, his hand slipping down to rub my stomach. “Can you feel her kick?”
“I think so,” I say. Sometimes when I focus I feel the soft flutter of butterfly wings, but I’m never quite sure if that’s the baby. Maybe I just want it to be, so that I have some tangible connection with the life growing inside me.
“Let’s name her.” He knits his fingers through mine, lying down beside me in the clover field. “Buttercup?”
I jab him with an elbow.
“What? It was good enough for your horse.” But he laughs. The sound of it moves like the warm tingle of a shot of whiskey inside me.
“Are you sure?” I ask. I feel like I’ve asked this before, but I never got an answer.
“Stop.”
Something pricks at my brain. We’ve had this argument, but we haven’t. I shake my head, but it remains foggy. “But how will we afford it?”
“I told you that she’s all we need. Our own secret fortune,” he says.
I smile even as a cloud moves overhead and blots out the sun. “I love you.”
He doesn’t reply. My fingers squeeze his hand but find it’s gone. I’m alone. A drop of rain hits my face and I startle, my eyes flying open to discover an unfamiliar face overhead.
“Oh, good morning,” she says in a thick British accent. “Or good afternoon, I suppose. I was just changing your IV.”
I gradually become aware of a cold trickle running up my arm. I glance down, confused, to discover a tube running up my forearm.
“I needed to flush your hep-lock. You probably felt that. Woke you up.” She bustles along cheerily, and I blink trying to process her—and everything else.
I’m in a hospital. That seems obvious from the IV and the monitor beeping next to my bed. But I shouldn’t be here. I was somewhere else—with him. I want to go back there. “Where am I?”
It’s a struggle to speak. My tongue feels like I’ve been sucking on cotton balls. The beeping monitor pitches up, and I turn to stare at it, realizing it’s measuring my heart rate. My hand flies toward my stomach, my body understanding before my brain can catch up, but I’m too tangled in lines and cords to reach it.
“The baby!” I croak. My throat goes raw but no tears come. Maybe I’ve dried out completely.
“Oh, no, lamb.” She rushes over and pours me a glass of water. “The baby’s quite alright. See look here!” She swivels another monitor, and I see a second rapid heartbeat.
My baby’s heartbeat. Each little jump on the monitor soothes me. I stare at it until I feel calm again while she helps me take a few drinks from the cup.
“Here. Just be careful you don’t bump the monitors.” She coaxes my arm out from the mess I’ve made of all the lines connecting me, and I’m finally able to settle my palm protectively over my stomach. “Is that better, mum?”
I nod, swallowing down the surge of emotion I feel at hearing that word. Mum. Mom. Mother. I can’t quite identify with it yet. It still feels foreign like I’m trying my best to understand a word in another language but not quite grasping it.
“What happened?” I ask, but before she can answer. The door to my hospital room opens and Felix steps in, holding