Page 47 of Tears of Gold

I think the beating of my heart against my ribs might actually make me sick. “Here.” I thrust it at him. “Three minutes, right?”

I’ve handed it to him face side down, but he turns it over and stares at the small windows. “I’d say however long it took for you to walk back.”

“What?” Hell, I know I’m in shock, but it didn’t take me three minutes to walk from the en-suite to the bed. He shows me the windows.

One says Pregnant. The other says six weeks.

“Fuck.” My knees fold, pulling me down onto the mattress. His hand grabs mine, squeezing hard like he’s stopping me from washing out to a sea of panic on a little dinghy unsuitable for rough conditions.

“Faith?”

I don’t want them to, but tears slip down my cheek. “I’m sorry, Eli. So sorry. I should have paid more attention.”

“Faith.” Shifting closer he slides his hands around my face, wiping my tears with his thumbs.

I’ve got a baby in my tummy.

Good God.

I’ve got a baby in my tummy.

“Don’t be sorry. This is us, we are two people. Maybe if I didn’t want you so much all the time, then I would be able to stop and think.”

“I can’t believe this.” Rising panic threatens to overwhelm me. My skin prickles as sweat breaks out along its surface.

Turning his attention from me to the stick which is still screaming the word pregnant he stares at it. What is he thinking?

“Eli.” My throat tightens until it hurts to swallow, to talk, even to breathe. “We’ve known each other three months.” He nods, momentarily distracted, so I continue. “We’ve been apart in that time.” My brain can’t go to those awful days after Al died, when my heart was smashed into a million fragmented pieces.

“What are you saying?” His eyes finally lift back up from the stick.

“Look at us, Eli. We’ve just moved into a house in some power play by your family. Should we even consider bringing a child into it?”

His shoulders slump. “I don’t know.” His words slice me in half. I wanted him to tell me he loved me, that my fears were unfounded; that something we could create was worth fighting for. But then maybe I wanted him to agree with me.

I don’t know what I want. My brain can’t utilise any area apart from the one that produces extreme shock and panic.

His fingers tangle with mine loosely and he clears his throat. “But I do know that before you, I had nothing. Nothing of any value. My life was all straight edges and repressed dreams. Then you stormed in and you pushed those edges until they were curved and voluminous and could contain so much more than I ever expected. Could contain me and you and the crazy that we’ve survived. Could make me wake every day, desperate to see what that day will bring instead of dreading it. And now…” He pauses, stuttering over his words. “Now you’ve pushed the lines further, created more, given me more than I ever could have dreamed.”

A tear slips down my cheek and his hand falls to my tummy, lifting the hem of my sweater and running lightly over my skin. “In there is something that is just ours, untouched by anyone else. Something we created. Whether that was by accident or chance, or whether it was some act of fate that we will never understand, it’s still ours and no one can touch it.”

“What if we can’t protect it, like neither of us have been able to protect ourselves?” I whisper, my voice cracking with every word as my deepest fears rise to the surface.

“Then we will fight harder, give everything to make sure we do.”

“You want the baby?” I hold his gaze. I’m not breathing.

“I want you.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

His fingers press harder against my tummy. “I want all of you. I always have. I want everything you create.”

“I think you had a hand in this.”

A smile lifts the corner of his mouth and that adorable dimple flashes. “I’m an exceptional artist.”

“Eli.” I want to fight him, but his words turn my focus until I can only see inside me. When Abi told me she was pregnant and I wondered how it felt to have something inside you that you put there, something that wasn’t entirely yours, not an organ or blood, or cells necessary to make you work, but other things, essential to make someone else work.