several moments, he saw his own frustration mirrored in her eyes. “It’s not that simple,” she said at last, and the bad feeling got a whole lot worse.
“Care to explain that?”
“Believe me,” she said with a harsh sigh, “if I could, I would. But anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about Heather. And how we’re going to solve this. At some point. Not tonight. I’m way too tired to figure any of it out right now.” Clutching the pillows to her chest, she headed toward the door.
“You’re spending the night on the sofa again?”
“You have to sleep on your back. And nowhere in our marriage vows does it say I have to sleep in the same room with a snoring man—”
“Do you love me?”
Already in the doorway, she spun around. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Darryl, we’re both exhausted, and stressed—”
“Simple question, yes or no. Do you love me?”
Their gazes warred for several seconds before she reached behind her to quietly shut the door. When she faced him again, she looked…worn-out. “We’re part of each other by now, aren’t we? All braided together like a pair of saplings planted side by side. After all this time, I wouldn’t know how not to love you. But let me ask you something….” Her mouth quirked, and she leaned against the door, strangling the pillows. “Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”
Her words slammed into him like fists. “For God’s sake, Faith—after everything we’ve been through together, after everything I’ve done for you and the kids…how can you even ask that?”
“Because,” she said, her eyes hooked in his, “there’s a difference between love and…and obligation. There’s doing what’s right, and doing what’s right.”
Darryl’s brows pulled together. “You think I married you because I had to?”
“Didn’t you?”
He looked at her as if she were speaking another language. “Have you forgotten how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other? Hell, there’s still times I want you so bad I can hardly think straight!”
“That’s hormones, Darryl. And proximity. But what I’m wondering now is…was it ever more than that? Really?”
He dropped onto the edge of the bed, swallowing hard before saying, “Dammit, I’m doing my best here.”
“I know you are,” Faith whispered. “And you always have. God knows there’s plenty of men in your situation who would’ve headed straight for the hills, rather than faced their responsibilities the way you did. And I love you for that.”
He smirked. “For doing the right thing?”
“Is that so terrible?” She sat beside him, laying her hand on his uncasted arm. “But in any case, this isn’t about you. It’s true,” she said when he snorted. “Which is exactly what makes this so…so weird. I wanted to marry you, too. To be with you. So I don’t understand this craziness any more than you do.”
While he sat there, hoping to hell it was the meds causing her words to make so little sense, she got up, hugging the pillows to her chest. “You need anything before I leave?”
“No.” Then his gaze slashed to hers. “How is it we can say all the right things, and yet the answers still feel all wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, then left the room, the elephant lumbering along after her…leaving behind a not-so-little reminder of its visit.
Wasn’t a painkiller in the world strong enough to dull this pain.
The sky was just beginning to pink up the next morning when Faith heard Darryl shuffle down the hall, yawning loudly. He paused at the door to the kitchen, frowning at her and Nicky, prompting Faith’s heart to start beating loudly enough to echo inside her head.
“You had pumpkin pie for breakfast?” he said in his morning-roughened voice, nodding toward the empty foil pie plate on the table in front of her.
“It was the last piece. I figured it wouldn’t be any good by lunchtime.”
He shook his head, one side of his mouth tilted up. “I didn’t know you were still nursing the baby.”
The plastic clock over the sink sounded like an old woman clucking her tongue at her as she sat at the kitchen table, Nicky at her breast. “Just once a day, in the morning,” she said, smoothing down the baby’s curls so she wouldn’t have to look at her husband. “After you’re gone, usually.”
“Don’t recall you keeping the others on the breast so long.”
“I know. Seems harder to wean him, I guess because he’s the last one….”
Her words faded into a silence that positively screamed between them.
“Didn’t expect you awake this early,” she said, as much to shatter that silence as anything else. “Sun’s not even up yet. Neither are the rest of the kids, thank goodness.”
She sensed him inching toward the refrigerator, barefoot as usual even though it was none too warm this early in the morning. Usually Darryl propelled himself through space like he could never get where he was going fast enough; today, however, he moved cautiously, as if he was trying to sneak past the pain. Sympathy twanged inside her—this was a man who rarely got sick, even when everybody else in the house was like to die from some crud or other. And everybody knows pain’s all the worse when you’re not used to it.
One hip propping open the door, he pulled out a carton of orange juice—he never had been a coffee-first-thing-in-the-morning kind of person. In the glow from the open fridge, she could see he hadn’t bothered combing his thick hair, that he looked to be wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on yesterday. That the waistband snap to his jeans was still undone.
“You need help doing up your pants?”
He stilled for a second, then twisted off the cap to the carton one-handed, poured the juice into a glass. “No.”
She swallowed. “Soon as I finish with Nicky, I can fix you some breakfast—”
“I’m not hungry.”
Faith took in a deep breath, trying to break the bands constricting her chest. “You get any sleep?”
“Not a whole lot, no. But thanks for asking.”
“Darryl, I—”
“There’s nothing to say, Faith,” he said, not looking at her. “Like you said, I was the one who brought up the subject.” He set the juice back in the fridge and let the door slam shut, making Nicky jump. The baby stopped nursing for a second, then latched back on, his blue eyes wide and trusting. Now standing at the window, Darryl sipped the juice, then made a face. “This our regular stuff?”
“No,
