Jovi’s smile didn’t just fade.
It died.
Her gaze skipped from my devastated face to the stark hospital setting, then settled on Vance.
On his hand on my chair.
On the disarray of his usually perfect hair.
On the way his entire being was angled toward me, a wall between me and the world.
She was seeing a version of her husband she didn’t recognize.
“Neri?” Zane’s voice was rough.
He took a half-step forward, his grip on Jovi loosening.
“What’s… what happened? Are you sick?” His eyes begged for a simple answer.
The flu.
Food poisoning.
Anything but the truth.
Vance answered, his voice like a sheet of ice cracking.
“She requires rest. Excuse us.” He pushed the chair forward.
Zane moved.
It was instinct, pure and stupid.
The protector.
He reached out and grabbed the wheelchair’s handle, stopping us.
“Wait! Just tell me what’s wrong. Let me help.” His voice cracked.
“I’m her husband.”
I’m her husband.
The numbness shattered.
The careful control, the VP, the strategist—gone.
What was left was raw, bleeding, and furious.
I didn’t sob.
I screamed.
“I HAD A MISCARRIAGE, ZANE! OUR BABY! IT’S GONE!”
Silence followed after my scream.
My breath heavy from rage.
Zane’s hand fell from the chair like he’d been burned.
All the color drained from his face, leaving him grey and slack-jawed.
The sonogram photo of their healthy baby fluttered from his other hand and landed on the floor between us, the blurry image facing up.
Jovi gasped, a sharp, ugly sound.
Her hands flew to her own stomach in a protective, possessive clutch that felt like a punch.
Vance went perfectly still.
Only his grip on the wheelchair kept me from feeling like I would float away.
My scream dissolved into a ragged, broken breath.
And then the dam broke.
Huge, silent sobs wracked my body, shaking the chair, my shoulders heaving.
I couldn’t get air.
The world blurred into a mess of pain and tears.
Zane made a choked sound.
Tears sprang to his own eyes.
He stumbled forward and dropped to his knees right there on the linoleum in front of me.
His hands came up, hovering, wanting to touch but afraid.
“Nerissa…” he whispered, his voice shattered. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“Oh God… I didn’t know… I…”
He looked utterly destroyed.
It was a portrait of shared, primal loss.
Out of the corner of my watery vision, I saw Vance.
He hadn’t moved.
His face was an unreadable mask, but his chest was rising and falling too quickly.
His knuckles were white where he gripped the chair.
He was an outsider to this specific, intimate grief.
He could hold my hand in the diagnosis, but he couldn’t enter this space between a husband and a wife and the child we’d lost.
And I saw Jovi.
She wasn’t looking at me or Zane anymore.
She was staring at her husband.
Staring at the profound, isolating ache in Vance’s eyes as he watched me fall apart in another man’s space.
An ache she had never seen directed at her.
Not ever.
A nurse finally broke the spell, urging Zane to take me home to rest.
He helped me, tenderly, from the chair, his arm strong around my shoulders.
As he led me away, I looked back once.
Vance was still standing there, a solitary statue.
Jovi took a step toward him, her mouth open to speak.
He didn’t even glance at her.
He just watched Zane take me away, his expression frozen, but his eyes following me until I turned the corner and vanished.