Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(59)

“Well,” he said, “I don’t really know how to fix all of that, but I can at least reassure you a little bit about the delivery part.”

“What?”

“I was there when Beth had Dixie,” he said. Beth had also been an assassin at Op Wraith. She and Griffin had escaped together. Tragically, she’d been killed last year. “And she said it wasn’t that bad.”

I made a face. “It wasn’t?”

“Well, I think the serum helps a lot,” he said. “Cause it heals you so fast? Like your body kind of can handle all of it a lot better?” He shrugged. “She did it all by herself, at home in the bathtub. I was supposed to help, but I kind of freaked out when I saw a bunch of blood, and then while I was recovering, it was over.”

At home? In a bathtub? “Why didn’t she go to the hospital?”

“We were trying to keep a low profile,” he said. “And she didn’t have insurance or anything. We didn’t want Op Wraith to find us.”

I felt a little horrified. “Do I have to deliver this baby in a bathtub?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not saying that at all.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Look, doll, you don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to have another abortion, Griffin. I told you that already.”

“I don’t want you to be scared,” he said.

I squared my shoulders. “Maybe I have to be. Maybe that’s just part of it. Your mother said that we’d never feel ready, didn’t she?”

“If you’re afraid, though, then you’re suffering and—”

“Lots of women have babies,” I said. “Heck, I think most women do. And if everybody else can do it, I can do it too.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” I said. “But maybe it’s okay that I’m not. I mean, maybe we’re going to worry about weird things. Like you’re worried about the bad seed. Maybe it’s normal.”

He pulled me back into his arms. “Nothing about us is normal.”

I laughed a little. “Maybe that’s okay, too, though. Because normal is boring.”

His hand moved over my stomach, resting against the small curve of my belly. I felt emotion swell within me at his movement. I wasn’t sure why it was so powerful. It was only a simple motion. But I suddenly felt protected and cherished and loved so deeply. It was heady and intense. I closed my eyes and leaned into him. We were bigger than ourselves. We’d made something together.

“You’re not an incubator,” he murmured into my ear. “You are my sweet, beautiful doll, and I would do anything to make you happy.”

I smiled. My voice was quiet too. “It doesn’t feel so scary somehow right now.”

“No?”

“No, I think it’s easier when I’m close to you. I think if I have you with me, I can handle it.”

He sighed softly, kissing my neck. “Is that why you did it, doll? Because you were scared like this, and I wasn’t there?”

“Yes. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Maybe not well enough.” I could hear him breathing. We were so close. “I’ve really screwed things up, haven’t I?”

“No,” I said. “You’re wonderful.”

“Only you would say that. I’m not.”

I twisted in his arms to face him. “Where is this coming from?”

He cupped my cheek with one hand. “I think I’m realizing how much of an idiot I’ve been. I’m not a good man. I abandoned you. I’ve done it more than once. That time in Boston, it was only chance that brought us back together again. If I’d never gone to that club, you might never have seen me again.”

I chewed on my lip. I’d thought this before. “But I did see you.”

“But when I left this winter, you must have thought about that. You must have thought that there was no guarantee that I’d ever come back.”

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Thinking about that time was too hard for me to do without wanting to cry. I’d felt so hopeless.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t believe I did that to you.”

“You thought I’d been unfaithful to you.”

“I shouldn’t have thought that,” he said.

“But my past,” I said. “You knew my past. You knew what I used to be like, and of course you—”

“That was the past, though,” he said. “I should have known that you’d changed.”

“But you abandoned me in the past,” I said. “I could have believed in you. I didn’t.”

He touched my hair, fingering the edge of it. “We gave up on each other.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“You know, when we were apart,” he said, “I stopped believing in love. I thought back on our relationship, how things seemed to start so well, and then get completely destroyed. And I decided that falling in love was just slow agony. At first you were so attached to someone, and then, as time went on, it disintegrated. But now... now, I’m thinking we gave up too soon.”