Page 181 of Diego

"I'm just being honest," I say. "You're also stubborn and infuriating and entirely too headstrong for your own good."

She laughs. "None of those things is a compliment."

"Al contrario," I say, my gaze holding hers. "All of them are."

I kiss her again, this time deeper, and she responds with a passion that sends a jolt through me. It's all I can do to keep my hands from wandering, from exploring the curves of her body, from giving her the release she so generously gave me. But I don't. I can't.

I pull back and look down at my stomach and the mess we've made.

I can't help but grin.

"Come on," I say, taking her hand. "Let's get cleaned up, then I'll make you some breakfast."

"Well, it's the least you can do," she jokes as she allows me to help her out of bed.

"It certainly is," I say, wrapping my arm around her waist, and thinking of all the ways I'm going to make it up to her the moment I can.

Chapter Thirty Two

Blair

I wake with my heart pounding and one hand pressed hard against my stomach.

For a few seconds, I have no idea where I am. The room is dim, and the sheets are tangled around my legs from the way I must have been moving in my sleep. My breathing is too fast, and there is still enough of the dream clinging to me that I am afraid to look down.

Blood.

That is always the part that stays with me.

Not the boutique or the ambulance or even the hospital room. It is the moment when I looked down, saw blood, and knew, with absolute certainty, that I was losing the baby.

The dream changes around it sometimes, but that part never does. Sometimes I am back in the fitting room. Sometimes I am alone here. Once I dreamed I was standing in the middle of a showing with a client talking to me while I watched the stain spread and could not make myself move.

Today it had been the bathroom.

I close my eyes again and force myself to breathe.

There is no pain.

No cramping.

Nothing wet between my legs.

I know that without checking, but I still sit there for another few seconds before finally looking down at myself. The soft pants I fell asleep in are exactly as they were before my nap, and the sight gives me enough relief that some of the tightness leaves my chest.

Diego is not beside me.

That part does not worry me. He is almost never here when I nap during the day because those couple of hours have become his best chance to catch up on work without hovering over me.

I know he is somewhere in the house, probably in his office with his laptop open and his phone glued to his hand, trying to pretend he has not completely reorganized his life around me.

The nightmare is harder to dismiss.

It is not the first one, and that is probably what bothers me most. The first few nights after the hospital, I could understand it. I had barely slept there, and every time I closed my eyes, my brain seemed determined to replay the worst parts of what had happened. But enough time has passed now that I keep expecting them to stop.

They have not.

I push myself higher against the pillows and pull the blanket over my legs even though I am not cold. The lake is visible through the windows from where I sit, flat and gray beneath the afternoon sky.