THE RAIN HAD calmed slightly when Aaron opened his eyes. It was barely light, and it took him a moment to figure out that he’d fallen asleep. Rosa stirred against him, reminding him of how she’d fallen asleep first the night before.
He hadn’t had the heart to move her then, and now, though he knew he should, he didn’t move. She was still sleeping, but it wouldn’t be long before she woke up. It was her habit to wake as the sun came up. She’d check to see if he was still in bed with her. If he was, she’d snuggle against him and go back to sleep. If he wasn’t, she’d go find him. Miserable, sleepy, she’d creep into his lap, complaining that if he hadn’t been working she’d have been able to sleep longer.
It had been one of her endearing qualities. Much like the fact that she couldn’t deal with quiet—his preferred state—so she’d keep talking until he’d answer her.
Things had been good between them. But he could see the cracks clearly now. Her running instead of turning to him when she’d found that lump had been the first sign of it. The last four months—and the last twelve hours—had highlighted the others.
All of which seemed to lead to the same conclusion: she didn’t want them. She didn’t want him.
He got up, the thought making him too anxious to continue lying still beside her. He’d never given much thought to being unwanted, though his mother had reminded him of it often enough that he should have.
There were days when she’d told him he was a surprise. Others when she’d call him an accident. It was only when she was feeling terrible about herself that she’d call him a mistake.
But he’d brushed it off. It had been easy to do when he’d been raised by his nanny—a kind woman who his mother’s rich family had been able to afford. So the idiosyncrasies of the woman who’d showed up twice a day to say good morning and goodnight to him hadn’t really mattered.
And since he’d never met his father, he hadn’t cared about that either. His needs had been taken care of. His nanny had been there when he was younger. His mother had become more of a permanent fixture in his life when he got older. And when she’d got sick it had jolted him into realising she was the only family he had.
He hadn’t needed anything else until he’d met Rosa. Until he’d married her. Until she’d left. And he’d realised how, despite believing otherwise, being unwanted had affected him.
He went about his morning routine as usual. His mother had thought of practicalities like toothbrushes and toothpaste, fortunately—hell, he’d take what he could at this point—and when he was done he went to the kitchen to make coffee.
‘Coffee?’ he asked when he heard a rustling behind him.
He made another cup after her sleepy, ‘Yes, please,’ and by the time he was done she’d emerged from the bathroom looking adorably mussed from sleep.
The shirt she wore was creased, her hair piled on the top of her head. It took less than a minute for his body to react to how much of her legs the shirt now revealed.
He took a steadying breath as he set her cup on the table and then moved to watch the rain through the glass doors. It was easier to do that than to watch her. Than to want her.
Than to need her.
‘It’s better today,’ she said softly from behind him. He grunted in response. The annoyance of the situation was catching up with him now.
Sure, that’s it, a voice in his head mocked him.
‘We’re back to this now, are we?’ she said after another few moments of silence. He took a sip of his coffee in response. Pretended not to hear her frustrated sigh.
‘Aaron—’
‘I’m sorry that you had to go through what you did,’ he said, turning to her. ‘I’m sorry that you felt you couldn’t share that with me. Whatever your reasons were,’ he added. ‘But clearly we have different opinions on this relationship. Now mine is finally catching up to yours.’
* * *
Being locked in that room was torture.
She’d thought it before, when she hadn’t alienated her only company. Well, she considered, at least not to the extent that she’d alienated him now. And she wasn’t even sure how she’d done it. They’d been on okay terms when she’d fallen asleep. Then, when she’d woken up, she’d found Aaron as aloof as always.
Except he hadn’t really ever been aloof with her. With other people, yes. But her? No. Being the recipient of it made her heart ache.
And now she’d also have to live with the silence she’d complained about earlier. For an indefinite amount of time. Within the first hour she was antsy. And then antsy turned into bored. She was desperate to run out in the rain again. But she didn’t. Because she was a mature, responsible adult who wouldn’t deal with her feelings by doing something that stupid. Again.
Instead, she went to the bed since Aaron had claimed the couch. The bedding was rumpled, the indentation of their bodies still there...
* * *
‘We have to leave this room at some point,’ Rosa said, snuggling into the warmth of Aaron’s body. He made a non-committal noise, tightening his arm around her, his free hand lightly trailing up and down her arm. ‘We’re on honeymoon. We should be going to the beach. Exploring the town. Showing off our love to the world.’ He didn’t reply. She sighed. ‘Fine. For food then, at the very least.’
‘We don’t need food.’
‘Really?’ she replied dryly. ‘You don’t think we’re going to need fuel if we want to stay here?’
The side of his mouth lifted. ‘I suppose you have a good point there.’
‘I know,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure how we’ve survived so long without it.’
He looked down at her, his eyes alight with desire and amusement. ‘Probably like this.’
His lips were on hers before she could stop him. And then so was his body, the weight of it a comforting and intoxicating pressure on her aching skin.
Suddenly, all thought of food fled from her mind. Suddenly, she didn’t want to stop...
* * *
She sucked in her breath at the memory. Brief as it had been, it had stung. It had reminded her of the good times she and Aaron had shared. Not only in their marriage in general, but there, in the very room they were trapped in. On the very bed she was looking at.
And she’d given up on that. On them. Because she’d made the wrong decision a long time ago. Because, even now, she didn’t know how to make the right one.
Desperate to escape from her thoughts, she began searching through the drawers of the bedside tables, hoping to find paper so she could work on a design that would keep her mind busy.
But, almost as quickly as she’d been swept into that memory of her and Aaron, she was drawn into another memory. This time, though, instead of paper she’d found a picture of her mother, holding the flowers they’d both been named after, smiling up at the camera.
The air left her lungs and her legs crumbled. She sagged down onto the bed.
‘Rosa?’
His voice was behind her. She hadn’t realised he was so close. The bed dipped next to her. His hand covered the one she’d let fall to her lap.
‘I didn’t realise your mom had this picture,’ she said absently. ‘It’s the one I put next to my mom’s hospital bed. A reminder of the flowers we’d been named for. Forces of nature. Symbols of life.’
She smiled. ‘I forgot this picture existed.’ She traced her mother’s smiling face with a finger. ‘She looked so happy here. She was pregnant with me, so it was before she got sick.’
‘Long before the cancer.’
‘No, I meant the hypochondria.’ She set the picture on top of the bedside table. Tilted her head as she looked at it. It had been a long time since she’d seen that smile on her mother’s face.
‘Your mom was a hypochondriac?’
His question lulled her out of the memories, and she quickly realised what she’d told him.
‘Yes,’ she forced herself to say lightly, and got up. Away from him. ‘I told you that.’
‘I’m sure I would have remembered if you had.’
‘I told you at the funeral.’ Her stomach cramped. ‘You asked me why people kept telling me how sorry they were that this had actually become something.’
He swore softly. ‘I forgot about it.’
‘I know.’
‘You didn’t remind me either. I don’t think you’ve ever spoken about it.’
‘No,’ she replied with a thin smile. ‘I didn’t.’
She walked away, towards the door that showed the light shower that was coming down now. She wanted to escape, but it wasn’t from the room any more. Or from him. It was from the memories.
From the reminder of how often she’d held her breath, waiting for her mother to tell her how the rash she’d got from being out in the sun was skin cancer. Or how her headaches were a brain tumour.
Rosa’s life had revolved around her mother’s anxiety. And that anxiety had spilled over into her own life. Rosa had never been free to do what she wanted to, too afraid that her mother would need her.
It had been easier not to make plans. She’d told herself that, and yet she’d still wanted to do things. And the tension between wanting and telling herself that she shouldn’t, that she couldn’t, had constantly churned in her stomach.
So she’d done spontaneous things. Things she’d wanted to do. She’d chosen to seize the moment because she hadn’t known when those moments would be snatched away from her.
And they would inevitably be snatched from her. And she’d mourn the loss of her freedom even as she’d wondered whether she should have done those things in the first place.
‘It hurt you.’
The quiet words said from behind her had tears prickling in her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Except that it came out in a whisper, which didn’t make it sound like it didn’t matter. ‘It’s over now.’
He moved next to her and she thought about how often they’d stood there, like that, since they’d arrived.
‘What was it like?’
She shook her head, fully intending not to answer that question. Which was why, when the words came spilling out of her mouth, it was so surprising.
‘Difficult. My mother had always been anxious. But it was okay, for the most part, because she could deal with it.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know what changed that. I don’t know why she suddenly started obsessing about her health. But by then I’d had already taken on the role of soother. I don’t have any memory that wasn’t somehow affected by it.’
She blew out a breath. ‘People use that term so easily. Hypochondriac. I remember a friend of mine calling a colleague a hypochondriac because she’d take sick leave often. And I found myself asking her whether she knew what that really meant.’
She stepped away from the door now, and began pacing. ‘It was terrible, and I felt so bad afterwards. Because her explanation was so pathetic, and didn’t come close to what it’s really like. How the person can feel themselves suffering. Or how they can see themselves dying. The panic, the anxiety. How they can never truly believe that things are going to be okay. How they can’t fully enjoy life because one day they believe life is going to destroy them.’
She didn’t mention what it was like for the people around the hypochondriac. How they’d constantly be waiting for the anxiety, for the panic to come. How that would make them anxious and panicked. How they’d doubt themselves. Had they handled it properly? Had they done the right thing to help? Had they helped at all?
How, even after the person was gone, they’d still feel the effects of it.
She stopped when her legs went weak and bent over, waiting for it to get better. And when it did she stood, and saw the conflicting emotions on Aaron’s face. He wanted to help her and yet he didn’t know if he could.
Her own fault.
‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to go on about it.’
‘I asked.’
‘I shouldn’t have spilled it all out on you like that.’
She walked to the couch, sank down on it.
‘You should have,’ he said when he took the seat opposite her. ‘You should have told me sooner.’
‘Apparently there’s a lot I should have told you.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘And with all my talking too, I hadn’t told you any of it.’
‘It’s part of the reason you left.’
She stiffened, her heart racing. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a reason why, with all your talking, you didn’t tell me about your mother. Or open up about it,’ he said quietly when she opened her mouth to protest. ‘It’s probably why you didn’t tell me about the lump in your breast either.’
‘No,’ she denied. But she’d started shaking. He was awfully close to the truth.
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘You’ve had to be brave for your mother for so long. You don’t know how not to be.’