Page 8 of Savage Love

Only I have no idea where Levin will be in that equation.

“We don’t even know if it’s really a thing yet,” I say quietly. “I might just be sick. All that bad takeout food in Rio, all the anxiety—it could just all be catching up with me.”

“Yeah.” Isabella looks at me, her lips pressed together. “It could be that.”

There’s another of those heavy, drawn-out silences. “But,” she continues finally, “we need to find out, one way or another.”

“I don’t want to go to the doctor–”

“Well, you might have to soon. But for now, we’ll start with the more usual way of figuring this out.” She motions for me to follow her. “Come on. We’ll see if you can keep a smoothie down while we’re at it. I’m starving. Niall doesn’t have anywhere to be this morning; he can watch Aisling for a little while.”

I get dressed while Isabella goes to tell Niall that we’re going to go grab breakfast, promising not to say anything to him until we know one way or another. I feel like I’m in a daze as I fish out jean shorts and a t-shirt, part of a new wardrobe that Isabella helped me shop for just after I got here.

That whole experience had been the first time I’d felt really happy to be here. I’d managed to put Levin out of my head for almost an entire day while Isabella and I had gone out to lunch, shopped, and then met Niall for dinner, just the three of us, with a sitter at home to watch the baby. I’d tried on everything I liked without our mother there to suggest that any of it was too tight or too short, or too revealing. For the first time in my life, I’d gotten to pick out my clothes entirely on my own, without any input beyond what I asked for from Isabella.

Everything had felt strange at first, after spending all my life sheltered and mostly locked behind the high walls of our family compound, only going out in bulletproof SUVs with security and at least one of our parents, if not both. Isabella and I went out in her car, a white Mercedes that she said she bought shortly after she and Niall were married, without any kind of security. I’d asked her if it wasn’t dangerous, and she laughed.

“It could be, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “But things have calmed down a lot here, and neither Niall nor I want to live feeling as if we’re afraid all of the time. The truth is—accidents happen all of the time. They’re just not targeted. But I could die in a car crash or a shooting at a mall or be mugged or any number of things that have nothing to do with Niall’s job. If there’s something that the Kings feel poses a threat, then we’ll lock things down. Until then, I drive myself, and I go where I want, and I don’t feel unsafe.”

It had surprised me that Niall was fine with that, and that had made Isabella laugh, too. “He doesn’t tell me what to do,” she said. “We’re a team, Elena. A partnership. We make decisions together. And this is one of them.”

That idea had seemed so foreign to me. Our parents had what I would consider a decent enough marriage by the standards of the world we lived in, but it wasn’t a partnership.

But in marrying Niall, Isabella subverted all of that. And she had told me to expect the same. “I knowPapaprobably told you that you might go home eventually,” she said over lunch that day. “But as far as I’m concerned—and Niall feels the same way—you can and should stay here. You can go to college, pick a career, get married if and when you want to, to whomever you please. You can get your own apartment when you’re ready. You can live your own life like I am. It’s worth it, Elena, even if it’s scary at first.”

Her knock at my door startles me out of the memory. “Elena? Are you ready?”

“Almost! Hang on.” I grab the soft red t-shirt I pulled out of the drawer and drag it on over my head, shoving my feet into a pair of sneakers. It’s already getting to the point where it’s sticky and humid in Boston for the summer, and I’m glad to be able to wear shorts.

When I come out, Isabella has changed out of the leggings she had on when she found me in the bathroom into jeans and a black tank top, her long hair tied up in a ponytail atop her head. I wonder for a moment if the change in outfit had something to do with Niall, if that’s what took her so long, and I feel a sudden, unexpected flush of jealousy.

Not over Niall—he’s attractive, but I would never have the slightest thought likethatabout my sister’s husband, my brother-in-law. The jealousy is entirely centered around the thought of having someone like that at all—and not just someone, but the someone that I miss. I have a deep, aching sense of loss, of missing Levin, and not just what we had, but everything wecouldhave had.

I’ll never go find him on some random morning to tell him I’m going out for breakfast, only to have him delay me with kisses or more, stripping off my clothes so that when I go to meet whoever it is that I’m having breakfast with, I’m wearing something else altogether. I’ll never share another quick, private moment with him, never have an even deeper intimacy than what we had before, the kind of intimacy that I imagine develops between husbands and wives over time.

Whatever chance we had at that is gone, along with him.

I follow Isabella out to the car, numbly buckling myself in, the buttery leather cool against the backs of my thighs. Isabella puts music on, something bright and cheery, but I barely hear it. All I can think about is that my life might be about to change forever, and Levin isn’t here. He can’t share in my worry and anxiety or help ease it, because he’s hundreds of miles away, completely oblivious.

Andhechose that, not me. I wanted him to stay. I would have wanted him to be here, right now.

Isabella takes us to the smoothie shop closest to the house, letting me stay in the air-conditioned car while she goes in. “I know what you’ll probably be able to keep down,” she tells me, disappearing inside while I sit there, trying to calm my riotous thoughts.

Would I actually have done anything differently, if I thought this was how it was going to turn out?I try to imagine myselfnottrying to spend as many nights in bed with Levin as I could, or asking him to buy condoms, a thing that would have almost certainly brought him to his senses and stopped any chance of anything more happening between us. Our entire relationship was predicated on the idea that every time we slept together, it wasn’t going to happen again. Buying condoms would have suggested that itwasgoing to happen again, any number of times, and Levin would have simply—not.

You could have asked him to pull out.My face flames red again at that, imagining Levin inside of me, the sound of his groan in my ear as he came close to the edge, the way he would bury himself inside of me as if he couldn’t get close enough, and I know there was never any chance of that. Again, everything between us always happened because he lost control—and I wanted to make him lose it. Regaining that control would have stopped everything.

My eyes fill with tears, and I hastily wipe them away as Isabella returns with two smoothies, handing me one of them. It looks green, and I peer at it suspiciously.

“It’s green tea and almond milk,” she says reassuringly. “It settled my stomach a lot when I was pregnant with Aisling, believe it or not. It might work for you, too.”

I sip at it tentatively as Isabella drives us to the drugstore. By the time we’re there, it’s patently clear that green tea smoothies arenotthe solution to my upset stomach. I end up in the bathroom, once again throwing up while Isabella looks for pregnancy tests. When I emerge, I feel dizzy and weak-kneed, and I wonder how anyone manages to reproduce if the process is this miserable.

Isabella glances at me as she puts two boxes into the basket she’s holding, and I see a flicker of sympathy on her face. “I think you’re having a harder time than I did. But if it is what we’re hoping it’s not, then it will get better. I promise.”

I can’t even respond. I’m too busy trying to convince my stomach that everything I’ve consumed today has already come back up, and there’s no point in continuing to press the issue.

The store clerk has a very knowing expression as she rings us up, looking at the boxes, and then at my pale face and red-rimmed eyes. It feels a little condescending, and I think Isabella feels the same way, because she shoves her card at the woman pointedly, giving her a look that clearly says we’re in a hurry. Which we are, because I can feel my throat tightening up again, and if I’m going to vomit again, I’d rather do it in Isabella’s guest bathroom that smells like lavender and has a rug on the tile floor.

---