Page 71 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

And with that, he walked away from her, naked, each beautiful line of his body a rejection of what she had offered.

She sat there, the warm breeze blowing through her hair.

They were married. She knew him. He wasn’t going to leave her. But he was going to wall himself off. Make himself a stranger. Pull away.

She thought perhaps she wouldn’t see him for the whole rest of the honeymoon. Instead, he became voracious.

He made love to her multiple times a day, but he didn’t speak to her after. And she allowed it. She let him soothe himself with her body, and each and every time she gave everything.

This was a real test of her strength. Of her endurance.

Because this was love rejected.

And if he had left her, then perhaps she could begin the cycle of healing. But they would never have separation. She would love him, alone. Isolated. And that was what she had offered. She had done it feeling like eventually he would come around. But he didn’t. He was somehow distant and more near at the same time. And when they finished their two weeks on the island, they traded in all that sundrenched beauty for the gloom of Manhattan, for a shared space but not a shared life in a house in Midtown.

They didn’t talk. Not often.

She felt like she had lost an integral part of him. Because what she had lost was their connection. The one that they had before sex. The one that they’d always had. He had always been there.

She didn’t invite him to her doctor appointments, because why?

The months melted together. Everything melted together.

And finally it was time for her to go and get her ultrasound where they could find out the gender of the baby. She knew that she wasn’t going to actually speak to Dario until she texted him, to tell him that he could come to the appointment if he wanted to.

She didn’t expect a response. But when she arrived at the doctor’s office, he appeared. Looking every inch the thunder.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to actually show up.”

“You invited me,” he said.

They were ushered into the room right away, which was plush and glorious, and a perk, she knew, of her marriage.

They weren’t kept waiting for long before an ultrasound technician came into the room.

“If you can undress and lie down I’ll be back in a moment,” the woman said.

Lyssia obeyed, and lay back on the table. She said nothing to Dario.

“I’m surprised you asked me,” he said.

“Why? I’m not the one who made it weird. I just said that I loved you. You’re the one that got distant. You’re the one that quit talking to me.”

“And you’re the one that got upset when I refused to give you what I had said that I couldn’t, and then you said it was offered freely. But you’re angry. Why did you invite me if you find me so confounding?”

“Because I wanted you here.”

The woman came back a moment later, and they stopped their discussion. She put gel on Lyssia’s stomach, and that familiar watery sound filled the room. She’d had more than one scan and several Doppler appointments, so she had become somewhat familiarized with the state of her womb.

Still, she held her breath a little bit each time. Waiting for the heartbeat. Waiting for the definitive proof that her baby was still there. Still with her. She could feel it move now, a little bit. And she was the one who had chosen not to share that with Dario. So in that sense, he was right. She had offered to continue to love him, as if it was all the same, and she had become wounded about the whole thing.

But then, the heartbeat echoed in the room, and she could see their baby’s profile. “Oh,” she said. “There he is.”

Dario looked confused. “He?”

“I just have a feeling. But we don’t know yet.”

“We will soon,” said the ultrasound tech. “Provided the baby is not shy.”

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