Chapter 170: Quiet desperation
By the third night of insomnia, I could sense the fear emanating off Caspian like a second pulse.
He wasn't speaking about it—Caspian would never speak about being scared. He didn't pace or lose his mind. He didn't clog up the air with noise or unsolicited advice. He just remained. And for some reason, that quiet, immoveable form was what shattered me more than anything else.
Tonight, I'd tried to pretend again. That I wasn't uneasy. That the fatigue holding me back in body wasn't new. That the roiling ache in my stomach wasn't different. That the nothing-works agony wasn't beginning to suggest that something more existed—something flowering just beneath the surface.
But Caspian had always had a knack for reading the things that weren't said.
And of late, I'd lost the capacity to hide them.
He approached me with soup initially—one of the very few foods I had consumed the previous night, and now the smell of it made me sick to my stomach. I gave him a small smile and fibbed with kindness that I hoped he'd believe. "Perhaps later."
He didn't push the matter. Just kissed the top of my head and placed it gently on the tray beside the bed.
Then the tea. Chamomile and honey. A ceremony he had somehow mastered. He carried it in like it was this tiny ritual thing, this sacred thing, and set it upon my nightstand in silence.
I remained there in silence, the manner in which his broad shoulders looked knotted tighter than usual underneath the black sweater he was wearing. The manner in which his jaw clenched as he turned from the window and focused on me. He wasn't nervous—he was tensing. And I didn't like that I had no idea how to get it to stop.
"You don't have to keep hovering," I breathed. My voice was coarse, smoother than I'd meant.
He stood up to sit beside me on the edge of the bed. Close, but not too close. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body against my blanket-wrapped legs.
"I'm not hovering," he said, gazing at mine. "I'm watching."
I glared at him. "There's a difference?"
"Hovering would imply I'm trying to repair it. Watching implies I'm trying to understand it."
There was that honesty again. That raw, unwavering truth of him that always made my chest ache in the best and worst ways.
"Understand what?" I whispered, gentler now.
"Then what's troubling you," he said without finesse. "Where it is. How it moves. Whether it changes when you sleep. Whether it improves when I'm out of the room."
I turned away. Not because I didn't wish to look at him—but because I knew I'd start crying if I kept staring at him like that.
"I don't wish you to see me like this."
"Why?" he asked gently.
"Because I have no idea what's wrong," I breathed. "And that scares me."
The silence that lay between us wrapped in. Soft, yet not hollow.
Then his hand crept across the bedspread, slowly interlocking his fingers with mine. He didn't crush. Just held on.
"You don't need to know," he breathed. "We'll find it out together."
There was a moment of pause, and then, hardly above a whisper, "I hate that I can't do this for you."
That was what it was. Not control. Not helplessness. Just this deep, primal hurt in him that I was hurting and he couldn't keep from happening to me.
I rolled towards him, struggling under the blankets. "You're here. That's what does the trick. Even if nothing else feels any better."
He looked at me then—truly looked. And the depth in his eyes curled my stomach, but not with sickness. Something else. Something without a name. Reverence. Love. Fear. All knotted in silence.
He remained silent, his head instead dropping to nudge a strand of hair back from my forehead. His hand was cold and sure, and when he kissed me on the temple, I released a breath I hadn't realized I held.
And then he did something that I wasn't expecting. He rose, walked over to the bookcase, and removed a book.
"The one you used to read to me?" I said.
He nodded. "You used to tell me stories were medicine when you were a little girl. I thought I'd give it a try."
He sat again, closer this time, the arc of his body next to mine grounding. He opened the old pages and read—quietly, his voice sounding like warm velvet in our bedroom's low light.
I did not care about the words, no. I let him ride me on his rhythm. Let him be the air I breathed. The hesitation he inserted in some sentences, as if they were more than they ought to be. The look he gave me after a paragraph, measuring for reaction, for any glimmer of relief on my face.
It didn't make the pain any less, but for the first time that morning, I wasn't drowning in it.
"You missed your calling," I breathed, as he finished the chapter.
He closed the book with a hint of a smile. "You think I should've been a narrator?"
"You would've made one hell of a bedtime story reader."
His eyes flicked to mine, and the tension between us exploded with the silence I hadn't even realized had built up.
Not the ugly kind. The kind you constructed slowly. Diplomatically. Like two individuals hurting in different manners, trying to find common ground.
"I'd read to you every night if it helped," he told me, his voice low and gravelly.
"I know."
He came in, moving slowly. Exploring. And I let him.
His lips brushed against mine like a gust of wind. Not at all demanding. Not rushed. Just the trembling, gentle movement of proximity when the world didn't know.
When he pulled away, his hand lay against my cheek. "Something is happening," he whispered. "I can feel it."
"I know," I gasped, trembling.
"Will you let me help you find out what it is?"
I nodded. And I could see the weight lift from his shoulders, just a fraction.
"Tomorrow," he said to me. "If you're still feeling this way—we go to the doctor."
"Okay."
He drew the blanket tighter around me. Kissed the crown of my head.
But later after he'd turned out the light and crawled into bed beside me in the dark, I lay there with my hand on my belly and staring up at the ceiling.
There was something going on. Something big.
But I didn't yet dare to say so aloud.
Because the truth was burning too softly yet. As of something holy.
And half of me already knew.