Conclave (Devil's Night, #3.5)

by Penelope Douglas

because if I could never hear him tell me how beautiful I was again, then I might not care what I did with my body or with who.”

Hiding behind playfulness.

I can’t take my eyes off him. My insides melt, and after all the years of wanting him and loving him, I’m still sixteen with a crush from afar. Loving someone so much it hurts.

I know it was abrupt, but I need to set the pace tonight. Or I’ll lose control.

The natural order. Tough love on crack.

“Because I need to be more. I need to be…useful.” “Why?” I want to laugh, not out of amusement but anger. I’m not a trophy. I’m not something to play with or program. “Because I need you to see what I can do,” I tell him. I need to prove myself. “Why?” He inches closer. I open my mouth, but I can’t find my words. I know what he’s doing, and the tears start to fill my eyes. I just need to say it. “Because I don’t want you to be disappointed in me,” I whisper. “Because you’ll be disappointed.” He stands in front of me, only a few inches between us. “Why?” “Because I can’t…I…” I stutter, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I can’t have children.” I close my eyes, silently starting to cry as the words leave my mouth. “I can’t give us a family.”

He went through the whole pep talk with me. Michael loves you. You have options. People make it work every day. Lots of kids need good homes. But people also break up over these things. Every day. People want children of their own. They want to make children with the man or woman they love. I never thought something like this would get in my way, but I’m scared. It’s easy to say I’m valuable. He loves me for me, and if my body can’t do this, it can’t be all he needs from me. I’m worth plenty, even if I can’t give him our children, right? This isn’t my fault. I haven’t failed. But believing those words and feeling them is more difficult. What if he tries but he decides this is just too hard? What if I can never accept that I can’t do this for him?

“We will have kids. If you want them. But I will never not have you.” He shakes me. “Do you understand?” A sob lodges in my throat. “Do you understand?” he growls again. “A world where there is no us can’t happen.”

While driving, we think, even for just a moment, about jerking the steering wheel into oncoming traffic or leaping off the balcony of a ship and into the abyss of the black water below. They’re passing thoughts and little dares we allow our psyche, because we’re tired of not living and we want the fear. We want to remember why we want to live.

it’s not about who we are but what we are, and animals don’t apologize for whatever they need to do to survive.

“That’s what binds us,” she told me. “Who?” “Our family.”

“It’s the chromosome the male contributes that decides the child’s sex. This is all your fault.”