[private] I couldn't utter my love when it counted; birthing

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

He does not say it like a dismissal, but she feels the rejection all the same. It is sharp and she nearly sucks her breath in. It causes her head to spin and she goes very still, very quiet as she tries to remember where she is and where he is and the fact that there is a tiny sleeping child at her feet. She tries to remember that she cannot fall apart now. She cannot splinter apart. She cannot forget who she is and what she is meant to do. Not now. Not now.

“Oh,” is all she says at first because it is the only sound that her lungs will allow her to make. It is a quiet thing, but she forces it to be whole. She forces it to not completely come apart.

There is another moment and she is acutely aware of the fact that she has been completely quiet. That she hasn’t really responded to him. Her heart constricts painfully.

She can’t ruin this just because she is greedy for things she cannot have.

She can’t ruin this just because she so desperately wants more.

As a girl, she could not be enough to earn Ophie’s love.

As a woman, she must not be enough for Beth.

She wraps herself around the pain and although there is a part of her—as feral and hissing as her daughter—that begs her to run away, she stays instead. She presses into the blade as she remains curled against him and just breathes. “Okay,” she says and she lets that be enough.

Adna wipes her expression clean and swallows the ache down.

She leans her cheek against his shoulder and tells herself it will be enough.

He doesn’t have to love her, she thinks. She will be happy with whatever he can give her.

ADNA