by Bethany-Kris
Anton flinched internally. Ivan was with him the day Demyan called and followed him to the bookstore when Anton rushed over there. They couldn’t exactly hide what had happened from their good friend, not that he would have, of course. Most others didn’t know, except for Anton’s mother.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Ivan. Just leave it alone, it’s private. That’s how we want to handle it.”
“I’m not asking about the miscarriage, I’m asking about her for you. My friend. It’s been a month, man. Is the depression any better?”
Anton’s snort was derisive. “Depends on what you mean, I guess.”
“Well, you’re home,” Ivan noted.
Thank fucking God for that, Anton thought. “She needs me. I need her. It works.”
“So why do you look like somebody just kicked your puppy?”
“I don’t know what else to do to help her, that’s all. She’s hurting, but she talks. She’s depressed, but she gets up, works, takes care of Demyan and does all she needs to do.” Anton shrugged, feeling a heavy weight on his shoulders. “I mean, it sucks. You don’t even get the time to enjoy having something before it’s taken away. The doctors can be so fucking callous, too. Telling her she can try for another when her cycle comes back, because it will help with the loss. Really? That’s kind of fucking ridiculous, I think. Just here, keep trying for another and everything will be better. But what do I know? It wasn’t me who lost the baby.”
“But you did, in a way,” Ivan added gently. “It was your child, too. One you wanted.”
Anton didn’t like to think of it that way. It wasn’t so black and white. “I didn’t bleed for weeks after, Ivan. I didn’t lay in our bed blaming and hating my body for betraying me. I didn’t cry like she did, or grieve. Does that make me awful, that even though I understand why she feels like she does, I can’t hurt over it like she did?”
“No, it makes you human. Everyone feels things differently. You’re the kind of man who handles your own emotional pain by taking care of those around you that you love. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Anton stayed silent, absorbing his friend’s words.
“Are you two … you know, sharing a bed, or just sharing a home?”
“Way to be vague,” Anton muttered under his breath.
“Did you want me to ask if you’re fuck—”
“Don’t be an idiot, Ivan. And no, we’re not. She had to wait a while, anyway. That time has passed, but I don’t think Vine’s quite ready for anything physical.”
Or maybe she was. Anton didn’t know. They shared a bed, sure, and he held her every chance he got, but he was terrified to make a move beyond that. What if doing so scared Viviana, or worse, pushed her away? He didn’t want her to feel as if he was pressuring her, or like sex was all he needed.
Though Anton did need it, in some ways. The best way he could love his wife, the one way he always knew how to let her feel it, was to physically show her.
“Maybe it’s me that’s not ready,” Anton confessed, letting the words slip out of the side of his mouth like they hadn’t existed in the first place. Ivan stayed quiet and let him continue. “I mean I am. I always want Vine like that, of course I do. I don’t have any indication she’s okay or ready for that. There’s no definite yes or no. I haven’t pushed her for it, or even asked. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” Ivan said. “Perhaps you should, Anton. You said it. You need her. She needs you. It works. Maybe the physical side of it is what’s been missing because you haven’t been looking for it, hmm?”
Damn it. Now, Anton really just wanted to go home.
“Go, man.”
Anton turned on his heel. “What?”
“Go home. I’ll make a couple of calls to get this shit fixed. Go see your wife.”
Ivan didn’t have to tell Anton a second time.
***
“Are you sad, Ma?” Anton heard Demyan ask in his tired, groggy voice.
“Hmm, no, I’m not sad, baby. Why would you think I’m sad?”
Anton rested his shoulder against the hallway wall and waited out the conversation, though he knew he should probably leave. He couldn’t. He desperately wanted to hear what Viviana might tell their son, especially if it was something she hadn’t told him.
“You cry,” Demyan said.
Viviana breathed deeply. “Sometimes you have to.”
“Boys don’t cry. Uncle Erik said so. Only if you has a bad booboo.”
“Have, Demyan. And Uncle Erik doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Viviana muttered. “Boys can cry.”
“Papa doesn’t cry.”
The silence following Demyan’s statement was heartbreaking. Was that was Viviana needed from Anton? Emotion, honesty? To know the anguish he felt but didn’t understand what he was supposed to correlate it to? Anton wasn’t sure he knew how to do that.
Finally, Viviana whispered, “Yeah, I know. Okay, it’s nap time, little man. Papa will be home when you wake up, and you can ask him about boys and crying. All right?”
“Boys don’t cry, Ma,” Demyan repeated in all his two-and-a-half-year-old wisdom.
“Sure, sure. Sleep, baby.”
Anton could have slipped down the hall in lots of time for his wife to not notice his eavesdropping, but he didn’t. Viviana didn’t seem all too surprised to find him standing with arms crossed and staring at the floor either. The tired sadness roaming in her gaze as she passed him in the hall, saying nothing, tugged deep down in Anton’s soul. He followed her to their bedroom two doors down.
When the door shut behind him, Viviana sighed. “Boys don’t cry, Anton.”
Anton swallowed the immediate emotions that lodged in his throat like a stopped. “They do.”
“Funny, your son doesn’t seem to think so. I don’t know how I feel about that right now.”
“Boys cry,” Anton insisted quietly. “Sometimes they just do it in a different way, over different things. Not everything is black and white. There are shades of grey, too.”
Viviana tossed him a look over her shoulder as she began straightening the mess that had become the sheets on their bed. “Do you cry, then?”
Straight to the point, as always.
“More inside than out, I think.”
“That’s not the same,” Viviana said, a little too hotly for Anton’s liking.
“And you don’t get to tell me how to grieve.”
Viviana froze, the sheet in her hand falling to the bed. “I—”
“Let’s be clear on one thing, baby. I cry. I hurt. I’m so concerned about you that I’m stuck in my own goddamn head, and I can’t get out of it most days. Funny thing, though, I’m okay with that. Because when I hurt, and when I cry, it’s always for you.”
“Anton …” she said, taking a step forward.
Anton raised a hand to stop her. “I cry when the woman I love thinks that she’s failed me. Or that her body is somehow wrong. I cried when she hurt for losing something because it wasn’t just hers, but a part of me, too, even though she was so mad at me. I cried at night. I cried alone. You didn’t want to be strong, and I didn’t want you to see me weak. You needed to cry, to talk, to be angry, and to hurt. I let you. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way you grieve over this, so why is it wrong for me to do it the way I need, Vine?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. Just try to understand everything given at face isn’t always the value.”
Blowing out a harsh sound, Viviana shook her head. “I’m so fucking selfish.”
Well, Anton certainly wasn’t expecting that and he didn’t necessarily agree, either. “I don’t think you are.”
“No, of course you don’t. You love me.”
“You love me, too,” Anton shot back. “Are you saying the way you love me isn’t worth the same as mine? That it’s not as good?”
“No!” Viviana gasped. “God, you know how much I love you.”
Anton hummed his agreement, stepping close enough that he could reach out to snag her wrist in his palm. “You’re not a selfish woman. You never have been. I won’t be the one to call you that, or allow you to do it.”
“But I haven’t even been paying attention to you. I asked you home, to be with me, and I don’t even know what you’re thinking about half of the time. I haven’t bothered to ask.”
“Yes you do,” Anton insisted firmly, drawing Viviana closer into his embrace. With her face buried against his neck, and her soft lips pressing to his skin, he felt a million times better. “Maybe not with words, but in other ways. You let Demyan call me throughout the day. Not once have you fought with me about the charges, or the shit storm we’re facing with that. Even though I know you just want to lay in bed, you get up with me in the morning and talk. And when you talk, I don’t have to, Vine. Sometimes that’s just what I need.”
Anton tilted Viviana’s face up under his urging hands, swiping away the wetness on her cheeks with his thumbs. “You supported me, stood by me, even after you asked me to leave. With the feds, you didn’t let them bully you, and you still acted as my wife. Our son is kept happy—spoiled, if anything. You allowed me back into our home, you let me close to you. Those are the things I need.”
“And they helped, you know, with this,” Viviana said with a wave at her midsection.
“In ways, yes. You can say it, baby. It happened, and you can say it.”
“I don’t like to.”
“I know,” Anton said gently.
Viviana shuddered when Anton leaned down to press a kiss on her forehead. “I just … don’t understand.”
“Understand what, exactly?”
“Why it’s so hard for me. It wasn’t like I had weeks and weeks being pregnant. I was only a few weeks into it. If I wasn’t paying attention to my cycles, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed I was pregnant until I miscarried.”
Anton felt a small sense of triumph at Viviana’s utterance of the word she so viciously avoided. “Because you did know. You had already attached yourself to the idea of having the baby. You didn’t consider this would happen, and really, why should you have? I don’t think the length or severity of your hurt and grief should be measured by the duration of the pregnancy. If anything, this shows you’re capable of feeling love. That you can, even so early and soon. The baby meant something to you—to me, too. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Viviana cleared her throat, blinking away the tears still shining in the corners of her eyes. All over again, Anton wished he knew if what he was saying was having an effect on his wife. If it meant anything at all to her. He only wanted to help.
“One of the nurses at the hospital, she was in my room when you left for a bit.”
“And?” Anton pressed.
“I’m not sure if she was just trying to help, but she called the baby tissue.”
Anton felt his spine crack as he stood a little straighter. “What?”
“You know, like cells and tissue. That’s all the baby was, according to her. She said it didn’t even have a heartbeat at the gestation it was and things like that. I don’t think she meant any harm, just trying to—”
“Distinguish the difference between the soul of a baby and the worth of tissue to a woman who had just lost a pregnancy? For what, to dictate how she should feel? That’s fucking ridiculous,” Anton muttered angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because in her own way, she was just trying to help, Anton. But it made me think, and it’s been on my mind all month. Was that what you thought of the miscarriage, just … tissue? I wouldn’t be hurt if you did,” Viviana rushed to say when Anton stayed silent. “I might not understand, but I wouldn’t persecute you for it, either.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Viviana stared up at him, confused. “That’s it?”
Yeah, it was, really. Anton correlated the pregnancy to his wife. It was something they, with love, had made together. Just like their son and their life. Maybe the form it was lost at was simply tissues and cells but it was much, much more than that, too.
“It was ours, Viviana,” Anton said honestly. “That was all that mattered to me.”
“Ours,” she echoed.
For the first time in longer than Anton wanted to admit, his wife smiled the tiniest smile.
Chapter Seven
Viviana used the tip of her finger to trace along Anton’s cheekbone. The strong lines of his face always relaxed in his sleep, making his appearance more boyish than the intense stares he usually sported when awake. Wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs and covered with only a sheet, nearly all of his beautiful, masculine form was on display for her to enjoy while he slept.
She didn’t feel so damned guilty, then. Viviana didn’t even understand why it was that she felt guilty over looking at him, anyway. Maybe it was because she yearned and ached to be closer to him than what she allowed, but things were still holding her back.
The miscarriage would be an acceptable excuse, and certainly an understandable one, if that was the reason why. Viviana knew it wasn’t. More than anything, she craved the comfort and intimacy Anton would give her physically, but she also didn’t trust herself enough not to hurt when it was over.
Desperately, Viviana held onto the knowledge that Anton loved her. When she was fighting to be found, he wasn’t far behind. When she was tattered in pieces, he was putting her back together. There was a strength in his love that had an almost suffocating quality, but she’d die happily wrapped in it. A certain devotion glimmered in his eyes that he reserved solely for her. He could be strong willed, possessive, jealous, and sometimes, just downright difficult, but he was hers. That love—all-encompassing and seemingly never-ending—was there. It was as true as it would ever be.
Viviana didn’t deny that.
But, he’d hurt her, too. Even if a million parts of her heard Anton every time he promised it couldn’t have happened the way it seemed, that he’d never touch another female willingly, something had happened with that woman. Anton allowed himself to be put in a position where his fidelity, both past and future, was in question. Viviana’s trust was shaken. It rocked her foundation in a way she hadn’t considered.
Viviana was finding it hard to move past that.
She wanted to, though. So badly.
Verbally and emotionally, the two were connecting. Maybe even in a way they hadn’t been able to before because when they did need to connect, the first thing one reached for was the other, physically. To touch, to understand, and love—sex had been the link between them, and it worked. But, for the first time in their relationship, Viviana found both her and Anton were relying on different modes to make that familiar connection keeping them so close.
There were off days and some were worse than others. There were also hits and sometimes misses, like earlier in the day when Viviana assumed she understood the depth of her husband’s pain, or lack thereof, over her miscarriage. If Anton was anything, he was good at wearing masks. He’d been doing it his whole life, after all. Some habits were hard to break. Viviana recognized his need to be a solid foundation when everything else around them seemed to be crumbling, but sometimes she needed to see his cracks, too.
Hell, they didn’t even have time to deal with one thing before the next came in to wreck and destroy. Were they being tested? It certainly felt like it. Were they winning? That was harder to tell.
Viviana’s fingers ghosted down over the faint stubble shadowing Anton’s jaw before allowing her fingers to trail down further to his neck, where the pulse of his heart beat against her skin. For a moment, she reveled in that feeling.
I breathe for you. My heart beats, and breaks, and bleeds only for you.
God, she loved this man.
“Vine?”
Like an electric shock to her system, Viviana jerked at the sound of her name on Anton’s mouth. She attempted to pull her hand away from his skin only to find him holding her finger
s in place. Suddenly, his heart rate had picked up under her touch, beating much faster than before.
“What are you doing?” Anton asked a little groggily.
“Nothing.” Viviana glanced up into the heated blue of his eyes. “Watching you, I guess.”
“Sleep?”
“It’s the best time to. I’m not so focused on you watching me, then.”
“Ah,” Anton murmured, his lips quirking up into a lazy grin. “I unsettle you, hmm?”
“Sometimes. Most times you just consume me.”
“Consume. I like that better.”
“Yeah,” Viviana said, feeling unsure under his watchful gaze. “I always know when you are. It’s like everything just fades away. You’re not seeing anyone else when you look at me and I know it. All of me centers in on that. Like a camera with a million viewers just zoned in on only me. I can feel it, if that makes sense.”
“Sure. Why do you think I just woke up, baby?”
Viviana sighed in the dark, feeling his hand encasing hers squeeze tighter.
“It is unsettling, though,” Anton added quieter. “Knowing there’s only one person in the whole world who has that kind of effect on you. It makes you vulnerable in some ways, and in others, you feel stronger. No one else is ever going to make every instinct you have react so completely. One heart brings you to your knees, makes you want to scream, fight, laugh, or cry. There’s only one—you, I mean.”
“Do you think we’re different from other people?” Viviana asked.
Anton shrugged one shoulder, reaching out with his free arm to wrap around Viviana’s waist. “I think we’re us, Vine. I’m perfectly happy with loving one woman enough to give every part of me over to her—mind, body, and soul. It doesn’t frighten me. Other people, they might not feel the same way, but they still love. You can’t judge the worth of their love based on the amount of themselves they hand over. Some people need to keep something for themselves. It could be the part of their soul they gave to their first love, or maybe it’s a broken piece they want to protect the person they love from it. Whatever it’s for, protection, sanity, it doesn’t matter. They need to keep it. No two people are alike.”