Page 43 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MARY

Three weeks have gone since the break-in, and Maxim’s hovering has been impressive.

He insists that I join him for his work, or that he joins me for mine and I don’t mind his company.

In fact, I am strong enough to admit that I’ve grown to quite like the companionable car rides, the touch of his hand on my back as he guides me from one place to the next, the way he listens so intently to whoever is speaking that they feel they ought to say the right words as to not waste his time.

The problem is that I am still so fucking sick , and though I’m not vomiting more than once per day, the nausea is like a silent sniper waiting at any moment to bowl me over.

He’s worried, and I still can’t get myself to tell him that I’m pregnant. I am just about out of lies to why I am always looking a little pukish, though.

But every time I’m about to tell him, he does something sweet, like kiss up the side of my neck, or make me come with his tongue, or draw me a bath, wash my hair, be an exceptionally good and thoughtful husband at every turn.

It’s not that I think he’ll stop when I tell him. He’ll be worse , I’m sure. More doting, more careful, more longing stares than I know what to do with.

I don’t know that I will be able to do what I need to do. It’s hard enough now, this resisting falling in love with my damn husband.

The battle is uphill and increasingly fruitless with every whispered Russian endearment, every tiny thing he does to make me feel cared for.

I’m pretty sure he believes that my nerves are frayed from the break-in. I couldn’t care less about what happened, but I still would love to know what those fuckers were after.

I’ve left that for Maxim, Sean, and Ness to worry about as I’ve been otherwise occupied trying to secretly get a grip on what appears to be a fetus growing in my abdomen.

I haven’t told my sisters, nor my mom, nor a doctor; only Greta knows and that’s because she follows me everywhere in the house, including into the bathroom where I vomit or pee on more positive pregnancy tests.

Elise knows too, I think. She hasn’t said anything, but she’s doubled the green juice recipe and keeps saying things like, “You’ll tell me if you want me to change the menu, right?

I want to make sure you have food you like. ”

Nice and innocuous enough, but she gives these meaningful looks when she says it, like she wants to make sure there are meals adequate to meet my pregnancy cravings, of which so far there have been none. At least she hasn’t said anything about it to Maxim or Sasha.

I wish I could tell my mom, at least, but I can’t be sure she would keep that secret until I’m ready to share it.

It’s not that my family wouldn’t be helpful—probably no one could be more of help than the heavily pregnant Vanessa and recently postpartum Willa, but when I think about telling anyone it all becomes very real, and I’m not ready for that.

I have time.

I need to get a hold of this sickness, but Google is nebulous, each proposed remedy accompanied by five other blog articles that explain why that remedy is actually horrible.

The only thing I’ve landed on without issue is using a whole lemon’s worth of wedges every day in my water, which I do think has helped somewhat. Sometimes.

It’s exhausting.

Maxim has been so intensely protective that I can’t be sure that he won’t flip his top the moment I tell him and whisk me away to some cabin in the wilderness for the next thirty to thirty-four weeks.

I am at my wit’s end after not being able to sleep through the nausea of the last two nights.

So, this morning, I was supposed to go with Maxim and Sasha to some breakfast with rich Russians, but I claimed a migraine and convinced him that it would be okay if he left the house without me.

There’s still extra security downstairs, I’m well guarded.

In determining who to ask for help, my sisters are out of the question.

They have loud mouths—my whole family does.

None of them can keep a secret to save their lives, at least not from each other, but one of them is easier to bully than the others.

I pick up my phone as soon as Maxim’s car drives away and call Nate.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Hello,” he says, but he makes it stupid by saying it like “yellow”.

“Come over,” I say. I’d go to him, but I’m too queasy to drive and Jean would probably text Maxim that I’d just left. “Bring bagels.”

He makes protests on the other side of the phone, but I don’t let him finish. “Come alone,” I say, and then hang up the phone.

He rings back two times in a row, the first one I send to voicemail, but the second I actually miss because I do have to go throw up the meager breakfast I tried to choke down this morning.

He shows up thirty minutes later after Jean calls to ask if I approve one Nate Gilbert to come upstairs.

When the elevator doors slide open, revealing him, I pull him immediately by the arm into the kitchen.

He looks around the same way he did the last two times he’s visited, like the place dazzles and surprises him.

If I didn’t feel the unbearable weight of a secret about to boil over, I would maybe admit that, yeah, I like the place too.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Nate says. I retrieve the toaster from the pantry and a bottle of green juice from the fridge. It’s the only thing I can reliably keep down.

“I need to tell you a secret. But if you tell anyone before I do, I will tell Maxim that you’re annoying me and he will never look at you the same.”

“Harsh,” he mutters. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Can you keep my secret or not?”

“You know I have to tell Vanessa, she’s?—”

“Your wife, your muse, whatever, I get it. You can’t tell her. Just for like a couple of days.”

“Mary.” He sounds exasperated.

“I’m pregnant,” I confess. He’s the first person I’ve said the words to, and in the silence that follows, he looks as gobsmacked as I’ve felt about the whole ordeal.

He goes through no less than four emotions in less than a minute; confusion, then shock, he almost looks excited, but then it’s back to the shock.

“You are?” he whispers.

“Yes,” I whisper back, though it’s just us here.

“Have you told anyone?”

“Yes,” I say, and he looks relieved. “You, just now.”

The stress returns to his face in an instant. The toaster pops up one of the bagels and Nate jumps like there’s another attacker.

I hand him a plate and a butter knife.

“Please be chill about this, I am too nauseous to fall victim to one of your anxiety attacks.”

“You’re sick? Like morning sickness?”

“Yes, like morning sickness, stupid.”

“Is it Maxim’s baby?” he whispers again, as if my husband might hear us from across the city.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. I want to hit him, but I want him to help me more, so I hold back.

“Obviously.”

“I knew it. You did have a hickey on St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Nate,” I warn. I forget, at times, that my brother-in-law is the single most intrusive person on the planet once he feels like he really knows someone.

“Whatever. Yes, we had sex at least one time, yes, it was a hickey, yes, his penis is massive, yes, he is a generous lover. Now are you ready to focus on the problem at hand?”

Nate’s mouth snaps shut and then he nods solemnly. The toaster pops up with the second bagel, and he retrieves it, burning his fingers immediately and cursing.

“What’s the problem? The baby? Like, what, you don’t want it?”

“No.” My hand covers my stomach as if to protect the cluster of cells from thinking that. “That’s not it.”

“How many weeks are you?”

“I think seven.”

Nate gets out his phone and taps at the screen before sliding it to me. I see a pastel colored app, a beating number 7 at the top of the screen and a blueberry below next to what looks kind of like a tadpole.

Baby is the size of a blueberry! it reads. My eyebrows cinch in the middle of my forehead. I was envisioning something much more abstract, less like a tiny creature.

I exhale and put the phone face down on the counter before I can get distracted reading the information the app offers about the little thing growing in me. Focus .

“The problem is that I can’t keep food down. But when I’m hungry, I feel even more sick, and it makes doing anything very difficult.”

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he says, completely sympathetic. “Ness was sick the first trimester, too.”

“Only the first trimester?” This gives me hope.

“Yeah, after that it got a lot better.”

“How many weeks is in a trimester?”

The question seems to surprise him, but he wipes the look off his face before I can snipe at him that I can’t know everything about pregnancy like he apparently does. “Twelve.”

I groan, dropping my head into my hand again. “Five more weeks of this?”

“It seemed to go fast,” he says. I think he’s lying by the tilt in his voice and general wince. “But I wasn’t the sick one.”

“I need your help to make me not feel so sick. Symptom management, if there’s nothing we can do to heal it completely.”

“Why didn’t you ask Willa? She’s the go-to for this stuff.”

“Because she would tell Vanessa.”

“Who would be the perfect person to know because she is actively pregnant!”

I should have known he would be unreasonable.

“No, because she would get all intense and call Maxim, telling him he needed to do more to protect me or she’d kill him.”

“You haven’t told Maxim ?” he asks, voice too loud.

“No. I need a few days to figure some things out.”

He blinks at me, one hand on his hips, the other holding his bagel with his usual dramatic flare. “For instance?”

“For instance, not being so sick. He’s already stressed about my safety, if he knows I’m this sick, he’ll be even more of a menace.” It’s a half lie, but it’s better than admitting I’m avoiding that there is something else growing in me that’s oddly shaped like big, unwieldy feelings.

“God forbid a man care about his wife’s health.”

I glare at him, regretting my choice to bring him in on this. I could probably have gone another few weeks with the lemon wedges and scheduling in my fifty-five minute naps every day, but if this lasts beyond the first trimester, I might actually go mad.

“Just give me four days before you tell her,” I beg. He gasps, affronted by this very reasonable demand.

“Two,” he counters.

“Three.”

He pulls that face he has, both eyebrows raised, eyes wide like he’s warning me not to push it. He remains the least threatening living thing on the planet, though, so I am always inclined to push it.

I slump my shoulders. “Please, Nate,” I say, voice little, because I’m fucking queasy again .

“What have you been able to keep down?” he asks, resigned.

I slide the bottle of green juice in front of him and he eyes it.

“Just this, basically. Saltine crackers are okay but then I eat too many and throw up. Fruits on their own make me feel very, super bad, and meat is a no go. Yesterday I ate three tortillas throughout the day and felt mostly fine but I was too fatigued to train, and then I threw up anyway.”

Nate unscrews the lid and smells the drink, not displeased with what he finds. He gets a glass down from the shelf and pours me a glass, rifles through a few drawers as if he owns the place, then sticks a metal straw in it before putting it in front of me.

“If you can eat, you should. Whatever you can keep down is good, have you been Googling things?”

I nod reluctantly. “Everyone has something to say.”

“And yet everyone is still different. Willa didn’t get sick really, but was fatigued the whole pregnancy.”

“She was?”

How did he know this? Why didn’t I notice? I wear my unwell-ness on my skin, in the form of greenish pallor and plum circles under my eyes. I look like death, which is probably another reason Maxim has been hovering so much.

“There’s medicine for this, Ness was on it. Go to a doctor, you need to be able to eat and sleep so the baby can grow. The medicine will help you.”

“She still has some? Pills?”

Nate takes a bite of bagel and nods.

“Great, can you bring them to me?”

“I think sharing prescriptions is illegal,” he says.

I stare unblinking at him until he’s done chewing, and the irony of what he said dawns on him.

He rolls his eyes. “Right. You don’t care.”

Greta makes her sleepy appearance, jumping onto the counter and meowing at Nate who just melts for the cat, scratching her so enthusiastically that her fur ends up floating in tiny clumps around them as they fall to the shiny countertop.

“I promise I’ll go to Dr. Judd,” I say. She’s Willa and Vanessa’s doctor, a completely lovely woman. Not Italian, but she’s family enough by now. My dad trusted her. “But not yet, okay? Soon.”

“You have three days before I tell your sister, and that’s generous.”

“Asshole,” I mutter. Three days is generous, though. He can’t keep secrets from my sister for shit. He told me and Leo he was planning something great for a proposal, but the day he picked up the ring, he got too excited and proposed as soon as she got home.

“So can we go get the drugs? Like now.” I nod down at his car keys. He’s still driving that old banged up Prius, though he promised my sister he’d upgrade to one of the bigger, safer cars when the baby is born.

Nate looks at Greta like she’ll be sympathetic to what he has to put up with. She rubs her head on his cheek and he melts all over again.

“Nate,” I snap. He sighs and gives the cat one last loud kiss on the head before taking his keys and half of his bagel with him in the direction of the elevator.

“If you throw up in the Prius, I’ll never forgive you.”