Page 15 of Brood (After the End #5)

We spend most of the afternoon in bed and even have dinner delivered to us, but the next morning things go back to normal.

Or mostly normal.

We get dressed and work and talk and have sex in our normal fashion, but I don’t feel as tense around him as I did.

I get a shiver of excitement every time I see him, and even small things he does make me happy.

I’m not as defensive as I sometimes was before, and maybe because of that, Will relaxes too.

He smiles more. He’ll never be a cheerful, gregarious man, but I catch a lot of little quirks of his lips.

And sometimes his eyes are soft when he looks at me.

I like the change.

A lot.

So, overall, I have a good week which is why it’s such a blow, one afternoon several days after Gus went feral, when I go to the bathroom after exercising to discover that my period has started again.

I was really hoping this month. Everything else is getting better, so I thought maybe this would happen for us too.

But there’s blood in my underwear. I’m still not pregnant.

I don’t cry, but I’m chilled and heavy as I take my shower, put in my menstrual cup, get dressed, and then lie down on my bed.

I’ve got two hours before my afternoon shift starts, so I have time to pull myself together before then.

Will finds me like that a half hour later.

He’s been coming to the room for his afternoon break more often than he used to, and twice this week, we’ve had an extra round of sex. But he must know something is wrong immediately because he pulls to a stop just inside the door.

When I don’t move and don’t speak, he takes long strides over to my bed and looks down on me.

“My period started,” I manage to say.

I’m proud of myself for not crying. For being able to articulate clearly.

I hear his thick exhale. He’s disappointed too. I know it.

I know it.

“Okay. It’s okay. We’ll keep trying.”

I nod and swallow over the lump in my throat.

He stands still for a minute. Then he goes to the bathroom and returns to the room, toeing off his shoes.

To my surprise, he climbs into the bed with me, spooning me the way he did after Gus’s attack.

I whimper and nestle back against him. “I was really hoping this month.”

“I know. I know.” He presses his lips against my loose hair. I never rebraided it after my shower. “I was hoping too. But no one I can remember has gotten pregnant in the first six months of trying. It’s still early.”

“I know.” I turn my head and am vaguely surprised to find Will’s face right there. Only an inch or two away from mine. “But I thought we could do it.”

“We will.” He nuzzles the side of my face. His bristles scratch my skin, and the sensation is oddly comforting.

“I feel like a failure.”

“You’re not.”

“I feel like one.”

“That’s because you have unreasonable expectations for yourself. But getting pregnant isn’t something you can accomplish by the force of your will.”

“I know.” I frown back at him. “But I don’t think my expectations are unreasonable. I’m usually good at things.”

He chuckles softly and tightens his arms around me. “I know you are. I was talking to Grearson last week, and he was saying you always had to be the best back in school.”

A giggle surprises me. Grearson was my lead teacher when I was a kid. “Why were you talking to Grearson about me?”

“I ran into him, and he was asking how you were and how married life was for us.”

“Oh. How did you answer him?”

Will pauses only briefly. “I said you were as good a spouse as anyone could hope for.”

A shiver of pleasure fills me, temporarily distracting me from my crushing disappointment. “You said that?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might say that I was prickly.”

His body shakes with breathy amusement. It’s subdued like mine—still tempered. “Of course I wouldn’t say that.”

“But you think that.”

“Sometimes.” He nuzzles my neck. “But that’s private. Just between us. No one else gets to know about your prickles.”

For some reason, I almost start crying again. My body shudders as I hold them back.

He brushes his lips against my hair again and murmurs something. I can’t hear it well, but it almost sounds like he says, “They’re mine.”

After a minute, the emotion fades, and he continues in his normal tone, “Anyway, that’s when he said you were always an overachiever in school.

You didn’t always get the highest marks in math and writing, but for basic life skills and for anything that took hard work, common sense, and logical reasoning, you were never satisfied unless you were the top of your class. ”

I smile. “I’m not naturally gifted with numbers and words, so other kids could beat me in those. But I was good at all the other subjects. I’m used to…achieving.”

“You do achieve. Every single person I know talks about how much better our meals taste since you’ve become head taster. You’re a great community member and friend and spouse. You can’t control whether you get pregnant. You shouldn’t group that in with your achievements.”

“I know that in theory. But it’s hard to feel it.”

He sighs. Shifts behind me to get more comfortable. “Yeah. I understand.”

“We have sex every single day, and both of us are healthy and fertile. I don’t understand why it’s not happening.”

“Do you remember Dr. Madison?”

I have no idea why he’s asking me that. “Yes. She was so nice. She died when I was fourteen.”

“She told me once when Vanessa wasn’t getting pregnant that the longer we’ve been here in the Refuge, the fewer pregnancies and healthy births there have been.

And the only reason she could come up with is that our bodies recognize we’re not supposed to be here.

We’re not supposed to be living underground.

We’re supposed to be on the surface. We’re supposed to feel the sun and breathe the fresh air and walk through meadows and climb mountains.

That’s what she said. Our bodies recognize we’re not supposed to be down here and are reluctant to make more babies. ”

It’s the first I’ve ever heard of this idea, and it takes me a minute to process it. Think it through. Finally I say, “Do you think she was right?”

“Yes. A lot of the time, I do. I think that’s why people go feral too. We shouldn’t have to live every day of our lives in this underground prison. It’s not…natural.”

“But we can’t go outside. Not if it’s so dangerous and primitive up there.”

He doesn’t answer immediately.

I turn to look at him. “You don’t think we can go outside, do you?”

“I…have no idea.”

It’s not an answer that comforts me. It makes me jittery. But he has made me feel better about my failure to get pregnant.

Maybe it’s not really my fault.

Maybe it’s my body trying to do what’s best for me. For our future baby. For humankind.

We lie together, him holding me close, for several more minutes. Then I finally say, “Your break is almost over. You need to get back to work.”

“I’ll go back in a minute.” He lets out a sigh that ruffles my hair. “I need more of this right now.”