Page 40

KENTUCKY

TWO DAYS LATER

KLAUS

I booked my own flight since the trip wasn’t work-related, and with foolish optimism assumed six hours extra would be enough.

But my connection from New York to Lexington was delayed, then trouble with my last-minute reservation consumed another hour at the hotel.

As I rushed south, staying a safe five miles over the speed limit so as not to risk a ticket, I came upon a traffic snarl after a truck spilled its cargo across the highway.

It seems everything is conspiring to make me late.

At the time of Natalia’s appointment, I’m still thirty miles north of the birthing center.

My only hope is that she will be delayed too, with the doctor running behind.

But as I turn into the car park, Natalia is walking out the double doors, heading down the stairs as she gazes at a small square of paper in her hand, a coat slung over her left arm.

My heart tumbles in a tug-of-war, both lifting to see her and falling when I realize the appointment is already over. I swoop into a parking slot and climb out, jogging a half-dozen spaces down, where she’s standing beside an older Jeep with wood-paneled sides.

“Talia,” I call out, lifting an arm.

She looks like she’s seen a ghost when she wheels around, and my spirits drop.

The surprise was a bad move—I’ve blundered again.

Her aunt sold me on the idea that it would be “romantic” if I showed up to the clinic unexpectedly, with a winning smile and an armful of roses.

In my haste, I’ve even neglected to get the flowers.

Colossal failure…

I pause as I round the car. Her fingers tighten on the door handle, and she slips the square of paper into a pocket of the handbag slung across her body.

“How are you… here?” she asks.

I take a few steps nearer. “I wasn’t sure whether you wanted me to come to the appointment, but I spoke to your aunt and she suggested I surprise you.

Claimed it would be ‘like something from a movie.’ Flowers, and…

” I trail off hopelessly and give a general sweeping wave, as if gesturing at the world. “But there were countless delays.”

“A movie ?” Natalia echoes with a wry look. “Maybe Auntie Min and I like different movies. Because I would’ve preferred a phone call to warn me. But instead?” She shrugs. “Radio silence from you. Which didn’t feel too great.”

A ruffle of wind musses her hair. She rakes it impatiently out of her face, then folds her arms against the chilly air.

I go to her and draw the coat from her arm, holding it open.

She pauses only a moment before removing her handbag and slipping into the coat’s sleeves.

When she turns, I fasten the two center buttons.

“Guess it didn’t occur to either of you,” she goes on, “that if you just show up and I’m not thrilled to see you, I look like a jerk after you’ve flown a gazillion miles. No pressure, right?”

“I’m doing this very badly, aren’t I?” I rub my face, sighing. “May we talk?”

“We are talking.”

“Let’s not spar with semantics, Talia. You know what I mean.” I glance up at the dark-streaked sky, which threatens rain. “Can we go somewhere? Even sitting in a car is fine.”

She scrunches her lips to the side in the peevish thinking way I know so well. I can’t help wanting to kiss her every time she does it. She catches me looking at her lips and takes a step back.

“I… Yeah, sure. We should sit in whatever you rented, because Auntie Min’s Jeep is forty years old and drafty as a barn.”

I offer an elbow. She snakes her arm through it and walks with me to my hire car, a black Audi sedan.

I open the passenger door for her, and when she sits and I bend to lift the hem of her long coat, she reaches for it at the same time and our hands collide.

She snatches her hand away, then leans to grab the door and pull it shut before I can.

The rain begins just as I take my seat on the driver’s side. Natalia watches raindrops blotch the windscreen and twists the strap of the handbag in her lap. I can smell her hair, and the familiar amaretto scent causes a tug of sorrow in my chest, knowing I don’t dare to pull her close.

“Are you well?” I ask her. “What did the doctor say?”

“It’s a midwife. And she said it looks great so far. Everything’s as expected. I won’t know more for a few weeks, when I have the tests.” She finally turns to look in my eyes, and the wild blue of them takes my breath away. “Do you want to know what the baby is—girl or boy?”

Adrenaline floods me; that simple question has suddenly made things startlingly real. “They could tell?”

She nods, pulling a thin paper photograph from the pocket of her bag and handing it to me. “Not super picturesque yet. Babies look like space aliens at this point.”

I’m a little embarrassed at how my hands shake. My heart thuds in my ears and joy melts the sharp edges of my anxiety as I greedily take in the strange-yet-unmistakable curled shape.

I smile, my eyes burning. “Hello, small traveler,” I manage, just above a whisper. “I look forward to meeting you.”

Natalia thankfully allows a long pause for me to study the sonogram—if she asked me a question now, my reply would be choked and raspy. She delivers a pat to my thigh.

“You can keep that one,” she tells me, her voice husky with repressed tears of her own. “They gave me a bunch.”

I look down at the square of paper. “Beautiful.”

Natalia closes in to look too, leaning on my shoulder. “Isn’t she?”

The words catch up to me a beat late, like an echo in close quarters. I look at Natalia, then back at the photo. “A girl?”

Her eyes narrow. “You’re not one of those sexist jerks who’s all, ‘I must have a son! An heir for my kingdom!’ are you?”

“She’s perfect.” Natalia’s hand is still on my leg, so I take a chance on twisting in my seat to embrace her. “Thank you,” I say into her hair.

“You, uh… It’s… I mean, ‘thanks’ aren’t called for. A person isn’t a favor or a gift.”

“Very true.” I hold her tighter, knowing any second now we will reach the limit on a celebratory hug. “I’m at a loss for how to express my feelings—gratitude is the closest to what I’m experiencing. I’ve no context for this.”

She grabs a fistful of the back of my shirt and presses her forehead against my shoulder hard. Her breath catches, then releases in a stifled whimper.

I disengage to look at her, cupping her cheek in one palm. “Talia… what’s—”

Before I complete the question, she kisses me. I’m too shocked to respond for a moment, and she withdraws an inch, eyes troubled, before I pull her close again, plunging one hand into her hair, combing up from the nape of her neck and squeezing a handful of the warm silk.

I’m not sure if this is a last kiss or a first, but either way it must be something we both remember, something to last a lifetime.

Three months of longing seem to pour out of us, disintegrating the wall between us.

Our mouths are hot and demanding, mapping the landscape of each other, exploring every curve.

She feeds on me as if famished, and when she pulls back to reconnect and we both close in too quickly, hitting our teeth, we smile against each other, comforted in the recognition of the hunger we share.

Our mouths soften with the reassurance that the kiss isn’t over.

Here in the insulated hush of the car with rain drumming on the roof, our eager breath saying more than words ever could, we shape this moment so it feels both infinite and outside of time.

There’s nothing beyond our pleasure in each other.

No yesterday, no tomorrow—only our lips and tongues and roaming hands and the need to be here together, steeped in the beautiful ache of simple need.

When Natalia finally retreats, her cheeks stained and her lips swollen and nude with kisses, she peeks at my eyes and says, “We can’t really get into the back seat like we did in Barcelona. Not in a parking lot.”

I tuck a lock of her tousled hair behind her left ear. “Would you suggest it, if we had privacy?”

My question isn’t spurred by lust, but a need to know if this kiss means the same thing to her as it does to me. I feel like I’m staring at a door, unsure whether it leads to “the lady or the tiger,” as in the fairy tale. It’s either the portal out, or in.

Painful remorse comes to me as I remember how Natalia once said I felt like a locked door. The night she left me, I’d locked it quite literally. I want to dismantle every barrier that’s ever stood between us, tearing apart nails and hinges and mortar and lies and silence.

She sits back, smoothing her hair. “I probably would suggest it, so I’m glad we can’t.

It’d make everything more complicated.” She chews at her kiss-abraded lower lip, studying me.

“Attraction can’t be what holds us together.

And—I can’t stress this enough— neither can a baby .

The idea of a baby ‘fixing everything’ is the basis for millions of unhappy childhoods, and relationships that should’ve laid down to die with dignity years earlier. ”

I force myself to breathe out slowly, dropping my gaze. “I don’t agree with your estimation of our prospects. But I have to accept that the place where you are, emotionally, is the place we are. My hopes don’t move the marker.”

She wrings the strap of her bag between nervous fingers. “Auntie Min’s best friend Naomi would say it’s probably a bad omen that a bunch of delays prevented you from getting here on time. Like… it means this wasn’t meant to be.”

I give a grim half-smile. “Does this vast and impartial universe care enough to overturn a cargo truck and slow me down so we might receive a message? Bad luck for that driver, having to become the instrument.”

Natalia chuckles, shaking her head. “Yeah, I guess not. It’s silly, I know.”

I take her hand. We hold loosely, needing the connection but wary of being any closer.