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His hand skimmed her stomach, whenever they were together like this they were in constant contact. Sometimes it was about greed, impatience, desperation, but in the last hours of their time, the sun starting to rise, it was soft, slow, warm, if not occasionally desperate for a different reason.
Nick’s pointer finger found a spot on her hip and followed it. A stretchmark that was one of the only reminders that she’d carried Hannah. She only had a few, her doctor told her it was genetics and a little bit of luck that she didn’t have more.
June sighed and tucked her head under his chin. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to hear her at all so she didn’t move away, her lips against his chest when she spoke.
“Maybe I’ll miscarry.”
Her words didn’t distract him, he kept tracing the stretch mark, back and forth from hip to belly and back again at a glacial pace. He didn’t even flinch. Luke always told her she worried too much. Maybe Nick was just going to pretend it wasn’t real.
He took a deep breath. “Maybe it will be a girl.”
June suddenly felt sick. Having a baby in her current situation was horrifying. But a girl growing in her, a girl brought into this fucking disaster of a place, a girl to be used...like Hannah, wherever she was.
She lifted her head up to see Nick with his eyes screwed shut, his jaw tight. That was the scariest thing he could think of. She would have laughed if it wasn’t viscerally terrifying for her, too.
He upheld this world and what? Now he was regretting those choices? It affected some part of him so now it was bad?
June shook her head and sat up, disgusted. “Maybe I’ll go batshit like Janine.”
His hand slipped off of her side when she sat up and she missed it.
“It won’t help, they’ll just pull you out of the river and make you a fertility experiment.”
She snapped to look at him and of course, he was too casual, always, but his hand was on her again, pressing into her thigh with the slightest quiver.
“She survived?” Her voice broke. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You feel better knowing?” He gave her a raised eyebrow and she hated that he was right.
She pushed herself up, sometimes when she did this he would reach for her, but he didn’t this time. He knew he’d gone too far.
“Maybe I’ll go batshit like Janine,” he said, surprising her.
June scoffed. “How does that help the situation?”
“It doesn’t.” He shrugged but now she could tell he was anxious as she was.
She’d learned to collect and hoard the little bits of himself he let slip, because they slipped so very rarely. She told herself she was cataloging them as a weapon, to use against him if the time came, but it was bullshit.
So she didn’t respond, he never told her anything and she could play that game too, she didn’t have to tell him anything, she didn’t need him. (The lie didn’t even work in her head but whatever.)
She leaned over the bed and reached for her clothes. But he used all his strength to hoist her back to him, his hand quickly finding that stretch mark again. June cleared her throat, waiting for some explanation.
“How long did the baby live?” Nick whispered. “Was it healthy?”
June didn't register what he meant until he moved his hand from stretch mark to her stomach, spreading his fingers like if he concentrated enough he could actually see into her womb. She gulped. He was as scared and unsure of how to feel as she was.
Covering his hand with hers, she lifted it to her mouth, kissing his palm.
“Hannah was born at 39 weeks, she was perfect.” June smiled, closing her eyes and remembering the little giraffe dress that she wore home from the hospital. “Seven pounds, no genetic abnormalities, ten fingers, ten toes, perfect hearing,” she stopped to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Her birthday's next month.”
He kissed her shoulder and didn’t say anything for what felt like minutes but surely was just a few seconds. June hoped he didn’t ask about Luke. Didn’t ask anything more about Hannah. It was too strange to talk about her here, it felt wrong like when you go into a warm house after being outside in the cold for too long.
“Doesn't even know she's gonna be a big sister.”
When she glanced at him he had that tiny smirk he had when he was trying to break the intensity of a moment and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“I don't even know if she remembers me.”
“Maybe she doesn't.”
The whiplash of this conversation was getting to be too much. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Easier to live without you if she can't remember.”
Oh.
She got the distinct impression he wasn't talking about Hannah anymore.
“Doesn't matter if this baby lives. She's not ours.” In another life, in another time maybe, except they wouldn’t have known each other at all. June had never been to Michigan and there was Luke before...
Nick turned, unable to look at her.
“They'll take her away,” she said.
“And then they'll take you away.” He followed. As close to an audible confession of his affection for her.
“The sun’s up,” she said, standing to get dressed, giving him an out.
“Stay.”
June looked back at the full sized bed (why did he get a bigger bed than she did?) Nick’s hair was sticking up all over the place, she didn't know short hair could do that. He was biting the inside of his lip and she tilted her head at him.
“Getting caught isn't going to help us any.”
“Just a few more minutes. Rita will be the only one up when you go in, she won't ask questions.”
That wasn't June’s impression of the Martha but she suspected Rita and Nick had some kind of agreement.
So she stayed. Slipped back into his bed and brushed her lips against his. With him life almost felt like normal.