Semua Bab Désiré Me 2: Bab 141 - Bab 150

 AURÉLIEThe conjugal bedroom is a prison of satin and silence. I feel its weight on my chest as soon as I enter. Lorenzo is already there, standing by the window, a silhouette cut out against the nocturnal blue. He doesn't turn around. He breathes, that's all. His breath, slow and steady, is the only sound in this room too vast.We sleep. If one can call it sleeping. Separated by an ocean of cold sheets, back to back like two funerary statues on the same tomb. Sometimes I feel the warmth of his body, barely a few centimeters away, and it is torture. An inaccessible promise. The air is thick, charged with everything we no longer say, with everything his hands no longer do on my skin.He is proper. Irreproachable. It's worse than if he slapped me. His "yes," his "no," his "how are you this morning?" spoken with the coldness of a doctor examining a stranger. He slips away at dawn, returns late, the smell of tobacco and cut wood clinging to his

AURÉLIEThe night refuses to end.I lie on my back, eyes open in the dark, my fingers clenched on the sheet. The cold of the parquet slowly left my skin while I lay there, crushed, but the cold inside me, that one hasn't moved. It has settled like frozen water in my veins.Beside me, his place is empty. Immaculate. The sheet is not wrinkled. The pillow has not kept the shape of his head. Nothing. Not even a ghost to touch.I close my eyes. I try to breathe. My chest is too heavy. My breasts weigh like stones against my ribs, that sensitivity that hasn't left me since I started carrying this life. Under my palms resting on my belly, the baby moves intermittently. A timid kick. Then another. He doesn't know that the world he will be born into is in ashes.I turn on my side, grab his pillow. I crush it against my face. I inhale. His smell is still there, a little. His shampoo, that scent of clean wood. My throat tightens.Why can't I hate him?He is right. That's the worst part. He is ri

AURÉLIEI don't know what he sees. Perhaps the woman he married. Perhaps the liar. Perhaps both, inseparably intertwined, forever, until death do us part.His hand slides from my belly to my waist. He pulls me toward him.His mouth finds mine.It isn't gentle. It isn't tender. It's the hunger of two beings who have deprived themselves for too long. It's the thirst of the desert. His lips are hard, imperious, his tongue plunging between my teeth, taking me, possessing me. I moan into his mouth, and that sound seems to break the last dam.He sits up suddenly, carrying me with him. I find myself seated on his thighs, wrapped around him, his steel arms around my waist. He kisses my jaw, my throat, the hollow of my neck. His teeth bite my skin, not hard enough to mark, hard enough for me to feel his hunger.— You're insufferable, he breathes against my collarbone.— I know.— You're going to destroy me.— I know.— I should hate you.— But you can't.He lifts his head. His eyes are bright,

AURÉLIEShe places her hand on her belly. The gesture is instinctive, maternal. I feel a searing pain shoot through my chest. Those babies. Her babies. The ones that should be mine. The ones I couldn't give him.— Do you want some coffee? Lorenzo offers.He pours for me before I answer. The gesture is mechanical, habitual. Eight years of marriage. Eight years of mornings together.Except these past months have been a lie. Except I wasn't really myself.Béatrice butters a slice of bread. Her fingers tremble very slightly. I am the only one who sees it—perhaps because I know her gestures as well as my own. Perhaps because I watch for the slightest crack.— I thought about names last night, she says suddenly.I startle. Our names?— For the babies, she clarifies. I was thinking… well, if you agree…She looks at Lorenzo. She doesn't look at me.— I was thinking of names that recall the family. Our grandparents' names, perhaps.Lorenzo sets down his cup.— We have time.— Not really. The d

LORENZOShe enters the room and the world slows down.It's not voluntary. It's not chosen. It's physical, visceral, uncontrollable. Every time Béatrice appears in my field of vision, my body reacts before my mind can stop it. My breath stops for a fraction of a second. My fingers clench. That heat rises, treacherous, unacceptable.Today, she is in the garden. Sitting on the stone bench, near the old oak. She is reading, or pretending to read. The sun filters through the leaves, draws moving shadows on her light dress. Her hair is loose today—a rarity—and falls in dark waves over her shoulders.Her belly. Always that belly. Immense, taut, magnificent. My children are growing inside her. My sons or daughters—we don't know yet—moving beneath her skin, kicking her palm when she rests her hand on them.I should see only them. I should see only a mother carrying her children.But I see her.I see the curve of her neck when she tilts her head. I see her lips moving silently as she reads. I s