“I know, angel. Shh. You deserve so much better than me, but you’re stuck with me because I can’t be without you again. I can’t live without you, Ivy. I won’t.” His voice breaks. He kisses my mouth, and I close my eyes. It’s a chaste kiss. Lips touching lips. And my heart flutters at the sensation. At this thing I have missed. Santiago kissing me. Santiago holding me. I missed it. Even as I have lain here these months—months—in this strange sleep, I have missed him.

“And I will do right by you. I will make you happy. I will be worthy of you. Of your love. I swear it. I swear it on my life, my angel.”

40

Ivy

Several weeks pass before I am released from the hospital, and Santiago helps settle me in the wheelchair I must be rolled out in before setting our little bundle in my arms.

Elena De La Rosa. I chose it because it means bright, shining light. That’s what she is for me. For us.

Santiago has yet to decide on her middle name, but she’s gone without a first name for the first weeks of her life, so this is a start. He apparently refused to choose a name without me.

He closes one hand over my shoulder and squeezes as he leans close to kiss my cheek. “Are you sure she’s not too heavy?”

“I’m sure,” I tell him. “She barely weighs nine pounds.”

“All right. If she gets too heavy—”

“I know. I’ll tell you.”

He nods, runs a knuckle over Elena’s cheek as she smiles up at us before closing her eyes and nuzzling into her blanket.

I’ve been in a coma for three months. Elena somehow survived the accident. No. Not accident. It makes me sick to think of it. Of Abel, my own brother, willing to run me down to wound Santiago.

I wipe my eye, and Santiago squeezes my shoulder again.

In those months, Elena grew strong inside me for as long as she could or as long as my body could manage it. She was early but not so early that she couldn’t survive.

Eva showed me all the videos she’d made of Elena moving in my belly while I lay still. It’s eerie to see it, see myself like that, see my stomach move with this human being inside it. And I have decided in the weeks that I’ve been back that Eva’s a lot like my husband. Obsessive and a little crazy in the best way.

She was upset I didn’t choose her first choice of name, which was—surprise—Evangeline. But she’d done some research choosing names with care and swore she knew it would be a girl all along.