After the Silence

The second pregnancy had started out beautifully. Familiar nausea, swollen breasts that Ethan worshipped at every chance, and a renewed wave of tenderness that swept through our home like a soft tide.

Ethan was attentive in every way — bringing home soft baby blankets in neutral tones, leaving rose-gold boxes of jewelry on my nightstand, curling around me at night with his hands splayed wide over my growing belly, murmuring to our baby while I drifted to sleep. He still touched me like I was something sacred, still made love to me with reverence often, fucking me often and heat, whispering how beautiful I looked heavy with his child.

We were happy. So happy.

Until everything stopped.

I was seven months along. I remember the moment too clearly — the absence of movement, the eerie stillness where there should have been little kicks, flutters, the rhythmic reassurance that life was still inside me.

The silence in the ultrasound room was unbearable. Ethan’s hand squeezed mine so tightly I lost feeling in my fingertips, but I clung back, needing the grounding of him more than anything.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said softly. “There’s no heartbeat.”

The world cracked open.

The next week was a blur of medical terms, of aching silence, of long nights spent in Ethan’s arms as we wept together. He never left my side. Not once. He was there when I delivered our stillborn son, holding my hand as my body broke in ways no one ever prepares for.

We named him Noah. Ethan kissed his tiny forehead through his tears, and I held him against my chest for as long as I could bear.

We returned home hollow and bruised.

The house felt heavier. The nursery stayed closed. Our bed became a sanctuary and a battleground — a place where grief and love collided. There were nights I sobbed into Ethan’s chest, clinging to him as though he could keep the sadness from swallowing me whole. And he did. In the only way he knew how.

With his arms. His words. His love.

He made me tea. Ran baths for me. Kissed my scars. Massaged my back when my body still ached from labor. He never pushed for more, not even when I caught him hard and aching behind me some nights. He simply held me. Waited. Loved. He stroked his rigid dick to relieve his heavy balls.

We waited seven weeks before trying again.

Not because we were told to—but because that was how long it took for me to feel ready. To want to feel something again besides pain. To feel him again.

That night, I came to him wrapped in one of his shirts, nothing underneath. His eyes darkened immediately, but he didn’t move.

“You sure?” he asked, voice low.

I nodded. “Yes. I want you to make me feel alive again.”

What followed wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t tender.

It was desperate, aching, full of the kind of fire only two people who’ve touched grief can summon. He tore the shirt from me and took me on our bed, my legs trembling as he kissed every inch of me like he was re-staking a claim. I sobbed once in the middle of it—overcome—and he kissed my tears, kept going, kept loving me the only way we knew now.

We didn’t make love.

We fucked hard like we needed to burn down the sadness.

And when I came apart under him, crying out his name, something inside me loosened. Something I hadn’t realized I’d been holding too tightly.

Afterward, we laid tangled together, hearts thudding, bodies damp with sweat and tears, and Ethan whispered, “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll try again. And I’ll love you through it all.”

I turned my head to him, kissed him long and deep, and whispered, “We already are.”