She felt his arms.
Going around her.
Both of them — the full, encompassing, both-arms-around quality of it. Her face against his chest and his arms around her and her belly between them.
"'I hate you,'" she said.
"'I know,'" he said.
"'You monster,'" she said. The word arriving with the honest delivery of someone who had chosen it carefully and meant it. "'You absolute— what are you? What did you do to me? What did you—'"
His voice, near her ear.
"'I can make you forget everything that happened here.'"
She heard the words.
She heard them through the crying. Through the wet, broken, chest-emptying quality of the crying.
She felt them land.
Not in her mind. Below her mind. That sub-conscious level where things land that do not go through the normal channels.
Her crying slowed.
The hiccupping, decelerating quality of crying that has been interrupted by something the body is more interested in than the crying.
