Chapter 4: The Call
The fire in the living room hearth popped, sending a spiral of embers up the chimney. Catriona watched it, phone pressed to her ear, one finger tracing the rim of her whiskey glass. She’d been staring at the same paragraph of her novel for twenty minutes. The words were just shapes. All she could see was Aidan walking out the door that morning, the purposeful set of his shoulders.
Jenny picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
Her voice was soft, scratchy. Catriona’s stomach clenched. “Hey. It’s me.”
“Cat.” A pause, the rustle of fabric. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Yeah?” Catriona took a sip of whiskey, the heat blooming in her chest. “How are you feeling?” She tried to keep it light, medical. It came out strained.
Another rustle. Jenny was probably in bed. “Sore. In… a good way. A real way.” She breathed out, a shaky sound. “He came at dawn. Didn’t even come upstairs. Just took me in the kitchen, over the counter.”
Catriona closed her eyes. The image was immediate, vivid: Jenny bent over the cold granite, Aidan’s broad hands on her hips, the first light on his back. Her own skin prickled. “Yeah?”
“He was… different this morning. Less patient. More… I don’t know. It was like he was just… making sure it took.” Jenny’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I can still feel him, Cat. I feel stretched. I feel full. I sat in a warm bath after and I could still… I could feel where he’d been.”
A slow, hot pulse thrummed low in Catriona’s belly. She shifted in the armchair. The firelight made the room feel close, secret. “Did he… was he okay to you?”
“He made me coffee afterward. Sat on the floor with me. We just sat there.” Jenny let out a small, wondering laugh. “It was the strangest, most normal thing. After… everything.”
The admission hung between them, charged and delicate. Catriona swirled the amber liquid in her glass. Her throat was tight. “I’m glad. I’m glad he was… decent.”
“More than decent.” Jenny’s whisper was fervent. “It’s not just the… the physical thing. It’s him. His focus. It’s like he’s studying me, learning how I work, trying to solve me. It makes me feel… seen. In a way that doesn’t hurt.”
Catriona’s breath caught. That was Aidan. That was exactly him. The methodical astronomer, mapping a new body. A possessive, sudden heat flared behind her ribs, unfamiliar and sharp. It wasn’t jealousy. It was something else, something that made her press her thighs together.
“I want to see,” Catriona said, the words out before she could cage them.
Silence on the line, thick enough to hear the crackle of the fire.
“What?” Jenny finally breathed.
“I want to watch.” Catriona’s voice was low, firm, surprising herself. “Next time. I want to be there. To see… the process. To see him… work.” It was a clinical word, but it felt filthy on her tongue.
“Oh.” Jenny’s exhalation was a soft shock. “Would you… would that be weird?”
“Yes.” Catriona laughed, a short, dry sound. “It would be profoundly weird. But I need to. I think I need to see it to understand it. To know what we’re really asking of him. Of you.” She wasn’t sure if that was the whole truth. The other truth sat in her gut, a warm, heavy stone of curiosity.
“Okay,” Jenny said, so quietly Catriona almost missed it. “If you want to. He might… I don’t know how he’d feel.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Catriona took another, deeper drink. The fire popped again. She stared into the flames, her mind painting pictures on the logs: tangled limbs, sweat-sheened skin, the intense concentration on her husband’s face. Her face grew warm.
“Catriona?” Jenny’s voice was small, tentative.
“Yeah, honey?”
A long pause. The question, when it came, was barely audible, a feather of sound that carried the weight of an anvil. “Would you ever let him do it to you? If… if it was me who couldn’t? Would you let him breed you, too?”
The air vanished from the room. Catriona’s glass stopped halfway to her lips. The firelight seemed to dim, the shadows in the corners growing deeper, swimming. She saw her own life, her own choices, her own easy fertility that she’d never once had to question. She saw Aidan’s face above hers, not in passion, but in that same fierce, purposeful study.
The silence stretched, elastic and painful. She heard Jenny’s shallow breathing on the other end of the line, waiting, suspended in the void of the unanswered.
Catriona put her glass down. It made a definitive click on the table.
She didn’t have an answer. The question had opened a door inside her, and a cold, fascinating draft was pouring out. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the empty honey jar on Jenny’s table, gleaming gold in the sun, waiting to be filled.
“Jenny,” she said, her voice strangely calm. “I have to go.”
She ended the call. The phone sat heavy in her lap. She watched the flames consume a log, turning it bright and hollow before it collapsed into embers. The warmth of the room no longer reached her. She was thinking of thresholds, of point-of-no-return burns in the sky, and of what it might feel like to stand on the other side of one.