The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 178

Chapter 162: The Body Mutiny

Bella POV

Three months in, and my body declared war on everything I had ever loved. It started with Caleb’s cologne.

I had always loved that scent – I had never once complained about it in all the months we had spent carefully, cautiously rebuilding what existed between us.

Clam

But on a Wednesday morning in early spring, I walked into the bedroom where he was getting dressed for a board meeting and the smell hit me like a wall.

“Stop,” I said.

He turned, one cufflink in, watching me with the particular patience he had developed over the last several weeks – the patience of a man who had learned very quickly that there was absolutely no predicting what was coming next. “What did I do?”

“Your cologne.” I pressed my hand flat against my chest. “Take it off.”

“Bella”

“Caleb.” I kept my voice very calm. “I am asking you nicely, take it off.”

He looked at me for a moment, then walked to the bathroom without another word and came back later smelling of plain soap. I breathed in carefully, decided that was acceptable, and kissed him on the cheek on my way out of the room like nothing had happened,

He switched to unscented everything by the following morning. Soap, deodorant, moisturiser James had sourced alternatives within the hour. I did not thank him for it because I was already locked in a separate silent battle with the smell of petrol from the underground car park, the specific cleaning product the housekeeper used on Thursdays, and – inexplicably, without any logic or warning – fresh printer paper.

Fresh printer paper, it had never offended a single person in the history of the world before now.

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“This is genuinely unacceptable,” I told Maya over the phone, standing in the doorway of my home office refusing to enter because James had printed acquisition reports that morning and they were sitting there radiating that horrible clean papery smell straight at me. “I can’t even walk in there. It’s like the paper is mocking me.”

“It’ll pass,” she said.

“You said that about the nausea.”

“The nausea did pass.”

“It was immediately replaced by this. Maya, I cried over a stapler yesterday because it smelled like new plastic, I hate this.”

“Bella. You’re building a human being from scratch. Give yourself some grace.”

I looked at the printer paper sitting peacefully on my desk and felt a very specific and personal animosity

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<Chapter 162-Phe Body Mutiny

toward it. “I have a board call in twenty minutes.”

“Take it from another room.”

“The acoustics in the other room are terrible.”

“Then open a window and breathe through your mouth.”

Clair

I opened the window. I breathed through my mouth. I ran the entire board call from the doorway like a person who had completely lost their mind, which Tom confirmed when he wandered past in the corridor, stopped, and stared at me.

“Why are you standing there?”

“Working.”

“But your desk is right there.”

“Tom.”

“Okay.” He said, walking away.

Later that evening I found Caleb in the kitchen, eating a handful of the salted almonds I had hidden in the pantry a few days earlier. The ones I had specifically craved at 2 a.m. the night before.

I stopped in the doorway and felt my eyes sting. “You ate my almonds.”

He froze mid-chew. “These? There were only a few left.”

“Exactly. They were mine, I woke up thinking about them and now they’re gone and I feel like I might actually cry over nuts, Caleb. This is ridiculous.”

He set the bowl down immediately and crossed the room. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know they were special. I’ll have James get ten more bags tonight.”

“It’s not about the almonds,” I said, voice cracking. Tears spilled over before I could stop them. “It’s everything. The smells, the cravings. I feel like my body is punishing me for wanting this baby so much. I used to be stronger than this, I cleaned offices all night while pregnant with Tom and never complained once. Now I’m crying because you ate a few almonds.”

ľ

Caleb pulled me into his arms without hesitation. “Hey, you are still the strongest person I know. This isn’t weakness – it’s pregnancy. You’re allowed to be human. Let me fix the almonds, let me fix anything you need.”

I sniffed against his shirt. “Promise you won’t eat my snacks anymore without asking.”

“I promise.”

The cravings arrived harder in week twenty and they were not reasonable. They did not politely appear at mealtimes, they descended without warning at completely unreasonable hours.

Monday: mango chutney on plain white rice at six forty-five in the morning before I had fully woken up. I stood at the kitchen counter in my pajamas eating it while Caleb watched from the doorway with a very careful expression, not saying a single word.

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Clam

“You’re judging me,” I muttered around a bite.

“I’m not, I’m admiring your commitment.”

“Good. Because If you say one thing about how this looks, I will cry. Again.”

Wednesday: sour cream and onion crisps dipped in honey. One moment I was reading a report, the next I was texting James. Two bags of onion crisp the thick-cut ones. With honey, the good kind, kindly add sour cream to it.

When James delivered the bag I tore it open on the spot. Caleb walked in a few minutes later and reached for one crisp without thinking.

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