“Start from the beginning. I’ve gotta hear this.”
I hesitated, but finally pushed out a breath, and told Carter what happened the evening Patience first told me she was pregnant.
“She hasn’t really spoken to me in the last two weeks.”
“I bet,” Carter stated, shaking his head as if he agreed with my wife.
“She can’t have this baby. All she needs to do is understand the possible consequences and why she cannot have this cannot happen. I am more than open to adoption. I’ve made that—”
“Adoption?” He pulled a face, frowning at me over the forkful of food he’d brought halfway to his mouth. His blue eyes, just like Mother’s, narrowed in the same way hers did when she gave me one of her disapproving expressions.
I didn’t get those looks too often, but when I did I had to avert my eyes. But I refused to turn away from Carter. I wasn’t in the wrong here.
“Aaron, you just asked … no, excuse me, youdemandedthat your wife get an abortion. Can you take a second to pause and think about how that made her feel?”
I rolled my eyes up toward the ceiling. “I know she was upset.”
“Upset? Upset?”
I lowered my gaze when I heard his fork clink against the porcelain dish in front of him.
“The kids spill their juice on a white sofa, expect your wife to be upset. You come home an hour late to a romantic dinner she had planned, expect her to be a little upset. You come too quick and she doesn’t get off—”
“She always gets off first,” I interrupted sternly.
Carter rolled his eyes. “You know what the fuck I mean. When you demand that yourwife,whom you have four kids with already, get an abortion—not because you can’t adequately take care of the child in some way but because you’re scared of what might happen, you need to expect she’ll be way passedupset.”
“She almost died!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the table. I ignored the onlookers who I could see out of my peripheral looking our way.
Carter, however, wasn’t disturbed in the least. My anger rarely bothered him.
“Get pissed all you want, but just know, you fucked up.” He shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe you,” he said before stick a forkful of food in his mouth.
We were silent for a few minutes as we both ate. I didn’t even taste the steamed red snapper and sautéed vegetables I’d ordered. At that point, I was just eating for sustenance, having not eaten since the night before. I had all types of tension coursing through my body. I hadn’t touched my wife in two weeks. The longest we’d ever gone since the twins were born and she’d been cleared after the six week check up. I was horny, agitated, and though I loathed to admit it, scared shitless.
“Did you even stop once to consider she might be scared?”
My eye rose to meet Carter’s as he stared at me.
I sat back in my wooden chair, knowing he had more to say.
“Have you? I mean, yes, you were there. You walked into the hospital room to find her being worked on by nurses and doctors. I’m sure that was terrifying. I couldn’t even ima—” His voice broke off as he shook his head. “But Patience was the one who went through it. She was the one who bled out minutes after delivering her two children. Did you once stop to ask her how she felt about being pregnant?”
I opened my mouth to respond but no words came out. Clamping my mouth shut, I wiped my lips with the linen napkin that had sat in my lap.
I shrugged off Carter’s words. “After we brought Thiers and Andreas home, she agreed that we were done having children. We’d consider adoption in the future but her getting pregnant wasn’t an option.”
“I’m sure this was right after she got out of the hospital and you did most of the talking in that conversation.”
My scowl deepened as I narrowed my eyes on Carter. “I didn’t force her to agree.”
“You probably didn’t.” He tilted his head, conceding that point. “I’m sure if Patience didn’t want that she would have made her disagreement vocal enough. But it’s what? A year later, and here she is pregnant. So what changed?”
“Nothing. She simply forgot to take her birth control.”
Carter grunted. “So you made the decision to not have anymore kids but you left the birth control up to her?”
“She agreed, asshole. And I didn’t leave it up to her the way you’re implying. She chose to get on the pill.”
