I lean over. For years, that night has haunted me. Finding my boyfriend cheating on me a short time after losing my virginity to him hurt so deep that the memory always hit hard—especially when I had Sophie every day to remind me.
“We need to talk about this.”
I nod. “I know. Just give me a minute.”
Patrick slips his arm around my shoulders.
“I guess communication’s never been a strength of ours.”He plants a kiss in my hair, but it doesn’t take away the numbness. “We’ve been so focused on the now that we keep on putting off talking about it. You must know I still have a lot of questions.”
I take a deep breath and sit up. “I’m sure you do. You were my first real boyfriend. I was a teenage girl and my heart was broken.”
He raises his hand to my cheek. “You broke my heart when you shut me out.”
Tears roll down my face. “We’re such a mess, aren’t we? I keep thinking about what my life—our life would have been if we’d talked.”
He takes a sip of his drink. “I ran out of time. Mum and Dad practically had to drag me away when we moved. And when I couldn’t get in touch, I knew I had to move on.”
“If we hadn’t had the accident. If I’d let you in. I feel like my head is full of ifs.”
Patrick leans back in his seat, cradling his glass in his hand. “I get it. But I think if we dwell on the ifs, that’ll drive us insane.”
“I owe you a huge apology.”
He shakes his head, leaning forward again and placing his drink on the table. “I owe you one. That party was such a dumb idea in the first place. I didn’t care about saying goodbye to all those people—not really. I went along with it because we’d spent so long talking about it before school even ended.”
“How do we even start to move forward?”
Patrick reaches for my hand. “You were all that mattered back then. I was so angry with myself for wasting my high school years not being with you, and then I somehowmanaged to throw away so many more. I’m not even sure after all this time that I can get to the bottom of whatever happened, but I promise you, Cassie—Inevercheated on you.”
My eyes fly open, and our gazes lock. His eyes—so much like our daughter’s—are fixed on me.
“Sophieisyours. I never planned to keep her from you—I came looking for you once.”
His brows rise. “When?”
“Not long after she was born. My pregnancy was tough. I found out about it when I was in hospital after the accident. I knew I had options but I wanted her, and Gran was behind me the whole way.”
He squeezes my fingers. “You said you had multiple surgeries.”
I nod. “I did. And there were medications they wanted to give me but couldn’t because I was pregnant. We worked through it, but I was lucky I had a high pain tolerance because there were times …” Tears prick my eyes. “Giving birth was the easy part. But I was so hormonal and miserable, still dealing with the death of my parents.”
“And you came looking for me.”
“I found you. You were walking down the road from uni, and you were with another woman. Seeing you hurt me so much—it took me back to the party. So I turned around and came home.”
He lets out a sigh. “I think I saw you. There was one day … but I wasn’t fast enough and then the car was gone, and I thought maybe it was just wishful thinking.”
Pulling away from him, I bury my face in my hands. So many moments—lost opportunities.
“Cassie. Come here.” He tugs me into his arms.
“I wanted to tell you about Sophie. But I thought you’d moved on.”
“I've seen pregnancy hormones in action. I know they mess you up. But you could have contacted me at any time. It’s been years.”
My heart sinks. “I know. The longer it got, the harder it got. I thought about it a lot over the years, but I knew I’d left it too long and Mark was so good with her. I’m not sure any excuse is enough.”
Patrick places a kiss in my hair. “You asked how we move forward? We tell Sophie the truth.”
