I run my hands through his hair, trying to placate him. “I love you too. Shh, it’s okay. Wewillget through this,” I say through my own tears and kiss his head as he continues to sob.
We sit in a pile of broken dreams, our hearts in pieces, comforting each other for close to an hour before we have no more tears to shed.
He’s hurting.
We’re hurting.
Where do we go from here?
We willneverhave children.
Correction,Iwillneverhave children.
Colt is still perfectly capable of having his own kids. They just can’t be with me, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
He is obviously falling apart, like his whole world is ending.
Maybe I need to be the one to let him search for the life that he so desperately desires.
A fresh river of tears falls down my cheeks, and even though I know the right thing to do is to let him go, the thought of being without him causes panic to set in.
Yes, I’m selfish.
Ineedhim with me.
“Goddammit! I didn’t mean to fall apart like that. I’m struggling, you know?” He looks up at me finally, and I see thatlook in his eyes. The one that gets him into trouble. It snaps me out of any self-induced spiral I might be going through right now. This time,Ineed to be strong. This time, it’s on me.
“Colt, youdo notneed to use. Do you hear me?” I yell at him, and he nods, running his hand along my tear-stained cheek.
“Don’t worry, I wouldneverdo that to you, baby. I know I’m a mess right now, but our life means too much for me to throw it away because I’m hurting. I’m just sorry this happened to us, to you. If it weren’t for me, then you wouldn’t have been pushed onto the street in the first place. The van would have never hit you, and you wouldneverhave had a hysterectomy. This is allmyfault, Dee. I did this,” he says, trying to take the blame.
I take his head in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Colter Slade, you stop that right now! Don’t you dare sprout about ‘what ifs.’ They can’t change the fact that we’re here in this situation together. Colt, the only way to have stopped this from happening would have been for us to have never met, and I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s an option and a life Ineverwant to think about. Because a life with you in it, whether we have children or not, is a life I’d choose every. Single. Fucking time, Colt. I love the fuck out of you, and I swear to God, if you keep blaming yourself for this, then I’m going to junk punch you,” I say in all seriousness, and Colt looks at me and half-smiles.
“In my junk?” he asks, and I nod, smiling at him.
“Yup, right up in there,” I elaborate, and he chuckles, wiping some hair from my face.
“Wewillget through this together, and there are always other options we can look into. Let’s have some time for us, just be together before we start looking into any other options, yeah?” Colt asks, and I nod in agreement.
We need time to heal.
Time to fix the hole that the surrogacy has left in our hearts.
But wewillget through this.
We’ve been through so much already in our lives together.
We can’t back out now.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
DEE
“Yeah, Dee’s okay. Devastated, but okay. She took it better than I did, Johnny. I lost it.” Colt’s voice is low, gravelly, and raw as it slips through the crack in the door.
I’ve just woken up, still tucked under the covers after everything that happened earlier. The heartbreak. The weight of it all. The ache in my chest is still there, heavy and suffocating.
“I should’ve been there for her, but instead, she was the one comforting me. I’m such a fucking jerk. I don’t know how she puts up with me,” Colt murmurs.
