My breath fired through my lips, guilt clawing at my throat. At my chest. In my stomach. Somehow, I’d managed to make him feel like an asshole. For the second time today.
“No. I’m sorry. I—thank you,” I said, my voice cracking under the weight of it all.Don’t fall apart, Daisy,I coached. Not now. Not in front of him.Pull yourself together.That time, it was Mom’s voice in my mind, her calloused thumbs quickly wiping away my tears so no one else would see.Head tall. Let the tears drain back where no one will see.
When I was little, I imagined the tears running back and dripping down the inside of my spine, filling me up from the inside. I remembered wondering just how full of tears Mom was. How full I would be when I was her age.
“You really didn’t have to do this, Max, but I’m grateful,” I said slowly and drew the bag closer.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. If he were Todd, that would be a different story. Todd struggled to notice a tear unless it stained his shirt.
Reaching inside, I started pulling out the clothes. Maybe they wouldn’t even be the right size, and I’d have to return them.Who was I kidding?Anything in the vicinity of large worked right now when my body felt completely different every morning.
I pulled out whatever sat on top—a lavender shirt—and held it up in front of me. Most people would’ve been blocked from view, but not Max. He was too tall. Those warm eyes found mine over the edge of the fabric. Protective and penetrating.
A row of flowers rose up from the bottom of the shirt, the words “Little sprout coming soon”scripted in the center.
The words felt like a punch to the inside of my chest. Unexpected, and knocking the wind, and everything else, right out of me.
“I thought since you’re helping with deliveries, it was fitting?—”
My sob cut off whatever he was about to say. A sudden, ugly sob that fired from the hollow in my chest. My little sprout was coming soon, and we had no home. No nursery. And currently, no father. A whole week I’d gone without crying, and then a silly garden pun was all it took to send me careening over the edge.
I didn’t even know what I did or said or sobbed. All I knew next was Max.
“Shit, Daze,” he muttered. His curse reached me as he did, his big arms pulling me tight to his chest. I didn’t have the strength to stop him.Nor the desire.
All week, I thought I’d been paddling myself to shore. Bringing myself to something stable and steady and out of the storm. As it turned out, I was only bailing water from my sinking heart, and tonight, it got to be too much.
“I’m sorry,” Max said against the top of my head, and I only sobbed harder.
He shouldn’t be sorry. This wasn’t his fault. None of this was. Not even my tears. And yet he took it all—took them all. They soaked his shirt. They soaked his palm where it cupped my cheek. I couldn’t stop them.
“It’s all right, Daze. I’ve got you,” Max murmured over and over again, holding me, rocking me in the middle of the living room.
It wasn’t all right, though. Nothing was all right. I was alone and pregnant with only temporary solutions.Where were we going to go? What was I going to do? How was I going to do this by myself?Suddenly, all the insecurities I’d fended off for a week attacked with full force, feeding off my hormones, off my stress, off my fears. And I would’ve collapsed in on myself if it weren’t for him.
Max didn’t just hold me. The harder I sobbed, the closer he clutched me. Protected me. One arm snaked around my back, the other bent along my arm, his hand cupping the back of my neck as his fingers gently massaged the base of my scalp.
His presence rose like a wall, shielding me from the rest of the world. In this apartment. In this job. In his arms. He was giving me the space to be vulnerable and the decency to pretend he didn’t see it. With every sob, I breathed him in. Flowers and mint. With every shake, I felt the strength of his arms support me. He’d never let me shatter. With every cry, I felt the pain dissolve against the heat of his hard chest.
“It’s all going to be okay, Daze. I’ve got you,” Max repeated, his lips against the top of my head. How many times had he said those words? I’d lost count. They’d become a melody in the background, a comforting chant that steadily pushed my worries back at bay. “I’m sorry?—”
“No.” I shook my head against him, slowly tipping back. “I’m sorry, Max,” I said through a bout of hiccups. “I shouldn’t have…I didn’t mean for this.” I sniffled, looking down at the T-shirt, the flowers on it now watered with tears.
“It’s okay, Daze. I’m always here for you. Always.”
I felt my armor crawl back over my skin like icicles. All I wanted was his warmth. All I wanted was his arms around me all night, even if it was to hold me like that and nothing more.All I wanted was to confess the weight on my chest.I wasn’t sad that Todd had disappeared.
I wasn’t sad that I wasn’t married to him. I was sad because, for my daughter’s sake, I felt like I should be. It was for her sake that I’d said yes when, weeks before, I’d considered finally ending things with Todd. It was for her sake I muddled through Todd’s doubts and drinking and distance. And now, I didn’t know which version of me was worse: not being sad that herfather had abandoned us or accepting so little from a man just so she’d have more of a father than I had.
Or was it this version? The version who’d always harbored a fantasy about being with Max Hamilton? But even that had its chinks.Even Max had left me.
“Are you?” I looked up at him and asked, my voice still clogged.
Pain lanced his eyes. “Of course. How could you think?—”
“Because you disappeared too, Max. For the last almost six months,” I charged. “As soon as Todd told you about the baby, about our wedding, you got so busy that we never saw you. That you never saw him. He needed you—I needed you. Was it because—” I flinched and stepped back, shocked at how easily I’d almost brought up that night. He couldn’t know. And if by some unbelievable chance he did, he was too much of a gentleman to say anything. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be…It doesn’t matter. Todd was going to do this no matter what anyone did.”
“I am sorry, Daisy.” It wasn’t his words as much as it was his expression that ripped a new tear in my heart—like I’d just driven a knife through his.
