I try to cover my face, but he takes my hands in his larger palms and holds them, gently massaging my wrists with his thumbs. “What are you talking about?” he asks softly, as if I’m fragile china that might crack with the slightest pressure. “What do you think you did that could make me hate you?”
Tears fill my eyes. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was protecting you.” In some part of my brain, I know I’m saying too much. But I’ve pushed past caution, I can’t stop. “I-I thought if I could buy more time, I could figure out what to do.”
“Do about what?”
“I was at your house that night because I was finally going to tell you. I was so scared, but I knew you’d pull me in your arms and make everything okay, the way you always did. But when I saw you…I thought you and Victor had betrayed me. I thought you didn’t love me anymore. I couldn’t tell you…I couldn’t tell my foster parents. Papa T would have expected you to marry me, and you would have done it for him. But I wasn’t going to force us into a marriage for the wrong reasons. So I ran.”
MY GUT WRENCHES. THE MISSING piece of the puzzle is right in front of me with crystal, brutal clarity. The abrupt way she cut me off, avoiding me for days. Not wanting me to touch her that night outside the library. How withdrawn and jumpy she was. Telling me she needed time to figure stuff out. She wasn’t rejecting me. She was protecting me from the news she thought I wouldn’t want to hear. Not because she didn’t love me. But because she did. And I was too damn blind and self-absorbed to see it. I turned my back on her when she needed me the most.
“You werepregnant.”
Even as I say the word, I hope that she’ll deny it. But Dee’s strangled cry locks the piece in place. My legs give out, and I drop to my knees. My irresponsibility in making love to her without a condom was bad enough. But now to find out that while on the way to tell me that she was pregnant, she had caught me in a compromising position with another woman.
Christ!And that’s not even the worst of it. I look into her face, pinched with sorrow, and voice the question I’m most afraid to ask: “What happened to our baby?”
Her lips part and her lashes blink rapidly against the flow of tears. She withdraws her hands from mine and wrings them in her lap. “I was so confused,” she begins. “I didn’t know what to do. I’d found a small apartment just outside of Chicago and was working a couple of low-end jobs, waiting tables and stocking books, to afford it. I still wanted to get my degree and go to law school. I couldn’t do that with a baby. I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a child under the best of circumstances. And these were far from the best. My mother hadn’t exactly been a great role model, and with all her issues, I worried I might end up just like her. Unable to cope when I wanted so much better for my baby. I picked up the phone so many times to call Mama and Papa T. But I couldn’t face their disappointment and the questions they would ask—or the answers.”
I listen, clenching my jaw so hard the muscles throb. Images whirl through my mind of Dee living in a rundown apartment with little money. Pregnant at eighteen. Facing the most heartrending decision. All alone.
“After being given away to strangers so many times, I wasn’t sure I could have the baby and then give him or her up for adoption. I-I didn’t want to terminate my pregnancy either. But what other choice did I have?”
Gutted, I wait for my verdict, for that’s how I feel—like the guilty party about to receive his punishment. Either choice Dee made, I wouldn’t blame her for. Not when it was my crime.
“The decision weighed on me. I had anxiety attacks, daily. But through it all, I kept falling more in love.” She cradles her stomach. “There were lots of single moms out there who found a way to make it work. I was naive perhaps, but I convinced myself I could do it. Raise a child, hold down a job, and still go to college.”
“You were brave.”
“No.” She shakes her head and gulps the next words. “I-I wasn’t. I was scared. Even after I made the decision, I doubted myself every day. I really started to freak out in my fifth month. School was three weeks away…I-I had very little money. I was going to need diapers…a babysitter…medical care…the list went on and on.
“I couldn’t sleep…I was stressed all the time. One night after working a double shift, I started to have cramps…and then some spotting. I went to the hospital right away. An ultrasound confirmed there was still a…heartbeat, but they admitted me.”
I take her trembling hands in mine. “Overnight…it got worse. When the doctor checked again…there…there was no heartbeat. My… baby was gone. I lost it. I…lose everything…everything I love.”
Sobs convulse her body. I get to my feet, sit down on the couch, and scoop Dee onto my lap. Hugging her close, I absorb her grief-laden tears as if they were my own.
I not only let her down, I let down our unborn child. How would she ever forgive me for that? How would I ever forgive myself?
Tightening my arms around her, I keep my thoughts, my remorse, and my useless apologies to myself and let her cry, long and hard the way I sense she needs to. Rocking her and stroking her hair until her tears run out.
“I’ve never told that to anyone,” she says, lying spent in my arms.
“Not even Lexie and Jordyn?”
“No one.”
“That’s a heavy secret to carry for all these years.”
“Some things are too painful to share.”
How well I know that. “Talking about it helps you grieve.”
“What I’ve told you is all I can manage for now.”
There’s more?
I incline my head to see her eyes. They’re red and puffy. She looks drained. “You need some sleep.”
I rise and bring us both to our feet. Seeing Dee so wrecked and vulnerable kicks my protective response into high gear. “You take my bed and I’ll take the guest room,” I say, guiding her to the master suite and into the bathroom. She doesn’t argue.
