Cree didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Still choked up, she couldn’t say anything and risk bursting into tears.
“Of course you weren’t,” he continued with a humorless laugh. “Dammit, Cree! You should’ve told me we were having a baby!” he roared and pounded on the counter. “I deserved to know that I was going to be a father. No matter how things turned out, I should’ve known!”
The hurt in his words was her undoing as a few more tears slipped through, but she batted them away. He was right, he had deserved to know, but it didn’t matter because the baby hadn’t survived.
She finally looked up and met his angry, teary eyes. “I wanted our baby more than I have ever wanted anything in my life,” she ground out, anger and hurt warring inside of her. “I had already lost you, and losing our child nearly killed me.”
That was an understatement. With all that had been going on in her life at the time, she had fallen into a deep depression that she thought she’d never get from under. It had seemed her whole world was crumbling around her, and if it hadn’t been for Essence, she wasn’t sure where she’d be right now. Her sister had been her rock, listening to her, wiping her tears, and making sure she didn’t totally lose herself to grief. Cree owed her so much.
Cree wiped her eyes and cheeks with the heel of her hand. “I always knew I’d want kids one day. When I found out I was pregnant, it gave me hope that my life wasn’t completely a mess. I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was eight weeks, and I’d been shocked. I had also been in denial since we were careful with birth control, but there’d been so much going on. Days were running into each other. They were a blur, and I lost track of many of them.
“But Tristan, I did plan on telling you about the baby. I just hadn’t decided on when or how. You were heading to Philly, and I was… Well, I’d been trying to come to grips with… everything, especially keeping my business afloat.” She shook her head. Those years seemed like a lifetime ago, while also feeling as if she had experienced everything yesterday. “After I lost the baby…”
“God, Cree,” Tristan started, but stopped and ran his large hands down his face.
He had decreased the distance between them, but he was still out of reach, which was probably good. If he came any closer or touched her, she’d probably fall apart. As it was, she was barely hanging on.
“I couldn’t tell you afterwards because I blamed you for everything. I know it wasn’t fair, but I blamed you for betraying me by signing with Ralph. I blamed you for putting my sports agency at risk, and I blamed you for every stress in my life. Which I figured caused the miscarriage. For the longest time, I blamed you for me losing our child.”
Tristan made a sound that was a cross between a sob and a growl, and he turned his back to her. With his hands resting on top of his head, he moved away from the counter and went to the opening of the kitchen before stopping abruptly.
With his back to her, he said, “I am so sorry, Cree. I never meant to hurt you,” he choked out. “God knows I never meant for any of this to happen. You were my everything!”
Cree’s heart cracked at his emotion-filled words, and she started to tell him that she was just as much at fault, but he continued.
“I honestly thought by signing with Ralph that I was doing what was best for us… for the family I wanted to build with you. With the large contracts he was known for getting his clients, I knew if he could do the same for us, we’d be set for life. I never thought—”
“You never thought I’d react before thinking. You never thought I would toss you out of the apartment before giving you a chance to explain your reasoning,” Cree finished for him, though that probably wasn’t what he was going to say. Tristan didn’t blame her for their breakup. He never blamed her, but deep down, she had always known she’d been the one at fault. Sure, he shouldn’t have made such an important decision without talking to her first, but ultimately, she was the one who had ended their relationship.
“I’ll never be able to forgive myself for destroying what we had,” he said as if not hearing what she’d said, and then he rushed toward the stairs.
“Tristan, wait!”
Cree went after him, but he had already made it to the top of the landing and didn’t look back.
She cursed under her breath. “What have I done?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tristan stumbled into Cree’s bedroom, unsure of how he made it up the stairs in one piece. His body was moving on its own accord as he walked around in circles in her space, aimlessly looking for something but really not seeing anything.
A baby.
Cree had been pregnant.
He’d been a dad.
Miscarriage.
As the words flowed through his brain on a loop, Tristan sank deeper into some type of emotional dark abyss, struggling to pull himself together. His head swam. His hands shook. His heart pounded like a jackhammer.
He rubbed his chest as if that would help settle the unsteadiness he was feeling. “Shoes. I need my shoes,” he mumbled, looking around the room until he found them sticking from under the bed.
He grabbed them, then started to sit on the edge of the bed but missed and almost landed on the floor until he caught himself.
Okay. Just breathe. In for four. Out for four.
He did that a few times until he felt he had regained some of his control.
