“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” There’s hurt in her voice. “You never once said you were struggling.”
“Because I thought they made me look weak,” I admit, and the word tastes bitter. “And I never wanted to look weak in front of you, Zalea.”
Silence stretches between us as she holds my gaze.
“When was the last one before today?” she asks carefully.
I hold her gaze. “Yesterday.”
She flinches. “And before that?”
“The day before.”
Her breath stutters and she slowly lowers herself onto the edge of the bed, keeping space between us.
“Gabriel…” Her voice cracks. “Have you been having panic attacks every day since I told you about the pregnancy?”
My jaw tightens. This is the part I could lie about to save her from the guilt she’s going to feel, but I don’t. I nod and the truth lands between us like a dropped weight. She presses a hand to her stomach like she’s been physically hit, and a broken sound escapes from her throat as tears instantly well in her eyes.
“Hey,” I say quickly, sitting up despite the lingering tremor in my chest. “Don’t cry over me, baby. I deserve this after everything I put you through.”
“No,” she says, her voice shaking. “No one deserves to experience a panic attack every single day, Gabriel. Especially not like that, not what I just saw.”
Her tears spill over, devastated, and somehow that hurts worse than the panic ever did. I reach for her slowly, giving her room to pull away if she wants to. The second my fingers brush her wrist, she collapses into me like she’s been holding herself upright by sheer will.
“Hey,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around her. “Come here.”
She buries her face in my chest, her shoulder shaking. I hold her tighter, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other rubbing slow circles into her spine like I’m trying to smooth the grief out of her.
“I’m sorry,” she chokes. “I didn’t know it would do this to you. I didn’t know?—”
“Stop.” I press a kiss into her hair. “I don’t ever want to hear you apologize for telling me the truth.”
“But you’re falling apart.”
“I was already falling apart before,” I admit quietly. “I was just ignoring it.”
She goes still in my arms and I tilt my head so my cheek rests against the crown of her head. “You carrying all the pain alonefor two years is what’s breaking me right now, not the truth. The fact that you were going through that by yourself.”
Her fingers fist into my damp shirt.
“You weren’t there,” she whispers.
I swallow hard. “I know.” But the words feel too thin for the weight of what they mean. “I ran,” I continue, forcing myself to say it out loud. “I did exactly what you were afraid I would do. Again. I asked you for time and then I disappeared. I left you in Positano like you meant nothing.”
Her grip tightens on my shirt.
“But I thought I was going to drown in it,” I admit. “The guilt. The what-ifs. I couldn’t breathe without picturing you in a hospital bed all alone.” My voice fractures. “And instead of staying and facing it with you, I ran.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes red, and lashes wet.
“I will never forgive myself,” I say, holding her gaze steady even though my chest feels like it’s caving in. “For not being there, for not noticing you were hurting, for not asking the right questions. You went through a pregnancy, a birth, and the worst kind of loss a person can experience…and I was chasing gold medals.”
My throat tightens but I don’t look away.
“I should have been there,” I whisper. “I should have held your hand in that hospital. I should have met our daughter. I should have grieved her with you instead of letting you carry all of that pain by yourself.”
A fresh tear slips down her cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb.
