"I saw the file," I continued. "The D&C. The pregnancy. And then I drove to Metropolitan and found Cathy."
Her hands started to shake and her whole body was trembling. Each second that passed, I could see walls crumble.
"She told me everything." My voice broke on the words.
"Cassian—"
"You were pregnant with our baby. And you lost it alone in a hospital bed while I was in surgery, and you never said a word. Not when I came home that night. Not in the weeks that followed. Not during the divorce or the five years after. You just carried it. Alone. Like it was something you had to survive by yourself."
"I was going to tell you,” she mumbled, tears streaming down her face. "I was trying to find the right moment, but we were fighting so much and I didn't know how?—"
"How to what? Trust me? Let me be there for you?"
"Yes!" The word exploded out of her. "I didn't know how to tell you I was pregnant when I wasn't even sure you wanted to stay married to me. I didn't know how to ask you to be happy about a baby when everything between us was falling apart."
"So you said nothing.”
"You were saving someone's life." Her voice cracked. "There was a patient on your table who needed you. I checked the surgical schedule. A gunshot wound and multiple organ damage. You were the only one who could save him."
"I would have left." I stepped closer, my own tears falling unchecked. "If you had called me, if you had asked, I would have walked out of that OR and come to you. You were my wife. That was our child. Nothing was more important than that."
"I didn't believe that." She sobbed, the sound torn from somewhere deep inside her. "I didn't believe I was more important than your work, because I never put you above mine. How could I expect something I wasn't willing to give?"
"By asking. By trusting me enough to let me make that choice!”
"I was scared!" The words ripped out of her. "I was terrified that you would stay out of guilt. That we would have the baby and you would resent me for trapping you. That I would become my mother, giving up everything for a family and spending the rest of my life looking out windows, wondering what I'd lost."
"So instead you lost everything alone. The baby. The marriage. Me." I grabbed her hands, holding on like she might disappear if I let go. "Do you have any idea what it would have meant to me? To grieve with you? To hold you in that moment instead of finding out five years later that I failed you when you needed me most?"
"You didn't fail me." Her face was a mess of tears, her voice barely audible. "I failed you. I failed us. I made a choice that wasn't mine to make alone, and I have regretted it every single day since."
I looked at her. I'd loved her for seven years, married for four, mourned for five. She had been so afraid of needing me that she'd chosen to shatter alone rather than let me catch her.
I dropped to my knees.
The tile was cold beneath me, but I didn't care. I didn't care about the people stopping to stare or the whispers starting to spread or anything except the woman standing in front of me with five years of grief finally breaking through.
"Cassian, what are you?—"
"I love you," I confessed, my words came out wrecked, desperate, and torn. "I have loved you every single day since I met you. Through the fighting and the silence and the divorce and the five years of pretending I'd moved on. I have carried you inside me like something I couldn't cut out no matter how hard I tried."
"Cassian—"
"I thought losing you was the price I had to pay for wanting too much. For not being enough. For choosing work when I should have chosen you." I gripped her hands tighter, my whole body shaking. "But I didn't lose you because we stopped loving each other. I lost you because we were both so terrified of being hurt that we forgot how to hold on."
Calla was staring at me, tears pouring down her face, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
"I'm not scared anymore," I said. "I'm terrified, but I'm not letting that stop me. Not this time. Not ever again."
I brought her hands to my chest, pressing them against my heart. "I'm not asking you to be perfect. I'm not asking you to never be afraid. I'm asking you to stop carrying everything alone. To trust me with the broken pieces and let me love you the way I should have loved you five years ago."
"What if I hurt you again?"
"You will. And I'll hurt you. That's what happens when two broken people try to build something whole." I looked up at her, everything I felt laid bare on my face. "But I would rather spend the rest of my life being hurt by you than spend another day pretending I don't need you."
She pulled her hands free.
For one terrible moment, I thought she was going to walk away. But she dropped to her knees in front of me.
