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Afterwards, we buy ice creams—triple chocolate for me and raspberry ripple for Owen—and return to the bench.
I’m battling gravity and the heat as I try to eat my ice cream before it melts, but I manage to finish it, and I’m just wiping my hands on a napkin when Owen asks me a question.
“Last Friday, before I had to leave, you spoke to me about something.”
I smooth my lips together, wishing I hadn’t eaten my ice cream so fast because I could definitely have avoided this conversation.
“Yeah… that.”
“Did you seriously think I was dying?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. It was just something you said about not being able to give a woman the life they deserve, and then Romana said you’d lost hope when Pippa left you and haven’t had any in a long time, and you know how my brain works. It can’t just sit still. You can’t feed it information like that and expect it not to run wild.”
I shrug helplessly.
“Take your very fictional boyfriend, for instance, who ended up being an old guy who’d been banned from shops for peeing on the floor.”
“How could I forget?” Owen smirks.
“I’m sorry for trying to work you out. I didn’t mean to,” I say solemnly.
A slight breeze whips off the sea and onto my shoulders. The sun’s starting to make a lazy descent to the west, casting the sky in a beautiful pink hue.
“I’m sorry,” Owen says at last. “I shouldn’t have put you in a position where you had to guess. I should’ve been honest with you from the start.”
I resist the urge to place my hand on his knee. “I told you, you don’t need to share anything with me if you don’t feel comfortable.”
“And I didn’t, at first, but now….” He trails off, and I brace myself, as I know enough about people to feel when someone is about to open up.
It must be so hard for him to let someone in, but here he is, and I’m ready for whatever he’s going to tell me.
“Pippa and I met while I was working at Hobart’s. She’d come to the showroom looking for a kitchen and left with a date. We got on well. She was very serious, but she knew what she wanted from life, and there wasn’t anything that’d stop her from getting what she wanted. She decided she wanted me, and I was happy with that.”
He inhales and stares at the horizon before continuing.
“We were together for a few years, and of course, the topic of starting a family came up. Pippa was adamant that she wanted the huge wedding first, so I popped the question, and the wedding happened.
“It was her day. I didn’t get much of a say in anything, but it didn’t matter because all I wanted to do was make her happy. I loved her—really loved her—and she loved me. I know she did, but maybe just not enough.”
He glances down at his hands, and my heart aches.
“Anyway, after the wedding, she wanted to try for a baby as it was all she’d ever wanted. I was a bit unsure, but I thought that some parents are a bit unsure, and maybe some people do feel a little nervous about the whole thing, but again, I just wanted Pippa to be happy, and I knew a baby would make her happy. But after a few years of trying, she still wasn’t pregnant.”
Owen’s eyes narrow, and I want to put my arm around him. I stop myself as he looks so still, so focused on trying to get these words out. The last thing I want to do is interrupt him.
“It killed me to watch her decline, obsess, stress, and cry over the one thing she wanted that we couldn’t seem to achieve. Finally, we sought medical help. Pippa was the one who wanted answers. I was scared to death, as deep down, I think I knew.”
Keeping my body still, I brace myself for what’s to come, trying to quiet my thumping pulse as I begin to see where this is heading.
“We had all the tests done. I spent months in small rooms giving samples in little bloody jars and being poked and prodded and examined. Pippa received the same attention, question after question, test after test, until finally they called us in to tell us what I already knew.”
His head drops to his chest, as if the hurt of that day is straddling his back. I can’t breathe, can’t move because of how painful this appears for him.
He looks back out over the sea as if he’s confessing to the ocean, hoping the waves will wash it all away. “It was me. I was the problem. I was the one stopping us from getting pregnant.”
He swallows hard as if digesting this news again for the very first time, and my heart cracks.
“The consultant talked about other options, but I knew Pippa wasn’t even listening. She’d gone rigid, her whole body frozen.
