CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Yes. But why were you going through my things?” she asked again as she stood in the doorway. She wasn’t sure she could move.

Maybe he couldn’t either. He didn’t stray from the bed as he shrugged listlessly. “There’s no good answer, Shan. I saw the sunflower on the cover, and it matched the one in your picture frame.”

“So you went through a photo book that you found in my nightstand because it matched one in my kitchen?” she asked, taking the time to process each action he’d taken.

“It was open,” he said, his voice barren.

Her skin prickled with fear at the sound. With nerves too, because she was stumbling blindly now. She’d wanted to tell him on her own terms. Not like this. Never like this.

She shook her head, as if she could erase the last five minutes. Start over—begin at the beginning. Sit down, talk, share the whole sad story, and then feed the cat. She had never wanted him to discover the truth on his own. A part of her was mad as hell that he’d gone through her book, and a part of her was deeply ashamed at what he’d found—the evidence of all she’d withheld.

A new emotion bubbled up inside her, too. Terror. She was terrified he’d walk away.

“Were you pregnant ten years ago?”

No point lying. No point hiding. “I was,” she said with a nod.

“When?” he asked in a wobbly voice, as if every word was new and foreign.

“I found out two weeks after you left.”

“Where is the...” he said, letting his voice trail off.

Her heart cratered, beating a drumbeat of hurt and sadness.

Oh, this was the worst. This was harder than she’d ever imagined. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to get the awful words out, but being forced to say them tasted worse. Bitter and acrid to the tongue. She drew a deep breath, and laid them out, one by one, in a row of awfulness. “I was pregnant. It lasted for twenty weeks. My water broke and I went into labor in London, and the baby was born too early. He didn’t live.”

“He?” Brent asked hoarsely. It sounded as if he’d been punched.

She had never seen him like this, white as snow, shocked to the bone. “Yes. He.”

Time crawled painfully to the next minute, then the next, and then the next. Soon, he managed to string more words together. “Was. He. Mine?”

Something inside her snapped, like an electric wire sliced to the ground from high above. “Yes. How the hell can you ask that question?”

He held his hands out wide. “How the hell can I ask? Because you just told me you were pregnant. It’s normal to ask.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, with some kind of dangerous cocktail of anger, shame and hurt mixing up inside her. “That’s not a normal question. It’s an insulting question.”

He stood up from the bed, planted his feet wide. She knew that stance; it meant he was angry. Fear clutched at her heart, and she flailed for the right next words. She tried mightily to turn the knob inside her chest from boil to simmer. “Yes. The baby was yours.”

Brent wobbled. The world seemed to sway for him. He crumpled onto the bed. She rushed over and wrapped her arms around him. Thankfully, he didn’t shrug her off. In the smallest voice, he croaked out, “What happened? When did you know?”

She squeezed his shoulder, and ran a hand through his soft hair. “I had no idea when we split up,” she said immediately, because she couldn’t bear for him to even think she might have known then. “But two weeks later I was late, so I took a pregnancy test and then several more. I didn’t say a word to anyone at first because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I was going to keep the baby, or give up the baby,” she said, forcing her voice to stay even so she wouldn’t sob her way through the conversation. That was no small feat. As she told the story, tears fell anyway. “I knew if I told you that you would give up your job and come rushing to my side.”

He grabbed her hand, gripping tightly as he looked her in the eyes. His were full of fierce determination. “I would have. You know that I would have been there for you in a heartbeat.”

“I know, and that’s exactly why I didn’t try to tell you right away. If you had come rushing back to me for this reason, you would have hated me. You would have resented me. You loved your work, and your career, and I didn’t want to be second choice or a forced first one. And I didn’t want it to affect your work.”

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair to say at all. You don’t know how it would have affected me. You don’t know it would have affected me negatively. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Nothing made a difference,” she said, heavily. “The baby is gone. It’s better that I never told you because it wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

“No, it’s not better,” he said, his voice rising. “I hate that you went through it all alone, without me.”

“I tried to call you a few times. I called you before I even went to London. Your number was disconnected. I didn’t think you even wanted to hear from me.”

“Of course I wanted to hear from you.”

“But I didn’t have your number.”

“I had to change phone services when I moved. It was different then. No one kept their phone numbers.”

“Well, that’s exactly why I didn’t have it. I had to have my brother track down your new number. And I called you when I went into labor.”

His face turned blank again. He didn’t move. A memory seemed to flick past his eyes. He stared at the wall for several seconds. She whispered his name to draw his attention. He turned away from whatever unseen point he was focusing on and looked at her. Recognition dawned in his eyes as he swirled his finger in a circle. “You. This. The baby. I thought you had to have been the unknown call from London that night.”

She nodded, letting the tears fall. “I called you in the taxi on the way to the hospital. My water had broken. I was losing the baby already. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He lowered his head into his hands, pressing his fingertips hard against his eyes. “I was at work on the show,” he said, recounting the night. “I saw a missed call from an unknown number in London. I had no way to reach you.”

“There was nothing to say after that point. The baby was gone. We can’t change the fact that my body failed. There is nothing that will change that. Even if we had been together, the fate would have been the same. The baby was never going to survive. The decision was made by Mother Nature.”

“That’s not true.” He shook his head over and over, repeating the same words. “That’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true.”

Her heart lurched towards him, and all her instincts said to comfort him. Because the man was in denial. “Brent, nothing would have changed,” she said softly.

He smacked his fist into the bed covers. “I would have wanted to know. No matter what. I hate that you went through this alone. I wanted to be there for you, and you didn’t give me the chance.”

She choked back the tears. “I wanted that, too. But how was I to know what you wanted? You left. It was over. You made your choice. You chose work over me. You made it clear I had to go with you or we were through. Why would you expect me to think you wanted to be there for me?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Besides, by the time this happened we’d been apart for four months. Even after it happened, what was I going to say that would have changed a thing? You were gone.”

* * *

He didn’t see it that way.

Because he’d just learned he was a bigger schmuck. He had done something far worse than walk away from the love of his life. Turns out, he’d abandoned the mother of his child. Thanks to his epic last words, she’d thought he wouldn’t have wanted to be by her side.