She had every reason to think that.

“If you don’t go with me, there’s no point staying together.”

He pictured her in London, alone and scared, not even sure what to tell the father of her child. He stood and paced around the room. He opened his mouth, but he had no clue how to respond. He was a fish out of water, gasping for air. Everything in his life had come easily to him. He had never suffered bad news. He had never lost someone he loved. But now, he felt the sting of devastation the first time in his life. He was experiencing all sorts of things that had become far too normal for Shannon. Unlike her, he had no roadmap to navigate this new terrain.

“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered.

“It’s okay. You don’t have say the perfect thing,” she said softly. She rose, too, and clasped his hands in hers, consoling him.

He couldn’t let her. Not when he’d failed her abysmally. If he hadn’t backed her into a corner, they’d have stayed together and he could have properly cared for her. He pushed her hands away. He didn’t know how to touch her. He didn’t deserve her affection. So he said the one thing he could manage. “I’m sorry I looked through your things.”

She flashed a small smile, absolving him. “I wish you hadn’t, because I was planning on telling you tonight. But it’s okay, and now you know. I was going to tell you as soon as I came back from feeding the cat.”

In a flash, his guilt vanished because that sounded awfully convenient. He arched an eyebrow in a question and shoved all his hurt on her. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

She stepped back. “I only started seeing you again two weeks ago. It’s not really the sort of thing you say at a first meeting. ‘Sorry I haven’t seen you in ten years, but hey, thought you might like to know it turned out I was pregnant when you left.’”

“That’s a start,” he said, even though those words felt all wrong, out of sync.

“Brent, that’s not a start. That’s not how you tell someone something hard.”

“Okay fine, since you’re such an expert. How about over dinner then at the Cromwell?”

Her eyes bugged out. “We were just starting to get to know each other again. I had no idea what we were going to become.”

“Then how about at one of our lunches?” he tossed back, simply throwing things at her, barely knowing where they would land, or how much they would hurt. All he knew was that everything inside him ached terribly, and now that he’d recovered the power of speech, he was using words as missiles lobbed at the nearest target—the woman he loved.

“That hardly seemed to be the time or place either. But since you’re reviewing chapter and verse and naming all the times I saw you, you should know that I actually did plan to tell you on Saturday night when we went out to Alvin Ailey.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, as if he’d caught her red-handed.

“Seriously? You’re seriously asking me? You left town that night. You sprang it on me after the show that you were leaving town in an hour. That’s why,” she said, parking her hands on her hips.

His eyes flared with anger. “Are we going to go over this again, Shannon?” He was sick and tired of having every mistake he’d ever made boomeranged back at him. “Can you ever fucking give me break?”

She stared at him, jutting out her chin. “Excuse me. This isn’t about cutting you a break. I was just saying that when you’re getting on a plane would have been a really shitty time to tell you. Think about it. Is that honestly when you wish I’d have tapped you on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, I know you’re off to New York for a really important business meeting, but I’ve been meaning to tell you I had your baby and lost your baby. Have a nice flight.’ Is it?”

She had a point, but he could barely see it just then. He was filled with anger, brimming with self-loathing. He hardly knew what to do with all this horribleness, so he erected more walls. “This whole time you’ve been asking me to be honest with you. And I was. I was honest about everything,” he said, shaking a finger at her. “And you have never been able to honest with me. It’s like pulling teeth to get you to tell me anything.”

“That is bullshit,” she said, her voice breaking with tears and anger. “And you know that. I am more open with you than anyone in my entire life. You just expect it from day one. And I’m so sorry I’m less than perfect at finding the best moment to tell you about the tragic fucking circumstances that have trailed behind me.”

He tossed his hands in the air and huffed. “There you go again. It’s always about you. It’s always about the shit you’ve been through.”

A fresh stream of tears rained down her cheeks. “This is what I meant the other night on the phone. That you’re going to resent me, and you already are.” She swiped her hand across her cheeks, wiping away the tears. They seemed to be falling faster now, relentlessly, streaking down her face. “I guess it’s nice not to have to deal with shit, isn’t it? But maybe if you could think about it, you’d realize it wasn’t so easy to tell you on our first date in college that my mother was in prison. That she sent me letters that ripped me to pieces. That prison made her go insane.

“And I’m very sorry that I didn’t tell you at lunch last week that I had a child, and lost a child. And that I miss him terribly and I imagine what he was like, and if he would have been like you. If he’d have had the best parts of you, like your heart and your humor, and the way you love. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you that right away. And I’m sorry that one of the reasons I wished he was alive is that I would have had a part of you then. I’m sorry I didn’t have the words to tell you all of that so eloquently at lunch, or in the photo booth, or the elevator, or at your club. And I’m sorry I’m doing a shitty job now. Most of all, I’m sorry that you’re finding it in you to belittle the fact that you’ve had a perfect life and mine has been problematic.” Every single word she said cut him to the bone. “But I guess now you know how it feels to lose something. It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”

He nodded and clamped his lips shut. He swallowed, and the lump in his throat was like a jagged rock. It cut him to pieces, and he had no clue what he’d say if he spoke again. Words had killed them last time. He’d said the wrong things ten years ago, and he was treading dangerously close to doing it again with the cruel ones he was firing off at her now. He couldn’t chance it happening a second time. He walked to the kitchen, picked up his bag, and headed to the door.

She followed him, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. Devastation was written in her eyes. “Are you leaving me?”

He took her hand, peeled it off him, then cupped her shoulders. He ached to swipe his thumb across her cheek, to tell her everything would be okay. But he couldn’t because he was feeling things he’d never felt before—like his skin had been sliced open. He had no training in how to stem the bleeding.

“No. I’m not walking away,” he said, taking his time with each word. “But I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me, and I'm pissed that you went through something awful and I couldn’t be there for you. And I’m pissed at myself for not having the right words to say. I’m leaving, because I love you, and because I don’t want say another wrong thing. I need to go, Shannon. I really need to go and have some time to deal with this. You’ve had ten years to deal with it. I’ve known for ten minutes.”

He opened the door, and left.

* * *

She collapsed, falling onto the floor, tears spilling into her lap. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to hurt more than she had before.

But he’d punctured a hole in her heart, and that damn organ had already been bruised too many times.

He might not call it walking away, but hell if she could tell the difference between now and the last time he’d done it.