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.

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.