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Anger hit. Betrayal followed. Nash scrubbed a hand down his face, feeling as if he’d been blindsided. “So youleft?You thought that was the fucking answer?”

For two years, she’d let him believe she hadn’t cared enough about him to even say goodbye. He shook with that rage, mentally unleashing a primal scream that plowed over his shock and ricocheted through his body.

“What the hell?” he shouted. “Did you think I was going to run out on you?”

She recoiled. “No. I-I don’t know. I didn’t… You were having fun. That’s what we’d agreed to. And…and we had rules. No emotions, no commitments. No future, no kids. I was already afraid to tell you that I’d caught feelings, but I was even more terrified to let you go. The positive pregnancy test… It almost killed me. I couldn’t risk seeing dread or rejection in your eyes. I didn’t want to give up that baby. So I panicked. And moved to California. I planned to raise the baby alone. I wasn’t ever going to burden you or trap you?—”

“Or even tell me?” Jesus, had she really thought he’d want nothing to do with his own child?

“Your face…” Her tears fell in earnest. “I’m so sorry. I was sure you d-didn’t want… And I was afraid. I spent that whole weekend trying to think and find the right words and…”

Her sobs swallowed the rest of her speech. Nash hurtled from the bed and stared in disbelief out the window, blocking out her obvious agony. He hated the decision she’d made to leave him. Part of him was fucking furious.

But as lightning flashed, illuminating his own haunted reflection, his rage collided with her crying—broken, wounded sounds that spoke of years of guilt and grief.

The storm inside him raged. She’d stolen his choice, denied him the right to know his own child existed. She had made assumptions about what he’d want, about who he was.

Yet she’d carried their baby alone, terrified and convinced he wouldn’t want either of them. The thought of her going through morning sickness, doctors’ appointments, feeling their child move—all while believing she had to hide it from him—squeezed his chest until he could barely breathe. He’d give anything to go back in time, swallow his careless words about not wanting a family, and show her that she meant everything to him.

But he couldn’t.

Thunder crashed outside as the warring emotions crashed inside him. He could hold onto his anger, let it fester between them like poison. Or he could choose to understand her fear, to share her grief, to heal together. The sound of her muffled sobs made the choice clear. Whatever mistakes she’d made, she had paid for them a thousand times over in tears and regret.

He turned back to the bed where she lay curled into herself, shaking with the force of her torment. His fury drained away, replaced by an overwhelming need to understand, to protect her, and to ensure she never felt alone again.

“Shh.” He pulled her closer and stroked her hair. “Deep breaths. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Where’s the baby, Hais?”

Her sobs came even harder. “Nash…”

He didn’t want to cause her any more anguish, but… “I need to know.”

“Twenty-two weeks along, I was in a car accident.” Her voice cracked, leaving behind an anguished whisper that twisted his heart. “They rushed me to the ER, but it…it was too late. Placental abruption. I miscarried.” She sobbed so hard, she stopped breathing except to gasp out, “I. Lost. Our baby.”

Pain hit like she’d shoved a blade through his chest. He couldn’t breathe.

His baby.Theirbaby. Gone.

“They tried so hard. Ten fingers. Ten toes. He was…beautiful.” Her voice squeaked between sobs. “But they couldn’t save him. I held him, alone in my hospital room, as he took his last breath.”

Nash’s heart felt like it was being ripped in two. His crushing grief cut deep, threatening to undo him. His eyes burned as he pictured Haisley pregnant with his child, their son growing inside her. The devastating loss she’d endured alone. He didn’t know how to process the fact that he’d almost been a father…and he might never have known.

And now his son was gone.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered and curled onto her side, into a ball, away from him. “So sorry. I… God, you have no idea.”

Her heartfelt tears wrenched everything inside him. She’d hurt him. Stolen from them. But she’d suffered so much, carrying his child and grieving its loss, broken and lost and completely alone.

He caressed her taut back and tried to roll her close, into his arms. Some part of him still wanted to rail at her, but what would that do? She needed his comfort, and he needed to give it to her. “God, Hais. You should have told me.”

“I know.” Her voice sounded small and pitiful, like she was kicking herself black-and-blue.

Fuck, she probably thought he was blaming her, too.

He lifted her stiff, resistant body onto his lap and curled her against his chest. “Baby, I would never have abandoned you. I would have been there every step of the way.”

He could picture it now—the life he’d never had a chance to fight for. Haisley with a swell beneath her dress, his hand resting there, feeling the first tiny kicks. Their baby’s first breath. The baby’s first cries. And then…nothing. Just an empty space where something precious should have been.

The loss fucking decimated him