Page 91 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

“They came and ate, then they headed to the yard, but…I stayed behind.”

Killian doesn’t offer anything else, just keeps watching me, as if he hopes my memory will decide to come back suddenly so he won’t have to continue coming clean.

“Why?”

He releases a little mirthless laugh. His eyes heat again, that trepidation melting away into a burning desire I feel through every inch of my body. “I needed to get you alone again. Give you one more kiss. I wanted to feel you pressed up against me and under me before I left for the day…”

My heart aches at the sincerity of his words. “And?”

His Adam’s apple bobs again as he gulps, then takes a few chugs of his beer.

Liquid courage, I guess, for whatever he has to tell me.

I tighten my grip on the blanket wrapped around me, burrowing deeper in it, cocooning myself in, and protecting myself from what he’s about to say.

“You stared up at me after we kissed, and you said that by this time next year we could have a fifth mouth to feed at the table, and it was like a bomb went off in my head.”

My chest tightens, the words ringing in my head. “I said what?”

His gaze cuts to mine. “You’d spent the whole festival playing with Jenny and her kids, remember?”

I nod. “Yeah, we sat together for the parade while Raven was busy covering the festival.”

Jenny Bellman has the cutest kids in town, and they’re always a handful. She needed the help while her husband was busy running the smoker in the food tent.

“Well, apparently, it gave you baby fever because that morning you wouldn’t stop talking about how we should start trying, even before the wedding.” Acid churns in my stomach as he continues, “And I don’t know how to explain it, but I saw this flash…”

“Of what?”

Killian hesitates for a second, afraid to reveal what he saw. “Of a beautiful, tiny version of you…”

Tears burn in my eyes, blurring his face.

His voice wavers slightly. “Of our daughter screaming and crying and me not knowing how to make anything better…”

My chest aches, as if a vise is closing around it, restricting my breathing.

Each breath gets harder to drag in.

“Of not knowing how the hell to be a father and failing miserably at it because I never had one.”

A hot tear slides down my cheek.

“I had this vision of the kind of life she deserved, the kind of father she needed that I couldn’t be, all the things that I couldn’t provide, and…I don’t know, I panicked.”

The pain in his admission slices through my chest, and I swallow through the emotion choking me. I swipe at the tears, trying to see him through them. “You don’t panic, Killian McBride.”

His jaw sets hard as he stares at me. “I did.”

“But we had discussed having kids before…”

He nods slowly. “In the future. Somewhere far down the line that wasn’t immediate. We weren’t even married yet, and…I thought everything was going to change. You wanted a baby”—he takes a long inhalation—“and you’d see what a shitty father I was.” His icy gaze holds mine. “And I’d lose you.” Killian shakes his head. “Saying it out loud now sounds fucking absurd, but at the time, it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe, the thought that giving you what you wanted would mean the end of us. And I pulled out of your arms…”

Tears flow freely down my cheeks now, a tidal wave brought on by the panic I can still feel in his words.

And the terror I see in his eyes.

He’s holding something back.