Page 138 of Every Silent Lie

“Like Petal’s my special friend?”

“Do you love Petal?”

“Yes.”

“Then she’s like Petal.”

The innocence of love in a child. How pure and easy it is. So different from the love between two adults, which can be so complicated and ugly. And yet the same as the love an adult can only feel for their child. Irrevocable.

My love for Dec felt easy. It even felt pure. Now, it just feels like an irreversible mess. I’ve spent three years avoiding small children, even my niece and nephew. It may have been extreme, it may have been unreasonable, but it was the only way for me. It was too triggering, and I was already running a daily gauntlet of triggers.

Which is why he didn’t tell you.

I lift the mug to my mouth with shaky hands and sip my coffee, immune to the scorching hot liquid as I struggle to swallow it down past the golf ball in my throat, my eyes welling.

“Camryn?”

My mug meets the table with a thud, my gaze moving to the doorway. Dec’s there, looking like he’s just rolled out of bed and thrown on some sweatpants and a hoodie, his hair a dishevelled mess.

And yet he’s still the most beautiful example of a man I’ve ever seen.

My lip wobbles, my heart now yelling at me, refusing to let me shut it down or build an impenetrable wall around it. Begging me to let him in. Telling me there’s a way. I shake my head and drop my eyes, my hands going between my thighs, the tears trailing my cheeks before they fall and splash on the table.

Dec’s pulling my chair around and kneeling in front of my naked body in a heartbeat, holding my face in his warm palms. But I can’t look at him, tears now splashing my naked thighs, my shoulders jerking from the force of my sobs. He curses under his breath and pulls my thighs apart, moving closer and squeezing me into his chest, hushing me quietly. The emotion pours out of my slumped form into the material of his hoodie, unstoppable, hard and never ending, until my body aches, my face is sore, and my eyes are scratchy. A mess. I can’t catch my breath, can’t breathe, and in utter desperation, I clutch the sleeves of his top, hanging on for dear life.

“Come,” he says gently, lifting me out of the chair and carrying me across his arms to my bedroom. I curl into him, willing the tears to stop, as he walks up the bed on his knees, still holding me, and sits up against the headboard, covering us with the duvet. He’s cradling me to his body, patient and quiet as I cry it all out, clinging to him.

Scared to let go.

Even more afraid to hold on.

“I love you, Camryn,” he whispers, almost with regret. “I’ll fight for this. I can’t let you go.” And that just makes me cry harder because, deep down, I don’t want him to let me go. And yet I don’t know if I can do this.

I snivel, rubbing my face into his chest, terrified to look at him. He gives me no choice when he tilts my face up to his. “Letting you leave last night was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Knowing I was the cause of your sadness killed me. Tell me I’ve not fucked everything up,” he begs. “Tell me you still love me.”

The ability to talk is beyond me, as no words can make it past my throat to be heard. So I sink my face into his neck and hold on that little bit tighter. He’s wrong. He’s not the cause of my sadness. The cause, the root cause, is nothing to do with Dec. I still feel somewhat betrayed, but also not. Dominic and even my brother? They both betrayed me. But Dec? I can’t hold him to the same card. Yes, he’s hidden things from me, but not for his own benefit. I saw the grief in his sister’s eyes. It wasn’t pity for me. It was pity for her brother. He hid his son to save me more pain. He’s suffering the consequences of my grief.

He’s saved my life.

And I walked out on him. I ran. I made him feel like I didn’t love him.

I bury myself closer to him, unable to get my emotions under control, and we stay where we are, huddled on my bed for an age, Dec quiet, me waiting for my body to stop shaking with the force of my sobs until I’m able to speak. “I still love you,” I eventually murmur, hearing his heart beat harder under my ear. “I can’t stop that.”

He sighs, in relief, I think, and negotiates me to my back, spreading himself the length of me, now his face in my neck. My hands naturally slip under his hoodie to his naked back and start softly tracing his spine. “I wanted to tell you about Albi,” he says, the words hot across the skin of my neck. “Not at first, but as soon as I realised I was growing feelings for you, that maybe I could see a future with you, I wanted to tell you about him. But then you shared your loss, Camryn, and I just couldn’t find the words that I knew would send what we have into fucking bedlam. I hated that my son would be the cause for such heartache in the woman I love.”

I close my eyes, another wave of wretchedness coming over me. “I hate that too,” I whisper. There are so many questions I want to ask, so much I need to know. Not only from Dec, but from myself. Can I handle this? If I try, if I truly want him, can I handle it? “You’re a single dad?” I ask.

“She walked out when Albi was four weeks old,” he says quietly, pulling out and sitting up, resting his arse on his heels and pulling me up to sit too. He gently wipes my eyes. “We were seeing each other. It was casual. Nothing serious. Then one day she showed up at my office and told me she was pregnant.” He flinches, as if remembering that moment. “All I could think about was my father. How absent he was. How promiscuous. Undevoted, undedicated. How he fucked me up. I didn’t want to be that man. I didn’t want to fuck my own son up by not being around.” He clears his throat and brushes some wet hair off my cheek. “So I did what I thought was the right thing.”

“Married her.”

He hums, his lips pressed together. “I wanted Albi to have a present dad, a stable family unit and, stupidly maybe, I thought that meant marrying her. She didn’t do pregnancy well. She did motherhood even worse. When Albi was four weeks old, I got a call from my bank manager saying she was trying to clear out my personal bank account.”

I blink at him.

“I told him to let her take it.”

“All your money?”