Page 93

Almost.
We huddled on the floor and cried together, though we did not move close enough to touch.  I couldn’t stand any contact while I gasped out the sordid details, the painful losses, and he, I thought, didn’t have the courage to seek to comfort me just then.
The sun was starting to rise, streaming into the window beside his front door, when we picked ourselves up, and made it to the kitchen table.  We sat, not close, not touching, not looking.
“Please,” he finally spoke, after I’d fallen silent, and been silent, for a very long time.  “Everything we had, everything we planned for.  All the things we talked about before I messed everything up.  I want marriage, babies, forever.  With you.”
I looked at my hands.  I couldn’t look at him.  Not for this.  No part of me wanted to tell him, but I’d gone long enough keeping it from him, and it wasn’t fair to go a step further, when we could never have what he was talking about.
I took the deepest breath.  “I can’t have children.  I’m barren.”
One furtive glance showed me the slightest shift in his expression as his head tilted up and his brows drew together.  “How can you say that?  You got pregnant twice.”
I swallowed, not knowing how to broach this part.  I knew I’d make a mess of it either way, so I just told him all of it.  “I told you that I lost the second baby in the accident.  I haven’t explained just how.
Right before impact, Dean was trying to…touch me.  I had a framed picture in my hands—”
“The one I gave you back that night?”  His voice was choked, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes.  That one.  I had the picture in my lap, and I used it to block his hands from going up my skirt.  I was focused only on that.  On stopping him.  I didn’t see the accident coming.  I had no time to brace myself.”
He made a soft grunt of a noise, and one stolen glance showed me that his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.
I hadn’t been even close to crying.  I’d been feeling pretty numb, actually.  I was only cataloging facts for him, after all, but watching one big tear fall from his thick lashes and hit the table had me tearing up.
I took a few long moments to compose myself before I spoke again, castigating myself the entire time.  This wasn’t about making him feel bad.  I had only meant to tell him what he needed to know.  This was my curse: to always say too much, and say it all wrong.
“The collision smashed in my side of the car.  This crushed my leg, my knee, but that was actually just one of the injuries.  The impact also broke the picture into sharp pieces of wood and glass, and several of the pieces stabbed deep into my abdomen.”
He gasped in a harsh breath so violently that I found myself breathing with him, as though I couldn’t suck air into my lungs fast enough, as though we were both suffocating with my confession.
“It did enough damage that the doctors knew right away that I could never get pregnant again.  It is not just unlikely for me to get pregnant, it is impossible.  I was hemorrhaging badly.  They were forced to perform a hysterectomy.”
This little reunion had been a hopeless fantasy from the start.
He was sobbing now.  Brokenly.  I’d never seen a grown man cry like that, great heaving sobs, as though the world were ending, and there was no earthly reason to hold back the despair.  He hadn’t even been like this for Jared, and we had both done our share of crying for his dear brother.
“It was a long time ago, Tristan, and it was nobody’s fault.  It was a tragic string of events that no one could have seen coming, let alone stopped, and we’ve both suffered enough for that night.  Please stop blaming yourself.  I did a long time ago.”  I was sobbing by the end, right along with him.
He was inconsolable.  I tried to talk at first, making good, valid points to him between my own sobs, but he seemed to hear none of it, just cried as though he’d never cried before, the dam had broken, and he would never stop.
Finally, back bent, body slumped, I went to him.  It was a hard thing for me to do, because I knew that at the end of this, I’d be saying goodbye to him and letting myself comfort and take comfort from his touch would only make it harder.  I wasn’t going to try to hold onto him forever through his guilt.
I knew more than anyone how much he wanted children.
As much as I did.
I would let him go.  I was capable of that much, at least.
I touched his head softly as I finally reached him.  Two arms had never been so grateful as the ones he wrapped around me.  His face burrowed into my neck.  He said the same thing, over and over, between those raw, awful, gasping, wrenching, sobs.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”
I stroked his hair, tears flowing freely down my face and into the soft strands.  I tried words again.  “Things worked out how they were supposed to work out.”
He shook his head, his face in my belly.  “No.  No.  No.  This is not how things were supposed to work out.  I wanted that baby.  Our baby.  Our babies.”  He sobbed brokenly for torturous minutes, before he continued.  “I wanted our family.  I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.”
I took a few deep, steadying breaths, wondering how I would do this, how I would be able to collect myself enough to walk away.