Page 39 of Storm in a Teacup (Love in Edinburgh #3)

Mel catches that expression, spinning on me. “Ben, I know we don’t know each other well and I know Atti is an utter arsehole, but if you cause a violent scene at my wedding tomorrow, I will actually kill you.”

I promise, “Never have been one for violence. Though, I have never met someone as deserving of a punch in the face as our dear Atticus.”

Linny snorts as Mel shakes her head at me. “You better not make me commit a crime on my wedding day, but I will if I have to.”

Mel hugs Linny, muttering something in her ear. Linny smiles. “Of course, Mel.” Then says in a loud whisper, “You’re getting married tomorrow!”

Mel claps her hands together excitedly. “I’m getting married tomorrow!” She spins around and goes back into the party.

We follow Mel so we can say our goodbyes to the rest of the wedding party, then start our journey back to Linny’s place. I don’t ask to walk her home—I just do, and she doesn’t complain. She holds my hand the entire walk.

When we get to her door, she asks, “You want to come in?” Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “To see Oscar Wilde?”

“Sure,” I say, following her inside, wondering if she is just inviting me in for a hello to her cat or if she will let me spend the rest of our night with my head buried in her thighs.

As per usual, Oscar Wilde comes hopping up to us as soon as we walk through the door.

I bend down to greet him as Linny heads to her bathroom.

She crosses the hallway to her bedroom a bit later with her face washed, glasses on, and hair pulled into a haphazard bun.

Oscar Wilde seems finished with me, so he slumps away.

I stand up, not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.

When Linny comes back out, she’s in sweats and an oversized T-shirt, which I think answers my question of whether or not this night will continue as it did in the cloakroom.

It’s perfectly fine that it won’t. I’m her friend first. I figure she has invited me into hers tonight to be her friend and nothing more.

She stops before me. “Why are you just standing there?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

Amusement crosses her face. “Well, take your coat off. Stay a while.”

She helps me pull my coat off, then hangs it on a hook by the front door. Then she comes back and removes my tie, tossing it on her coffee table, then unbuttons my top two buttons. Lastly, her fingers trace through my hair, messing up the style she helped me get it back to in the cloakroom.

“Och, not the hair,” I say, even though my head is pushing into her fingers like a cat wanting to be pet.

“I love your hair,” she says absently before pulling away.

My tongue clicks. “I knew you only liked me for the hair.”

“Caught me.”

As I roll up the sleeves of my shirt, she switches off the overhead light in favor of a lamp on the side table. Then she sits down on the couch, angling herself against the arm and pulling her legs up to wrap her arms around.

“I’m ready to talk about Atti,” she says quietly.

A rush of anticipation hits my chest. This was the one thing. The one thing she was using to keep a distance between us, and now, she’s ready to offer it away.

“Okay,” I say just as quietly, taking a seat across from her on the couch, one leg propped up on it so I can face her.

She loses my eye, picking at her fingernails as she says, “I had a miscarriage.”

I jerk up straight in my seat. “Oh, fuck, Lin.”

She adds unnecessarily, “When I was with Atti.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. I hold my arms out to her. “Come here, sugar. Please.”

She nods barely, scooting over on the couch until her back is pressed to my chest. I swing an arm around her shoulders and place a kiss on the top of her head as she snuggles into me.

“Talk to me about it,” I softly plead.

She burrows deeper into me, scooching lower so she can press her head to my chest. “It happened while we were engaged. We got engaged, and then about two months later, I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t ready for it at all, but we were happy about it.

I was happy about it. I was excited because I thought I was having a baby with the man I loved, and I thought because of that, everything would work out. ”

She swallows. “But, four months in, I woke up in so much pain I couldn’t see straight, bleeding all over the bed.” She clears her throat. “We went to the hospital and they told me I lost the baby. I don’t think I have ever cried that hard. So hard I could have thrown up.”

I don’t say anything, just continue to stroke her hair as I let her tell me this story at her own pace.

“We went home, and I stayed in bed for a solid week. During that week, Atti was great. He took care of me. He held me when I needed to be held and gave me space when I needed space. I mean, we were both going through this loss. When I finally got out of bed, I guess he figured I was over it. I still wasn’t okay, but I was showered and eating breakfast in the kitchen.

While he was making coffee, he said…and he said this so casually, he said, ‘It was for the best.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about at first because in my mind, there was no way he could be talking about the baby.

But then he kept talking. ‘We weren’t ready for a kid.

’ I remember nodding, thinking he was trying to make me feel better, even though it was a bad method.

I said, ‘Probably not. We can try again after we’re married.

’ But then he shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know, Linny.

I mean, do you even want a baby?’ And it was the way he said ‘you’ that I knew I did not like where this conversation was heading.

” She swallows again and is quiet for a long while.

I keep my mouth shut, pressing another kiss to her head.

She starts speaking again. “He said, ‘With your eyes, it would be easier on us to just not have kids.’ And of course, I argued and said, ‘My dad did just fine. My aunts did just fine. My grandmother did just fine.’ But he said, ‘You know what I mean. Hell, you said yourself you were worried about it. What if you pass it on to our kid? I don’t know if I can take care of more than one of you.’”

A blind fury washes over me for her. I could kill him, the right bastard. Mel warned me against causing a violent scene at the wedding, so maybe I can do it before? Linny’s hand strokes over my thigh, bringing me out of the livid haze and back to reality.

She keeps speaking. “With that, he implied that if our kid had my eyes, he would love them less. Like my eyes made him love me less. I kicked him out. I screamed and yelled, but I did not shed one tear because I had used all those up over the week. We broke up, and he still to this day acts like he does not understand why.”

Finally, I feel like it’s okay for me to speak. “He was wrong for that, Lin. He’s a daft idiot. The biggest idiot I’ve met, in fact. You and any child you have are one hundred percent worthy of all the love anyone has to give.”

She stays in my arms, but I feel as she turns away from me. “The thing is, I agree with him. It would be best if I didn’t have kids. If I didn’t risk passing on my eyes. My eyes suck. Why would I want the person or people I love most in the world to go through this like I am?”

I swallow over a thick lump in my throat. “It’s your choice, sugar. But you want kids. You said how excited you were when you were pregnant.”

“I changed my mind. That’s why I don’t do penetrative sex—it makes me feel safer. That way, I will never get pregnant again.”

“Okay, but is the risk that your kids might have RP the only thing holding you back?”

“I mean, I think it will be too hard to take care of them with my eyes.”

“I don’t agree. I think sometimes you may have to take care of them differently, but it won’t be impossible. How likely is it to get passed on?”

“I don’t have a percentage. My dad and two of his three siblings all have it.”

“How many of your siblings have it?”

She purses her lips. “Just me.”

“Mel doesn’t have it.”

“No. Only one of my cousins does.” Her jaw tightens. “But still, Ben. I’m not going to change my mind about this.”

“I’m not trying to make you. I just don’t want that man in your head, making you think you can’t have the things you want.”

She says quietly, “It’s not that I can’t. It’s that the responsible thing for me is that I shouldn’t. ”

I hold her tighter. “Fuck society’s fucked up view of responsibility.”

She hums slightly, but I can’t tell if it’s in agreement or not.

I gnaw my lip. “Can I ask the timeline for all of this?”

“July 9 th ,” she answers instantly. “We broke up about a week later, so uh, July 16 th or 17 th ?”

“This past July?” I confirm.

“Yeah.”

It’s been less than a year—no wonder she was so pissed at Atti when she saw him happy and laughing at that pub in early September. My face presses into her hair.

We sit there together for a while longer before she finally pushes herself up and away from me. “I’m tired.”

That’ll be my cue. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Can you stay the night?” She looks at me hopefully.

My heart pinches in a good way. “Can I sleep in your bed with you?”

“Where else would you sleep?”

Linny lets me borrow her facewash and an extra toothbrush so I can brush my teeth. I take off my trousers and my shirt so I can climb into the bed in my pants and undershirt. Before I do, I grab pillows from off the floor and start to build that barrier between us.

Linny laughs and throws the pillows back at me. “Just get in the bed.”

I smirk and climb in beside her. She flips off the lamp on her bedside table, then slides across the bed to snuggle in my arms, her back to my front.

“Shut up,” she grumbles into the pillow. My arms tighten around her with the intent to stay that way for the rest of the night.

“I didn’t say anything,” I mutter, my grinning mouth pressing a kiss to the back of her head.

“You were going to.”

“I was only going to say that you do like to cuddle. We’re cuddle buddies.”

“ Ew ,” she emphasizes.

With my arms secure around her, I shake her a little bit and taunt, “You like to cuddle.”

She lightly kicks me, but doesn’t try to move. “Only with you, you jerk.”

I sigh against her, the dark room offering courage. “Lin, you make me feel whole.”

Almost automatically, and without much gumption, she says, “You can’t say that.”

I squeeze her body to mine. “Why not? It’s true. You have somehow managed to tape together the shards of me into something resembling a real person.”

“I am too tired for you to be this poetic.” Her body shifts against mine, burrowing in. “I think you did that for yourself, though.”

“I think you helped. As did my therapist.”

“You’re helping me too,” she murmurs before drifting off to sleep.