Page 123 of The Promise Of Rain

I watched as realization hit.

And then I watched him fall apart.

“What?”he rasped, licking his dry lips.

His eyes swung wildly from one corner of the room to the other before coming back to mine.

Fractured.

“What happened?”

Familiar tears sprang to my eyes for the baby I’d desperately wanted.The baby I’d planned to raise on my own if Deacon wanted no part of us.The baby that would give me a family of my own.

“I think it was the drugs Baxter’s father gave me, or maybe it was the stress of—” I cut myself off.

His hands flew to his head.He gripped his hair, his knuckles turning white.“Of me leaving on top of everything else,” he finished for me.

“I’m pretty sure it was the drugs,” I whispered.“And the terror of not knowing what he was going to do to me.”

His eyes skittered back and forth between mine like I had the answer he sought.

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

He leapt to his feet and paced away, his body vibrating like a live wire.

“Fuck,” he hissed.“Jenny, I can’t, I can’t fix any of this.”

He stabbed his fingers into his hair, his eyes wide and furious as he processed.

“How far along were you?”he asked, his voice gruff.

“Nine weeks.”

Hands bracing both sides of his head, he turned to look at me, his eyes tortured.“Did it hurt?”

I hadn’t thought we’d get into this much detail.

I hadn’t remembered in this much detail in a long time.

Tipping my chin down, I gave a single short nod.“It hurt.”

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” he chanted, pacing around in a tight circle before striding back to the couch.

Sitting back down beside me, head hanging down, one elbow braced on his knee, the other knee bouncing, he held out his hand out toward me, palm up.

Without a thought, I gave him my hand.What was a hand when he already held my heart?

He shuddered and closed his fingers over mine.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” I murmured.

He shook his head.“I never want you carrying your pain on your own, but this is my pain, too.I lost something, something huge.Just because I didn’t know, doesn’t make it less true.”

I squeezed his hand, pressing my palm into his as if to fuse us together.

“But the biggest loss,” his voice broke, “was not being here to hold you through it.”

He held my hand in a death-grip, his head hanging low as his knee stilled.“I can’t think about everything you’ve gone through on your own without wanting to burn the whole fucking world to the ground,” he admitted gruffly.