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.
I had to try.
“It’s not in the cards,” I began, haltingly, gasping with the effort, as though my body were so at war that my lungs would not cooperate, and my vocal cords would no longer take direction from my brain. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore. It’s not an option. I know you think I’m good for you. I get that now. But can’t you see that you aren’t good for me? I’m trading my peace of mind for split seconds of bliss here. I look at you, and I remember. I remember what I’ve lost, what I should have been, what I could have had. Some of it feels good, but just as much of it is near unbearable for me. I could find someone, someone else, who didn’t only remind me of the things I’m not. Of the things I’ve lost. In fact, I intend to. And you, you can find someone else that doesn’t make you remember, either, doesn’t tear you up with guilt. Some relationship without a lifetime’s worth of baggage, weighing it down. I’m sorry, but I can’t see you anymore. I wish you the best in your life, and so I’m setting you free.”
Somehow, I peeled myself away from him and left.
He let me.
I couldn’t even look at him after that last bit, so I had no clue what it cost him to keep his silence while I sliced us both open and walked away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I did what I always did when I was too weak to stand. I went home.
Bev welcomed me with her warm heart and her open arms, as she always had.
I poured my heart out to her and told her everything I’d avoided telling since Tristan and I had started seeing each other again.
She took it well, didn’t judge, only soothed and listened and soothed some more.
I hadn’t even been there for five hours when Frankie showed up, and I wasn’t at all surprised. It seemed to be her MO.
She was like our combat nurse, always showing up after a battle to help each side nurse its wounds. I must have been the one she’d decided was more badly injured, if she’d found me this fast.
Bev let her in and poured her a glass of red wine.
“Why do I always take life so seriously?” I asked them both.
Neither had an answer except to give me sympathetic looks.
“You know, I’ve never smoked crack,” I told mostly Frankie, but of course, Bev had the stronger reaction.
“What the hell are you talking about?” She sounded appalled.
“We used to have this homeless guy that would creep into the gallery, like a couple of times a week.”
“Dirty Jim,” Frankie guessed.
I nodded.
“He sounds charming,” Bev said, sounding appalled.
“Not so much.”
“He had Hep C,” Frankie added her two cents. “Liked to talk about it. In fact, he had a rap about it. Shit, I can’t remember what it was, but he actually found a word that rhymed with hepatitis.”
“We’d always have him escorted out,” I continued, ignoring her. “Since he tended to shout obscenities at the other patrons. But whenever security would start to drag him out, his last line was always, ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve smoked crack.’ Hell, for all I know, he had a point.”
They both stared at me like I was crazy, and that’s when I realized that I was drunk. I started laughing.
“Now I remember! It was meningitis. That’s the word he used to rhyme with hepatitis in his rap. Not as clever of a rhyme as it seemed like at the time, but oh well. God, he was a crazy motherfucker. I shit you not, he asked me to tattoo some balls on his chin, like, a dozen times.”
I shook my head at her, laughing harder.
“He offered to pay for it by donating his sperm to the parlor. He was a dick, always trying to get on the TV show, but he never said anything that could get past the censors, the weirdo. The producers even tried to coach him, because they thought he’d be a funny touch for the show, but he couldn’t go two words with dropping the F-bomb.”