Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
It took me a moment, the truth much harder to hear than I thought it would be. But once I could breathe again, I prodded him to finish.
He squeezed the chair’s back, his knuckles turning white. “I remember laughing, and she leaned over and kissed me, and I didn’t stop her.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t sleep with her,” he told me, emphasizing the word sleep. “I left as soon as it was finished.”
Meaning he had not held her next to his heart as he did me. He had not snuggled her up tight against his chest. She had not slept in the crook of his neck. He had not woken with her tangled around him. But these were memories now too, and I had to put them away.
“And when did you know she was having your child?”
“A month later, she showed up at work to see me,” he barely got out. “We went to my office, and she told me.”
I nodded.
“She said she would be whatever I needed. I told her I didn’t want her or the baby in my life. I told her it was a mistake. I told her how much I love you.”
“Did she laugh?” I asked before I thought better of it.
“No, she didn’t laugh,” he said crossly, defensive and annoyed. “She knows I love you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she does.”
“I can do without the sarcasm.”
“And I could have done without the cheating, both times, but what are we gonna do?”
He scowled darkly. “She promised me I would never hear from her again.”
“But? I hear a but coming.”
“She came back a month later with sonogram pictures.”
“That’s nice,” was all I could think of to say.
“I told her again that I wanted nothing to do with the baby.”
“That had to have hurt her,” I said, imagining her in my mind, Celia Hughes, what I thought she looked like and how sad she must have been.
“I didn’t give a shit.”
“That’s not true. You care about people. You’re a doctor, for fuck’s sake. First do no harm and all that.”
“I didn’t care that day.”
“And now?”
“And now even less,” he confessed gloomily. “Because I know this is going to haunt my life forever.”
“And you’re sure it’s your child?”
“I had a DNA test done.”
“Very thorough of you.”
“I was hopeful,” he muttered.
“But?”
“But there’s no doubt. He’s mine.”
“He?” I said shakily, my breath stuttering.
“She had an amnio done just recently, as she’s in her second trimester now,” he answered, his voice sounding hollow. “It’s definitely a boy.”
“Your son,” I said breathlessly. I heard the chair scrape on the floor as he leaped to his feet, overturning the chair in the process. He wrapped around me, and I couldn’t move. “Get off me.”
He tightened his grip and buried his face in my hair. “Trace… Tracy,” he chanted, on the verge of tears. “Please forgive me. Please, please forgive me. I’ll do anything.”
It was my fault. I let him think we could still be friends after his betrayal. But the trust was dead, and by thinking we could be friends, I’d given him hope. That had been cruel, and I felt the weight of that cowardly decision now. “We’re done, Breck,” I said softly, using the abbreviated version of his name like I never did, pushing gently out of his embrace and slipping off the bed. “And honestly, I should be the least of your concerns right now.”
On my feet with the bed between us, I felt better, like I could breathe.
“Trace—”
“You should probably go.”
He looked cornered. “Please, Tracy, please,” he said over and over, a thread of panic in his voice, the tears in his eyes spilling over. “You must forgive me. You have to forgive me.”
“It’s not even about that. You and Celia have a lot of decisions to make, and what I do or don’t should have no bearing on anything. I’m so insignificant in your life right now that it’s laughable.”
“No, you—”
“Go talk to her. Don’t waste your time here with me.”
He came around the bed fast, and outside of flipping over it like a gymnast, I was stuck. So when he grabbed me and pulled me into his arms, I let him. “Trace,” he said into my hair, his voice like a caress. “I need you. You need me. I belong to you. Don’t throw me away. You love me. Don’t stop, don’t ever stop. I’d die—I would die.”
But his words, which had once meant everything, sounded hollow now. It was sad, the ending, the actual completion of us. And that’s what I was feeling, nothing else. I had shed tears for him months ago. I was all out. At this point, he simply needed to go and figure out the next part of his life.
“I messed up, but it can be fixed if you’d just let me.”
I looked up into the violet eyes I knew so well.