Bait(79)
It’ll never happen.
Because my scars are deep.
Raw even though they are unseen.
Leo’s heart is so strong against my ribs. His breath is steady.
“Are you thinking about him?” he asks, without even a hint of jealousy.
I shake my head. “Not him, no. He’s a stupid prick. I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.”
He takes a breath. “Tonight is a night for secrets, Abigail. Yours as well as mine.”
I smile, but it’s a sad smile. “I lost a baby,” I tell him, even though he already knows.
His arms wrap me up and hold me tight. “You were ready to be a mum?”
“No,” I say, wishing my laugh would sound more convincing. “I mean, yes, but no. I don’t know if it works like that, if one day you wake up and know you’re ready. The test was positive and I knew I wanted it. That’s as ready as I felt.”
“And what about him? Was he a class-A cocksucker from the word go?”
I sigh. “Pretty much.”
“He was a fucking idiot,” he says, and my heart thumps. “I’d never have left you.”
And I know he wouldn’t.
Not even if staying burnt him alive.
Stephen wouldn’t risk his flat screen TV, let alone his personal safety.
Wouldn’t risk a stable pay check to make sure I was still alive.
“Being a father is the greatest gift on earth,” he continues. “He’ll regret his mistakes every day of his life, even if you never know it. Even if he doesn’t know it himself.”
But he won’t. I know he won’t.
He doesn’t need to.
Which makes it even more fucking painful.
My own secrets are right there, begging for confession.
Ones I’ve buried. Ones I’ve run from.
Ones that won’t stay quiet now I’ve seen the beautiful strength in someone else’s scars.
I just hope Leo can love my scars just as much as I love his.
Because he’s right – being a father, a parent, is the greatest gift on earth.
One I may never know.
And loving me might well take it away from him.
Just as the universe took it away from me.
And handed it back to Stephen on a silver platter.
“Do you mean that?” I ask him, even as my words choke. “That being a father is the greatest gift on earth? You want kids?”
He smiles. Oh, how he smiles. “Yes, Abigail, I want kids.”
I feel so exposed as he kisses my forehead.
“The miscarriage was bad. Bad enough that I nearly died,” I tell him, then opt to spill the rest before I change my mind. “Stephen told me he didn’t want to beg me to get rid of our baby, but he did. He didn’t want the baby and he didn’t want me. He told me his wife was estranged, that they were strangers in the same house, that he wasn’t in love with her and had no idea how he’d ended up with a mortgage and a whole host of entwined families. He said she’d hurt herself if he left, that she was fragile, depressed, that she wouldn’t handle it. He said that’s why he stayed.”
“Stephen is a fucking asshole,” he says.
“I saw him every day for four years before anything happened between us. I knew his thoughts better than I knew my own, just by looking at him.” I pause. “Or so I thought.”
“Sometimes you can know someone for years and know nothing at all,” he says.
He’s got that right.
I meet his eyes. “I shouldn’t have ever done it, not knowing he was under the same roof as someone else. I should’ve known better, but I loved him. I thought he loved me, too. I was stupid enough to think we’d end up together, that somehow he’d find a way to leave and make sure she was okay.”
“He didn’t want to leave her when it came to it?”
I smile a bitter smile. “I don’t think he ever really wanted to leave her at all, no matter what he had to say about it. They had a nice little slice of suburbia. A Scandinavian pine kitchen and a big TV. A decent lease car on the driveway. Their own little corner of domestic bliss.” I pause. “I didn’t think it mattered to him. I didn’t think he’d go running for cover as the fireworks started.”
He takes my fingers in his. Squeezes tight. “Like I said, the guy’s a fucking idiot. When it happens next time it’ll be different, I swear.”
I can hardly bear to look at him. “You really want kids?”
He smirks. “Right now? I’m sure we’d do just fine if the situation arose, Abigail.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say, and my voice is barely more than a rasp. “I mean, is that what you want, in your future? You’re sure? Definitely sure?”