This was why she was so careful to keep her relationships light and casual. The men in her life had been assholes, all of them, and she wanted to remain in control so she didn’t have to risk being hurt.
He had no idea how he could heal a lifetime of disappointments.
“You should know,” he said carefully, “nothing you’ve told me makes me suddenly discover I can’t possibly be in love with you.”
She looked at him, her face pale and lovely against the shadows around her and completely solemn. “Oh, just wait.”
The dog moved closer to her, resting his chin on her leg, and her hands absently moved through his fur.
“When I was about six months along, still working sixteen-hour days on my feet in a hot, crowded restaurant kitchen and not taking any kind of care of myself or the baby, I started having pain under my rib cage. Severe pain.”
He ached for her, for what he sensed was coming.
“It went on for two days. I didn’t go to a doctor. In fact, I continued working and told myself it would pass. On the second day, I fainted just before the dinner rush while I was slicing tomatoes for the insalata caprese and I started hemorrhaging all over the floor.”
His own blood ran cold thinking of her, a young woman alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language well in dire need of medical attention.
“I was rushed to the hospital where it turned out the pain I had been so stubbornly ignoring had been a placental abruption. The baby didn’t survive. I nearly didn’t.”
He could feel his insides tremble at the thought of how close she might have come. “But you did.”
“Yes. More or less intact. Well, less, actually. They had to take out everything to save my life. All the girly parts, I mean.”
She said the words as if they had some great significance, but he was just a big dumb carpenter and didn’t understand why she thought that would matter to him.
“And where is the part where you killed your baby?” he asked.
She stared. “Haven’t you been listening? If I had taken proper care of myself, seen a doctor, stayed off my feet for five minutes, maybe, the baby might have survived. Instead, I was so busy hating myself for my stupidity and naïveté and hating Marco for being an ass and even hating the baby for ruining everything that I let an innocent child die because of it.”
Again he chose his words carefully. Everything—everything—hinged on him not screwing this up. “Sorry, but I’m not seeing it. You made poor choices, but you didn’t kill your child.”
She made a strangled noise as if gearing up to argue and he purposely hardened his voice. “I served three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I know what it means to kill someone, defending myself or my platoon or the mission. I also know the difference between that and an emotionally battered young woman alone in a foreign country neglecting her health while she tries to survive. Trust me, there’s no comparison.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DESPITE THE SUMMER EVENING, she shivered at his blunt words.
He had killed people. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been a Ranger, after all, but it was hard to reconcile the soldier he had once been with the man who talked to Ethan with such patient gentleness and taught him to use a hammer and was building the world’s best tree house for him.
You made poor choices but you didn’t kill your child.
The words seemed to seep inside her, finding all the dark, ugly corners she didn’t want to explore. She had been young, not nearly as sophisticated and urbane as she had wanted to pretend when she took off alone to Europe. She had grown up in a tight-knit family, in a small, conservative town. She had made really stupid choices but she didn’t know anybody who couldn’t say the same.
The doctors afterward had told her that even with the proper medical care and attention, the placenta had been weak and might have abrupted anyway. She hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was easier to blame herself but now, a dozen years later, she could view that young woman she had been with a little more compassion.
“In the end,” she whispered now, “when I woke up after the surgery and the doctors told me what had happened and that the baby was dead, I...finally I wanted him again. So much.”
The tears began to fall and she couldn’t seem to stop them and she stopped trying. She hadn’t cried in forever and now, here in the darkness with Sam, she cried for her empty arms and a young woman’s shattered dreams and all the chances she had lost along the way.
Sam swore and rose from his chair. Before she could protest, he sat beside her on the porch swing he had hung and pulled her into his arms.