Worth the Wait (McKinney_Walker #1)(63)
“No. I quickly found that psychiatry was not my calling. I had no desire to work in a hospital. I have the degree if I ever need it. It saves people from having to go to another doctor if I really feel medication would help them. I specialize in grief counseling. I do a lot of work with couples. It’s not always death or illness. Drug addiction brings a certain grief to parents. Guilt. Blame. It’s difficult, and the wedge that’s often driven between them makes it even more so.”
He stared into his coffee, a humorless laugh on his lips. “We’d know something about that.”
“Yes. We would.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know.” Sometimes the why and the how didn’t matter, she thought. Sometimes there was enough hurt that a love was simply broken. It didn’t matter whose fault or how true the justifications. A broken heart was still broken, and it still took time to put it back together. If it even could be.
Nick set his mug on the counter and came to stand in front of her. He looked at her for a long time. Touched her hair and her cheek. “It scares me too, you know. What I feel for you. What I've always felt.”
“Have you always felt it?” She hated to ask, but if there was any chance for them, she needed to know. What had happened to them? How had he let her go so easily?
“More than I wanted to let myself. Losing Hannah, finding her the way I did, it changed me, but I never stopped loving you.” He framed her face in his big, warm hands. “Not for a second. I might have buried it so deep you couldn’t feel it, but it was still there. Always. I lost you, lost us. Now it feels like I have a chance again. Like we have a chance.”
Nick had never lied to her, especially about his feelings. Even at nineteen, she’d known that. But it hadn’t been enough before. Why would it be enough now? “And now you can believe you deserve it?”
“I’m working on that, but I know you do.”
Did she want a chance? To open her heart to him again, have it crushed again? She’d needed him last night, and she’d given in to what he offered. She couldn’t regret their talk, the things that needed to be said, but what had really changed?
“I don’t blame you for not believing that.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you.” She ached to reach out for him, to run her hands up his chest and lose herself in the passion that hadn’t diminished in all this time. He said he still loved her, but what did that mean? He loved her now, but he’d loved her then, hadn’t he? “Maybe there’s too much between us. Too much time and hurt.”
“I don’t believe that. I won’t.”
She stared down the hallway, thinking of the empty room. Nick had nothing to do with that. The baby they’d lost had nothing to do with the baby she’d lost without him, but… “Maybe some things should be left in the past or…maybe it’s just me. Maybe now I’m stuck just like you were.” Her heart hurt, it ached, bleeding from the hole Savannah had left and now all the old wounds from Nick torn open on top of that.
Nick was quiet for a long time. So was she, afraid he would mention the baby they had lost, grateful that he didn’t. She was too raw to go there again so soon. Maybe he was too.
“I didn’t use a condom, Mia. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond right away, trying to figure out how she felt about that. She gave up. Her emotions were too much of a gauntlet to fight her way through on this dark rainy morning. “It’s not the right time.”
She couldn’t tell if Nick was disappointed or relieved. God help her, she didn’t know which she was, either.
“I told you I loved you. I meant it.”
Completely overwhelmed, she started to move away. “Nick, you can’t just—”
“I can,” he said, pulling her against his chest, not letting her go. “And I’m sorry if it’s too soon.”
“It all feels too soon,” she whispered. “And at the same time, it feels much too late. I don’t want you to break my heart again, Nick. I don’t think it’s all the way repaired from the last time.”
“Mia.” His hand caressed slowly up and down her back. “I don’t want to break your heart. I don’t want to hurt you at all, ever. I didn’t want to before.”
“I know.” It was unnecessary to point out that he had all the same. Maybe she’d broken his, too. She looked up at the brown eyes she loved and forced herself to be stronger than she had before. “I know it may not make sense to you, but… the fact that I want to jump right back into what we had so badly scares me. That you’re saying you want it…” She shook her head. How could she trust that? How could he expect her to?