He’s silent for a while. His body jerks slightly, giving away his silence for anything but what it is. My big strong man is breaking. I knew he was holding his pain tight last night, trying to be strong for me. Trying to keep his torment from showing.
I bring my arms around and lace my fingers together against his chest, his heart beating rapidly against my arm. His body stills when I place my lips against his back and whisper the only thing I can think of. “It’s okay, Ax. You can’t hold this in. For years I have and it doesn’t help.” Then I fall silent and hold him tight, hoping he opens up to me.
“It’s my fault,” he finally says, his voice thick with emotion.
“What? What is?” I question.
“Everything.”
We fall silent again while I puzzle over his response. We were both victims here in fate’s cruel game of keep-away. I don’t understand how he can even begin to blame himself.
“Baby, you have to give me more than that. There is no way any of this is your fault,” I plead.
He straightens his body but doesn’t make the move to turn. Letting his legs fall to dangle from the end of the wooden path, he turns his head and looks over at the sun rising slowly above the tree line. He brings his arms up from their relaxed position at his sides and closes them over mine before pulling my arms away from his chest and clasping our hands together on his lap.
“The first thing I did when I left June and Donnie’s was report them to child services. Between the conditions they forced us to live in, the food they refused us, and Donnie’s creepy behavior with the little girls, there was plenty to shut them down. They lost every child the state was paying for. It’s no fucking wonder she slammed the door in my face when I went on my search for you.” He lets out a humorless laugh before continuing. “I wouldn’t have even bothered, Izzy . . . but I was fucking desperate to find you.”
“She opened the door, and when she saw it was me, the bitch spit in my fucking face. I didn’t even get a word out. She did manage to tell me about your parents. I will spare you the details on that, but I got nothing else. She must have loved knowing she had the key to my finding you, the key to keeping me from you.”
When I feel wetness fall on the arm resting on his lap, I lift my cheek from his back and look up at the cloudless sky before realizing it was coming from him. My heart is breaking just a little more from knowing just how deep his agony is rooted.
“I never got your letters, Izzy. You know . . . You fucking know I would have come running. Not a single one. I wasn’t at base long. I can’t give you much but they scooped me up quick and I had to leave. Top-secret shit and I went dark, baby. I wrote you a letter that explained it all, but the timing of your parents . . . It makes sense you never got it. I had no fucking clue you were writing, trying to find me.” He shakes his head as if that simple move can purge the bitterness of his memories.
“Baby . . .” I don’t know what to say.
He squeezes my hands and lets me know that he needs this. He needs to get this out. “Fucking killing me, Izzy . . . to know that I was so close to you but so fucking far. Knowing that you and our . . . baby . . .” He pauses on a sob that catches his words, “Our baby, God, our baby . . . That baby would have been the most perfect child ever born.” His big body folds over and he starts crying in earnest. Tears of my own are falling down my face and onto his back, but I just hold him tighter.
I give him the time he needs to get it out, holding him tight and whispering words of love against his back.
We sit there for a while. He lets out his anguish and I hold him, offering what strength I can. The sun is finally up when he sits back up and turns his head. His eyes are red and the tears are still falling silently. Seeing him like this is destroying me.
“I would have loved that baby, loved that baby so much, Izzy. We would have been so happy,” he says, each word pushing an invisible dagger into my heart. I know it isn’t my fault that I miscarried, and I long ago coped with the loss, but right now, in this moment, I feel as if it happened yesterday.
“I know, Axel,” I offer. “I wish I knew what to say to help you, to ease this pain.”