She rubbed at her shoulders, then patted her hair, but she was far too wet for the towel to do much good. And far too anxious to talk to him to wait any longer.
“Duff.” Her nerves stalled her, making her throat constrict. She tried again. “I’ve come to tell you something. It’s important.”
“Yeah, I think you’ve told me the important stuff already. But go ahead.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a gesture that made her heart ache.
She cleared her throat. “First, I need to . . . I need to apologize.”
His dark brows shot up, but he didn’t say anything, so she continued.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I launched this on you the way I did. I’m sorry I made the decision about what I was going to do without you being a part of the conversation. I’m sorry I didn’t even give you a chance to show me the kind of man you are—the kind of man I already knew you were. Which makes it even more supremely stupid that I didn’t believe it when you said you loved me.”
“Huh.” He stopped, and when he uncrossed his arms, she breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s not past tense, you know.”
“It’s not? Oh, God, Duff,” she said, then burst into tears.
As he took her into his strong arms, she muttered, “It’s the damn pregnancy. I can’t seem to do anything but cry. And it’s you. And my utter stupidity. I tried to blame it on the hormones, but the truth is . . . the truth is, I’m so damn scared.”
“Sure, you are. Of course.”
“No, it’s more than being pregnant. It’s because I’m so in love with you, I can’t see straight.”
“Wait.” He pulled back from her, holding her at arm’s length, peering down into her eyes. “Say that again?”
“No, please don’t look at me like this. I look awful.”
“You look more fucking beautiful than any woman who ever lived. Say it again, Layla.”
She started to shake her head, but even as she did, the words poured from her mouth, totally beyond her control. “I love you. Ridiculously. I loved you before I found out I was pregnant. I knew it when you said it to me. I’m just so damned stubborn.”
“No kidding.”
She tried to roll her eyes, but they were too swollen, so she looked up at him instead, at his beautiful face—the face of the man she loved. “Duff? Do you still love me? Really?”
“Yeah, I do. Two days and an argument don’t change that, you know.”
“I guess . . . I guess I didn’t know. It’s not something I know how to trust. And you were so mad at me.”
“Yeah, I was. But there’s a reason for that. A reason I haven’t spoken to anyone about. But I think I should tell you now. Come sit down, lovely.”
He led her to the couch, sat her down and covered her with a blanket, clucking, “You didn’t even wear a coat.”
“It’s New Orleans.”
“It’s still November.”
“I forgot about that part.”
He gave her arm a squeeze, a small smile on his face. “All right. So. This is fairly awful, this thing I’m about to tell you. I’ve been carrying it around for a while. But some things you can’t burden other people with.”
“I don’t know,” Layla said. “I think if you have people in your life who care about you—and you do—you should be able to tell them anything.”
“Yeah. I probably should have confided in Jamie, but I’m a guy, and we tend to think we have to behave like chest-beating cavemen most of the time.”
“There seems to be a lot of truth in that. But tell me.”
“I’ve mentioned my ex, Bess, yeah? The last relationship I had? Well, we broke up for a lot of reasons. But the kicker was this: she went to England, telling me she was going to visit her sister. And the day after she returned, I had to rush her to the hospital. She was bleeding. Hemorrhaging. Because she’d had . . . she’d terminated a pregnancy and wasn’t going to tell me about it.”
“Oh my God. Why not?”
He dropped his head, his hands curling around each other; then he looked back up at her. “Because apparently she didn’t trust me enough. And to be honest, it made me question what sort of man I was—her assuming I’d be so averse to having a kid that she had to go and do that. And I wouldn’t have been thrilled, especially not where our relationship was at the time, but it wore on me. It did. I’ve always felt as if I fucked up fairly badly to bring that about. And her guilt over it, it ate her alive. I feel responsible for that, as well. She couldn’t stand to look at me after that, and I can’t blame her.”
“But you blame yourself? She didn’t give you any choice in the matter. And I know, I know—I was about to do the same thing. Well, with not giving you any choice, but I was only ever going to keep the baby. You have to know that. But, Duff, how was it your fault that she didn’t?”
“Because perhaps she was right about me. Same as my parents always said. I’m a handful. Irresponsible. Incorrigible.”
Layla tried to smile at him. “Well, I’ll give them the incorrigible part.”
“You’d be right enough.”
He was still wringing his hands, and suddenly she felt her own strength returning—she was strong because in this moment he needed her to be. Maybe that’s what love was. She reached out and pried one of his hands free, hanging on to it.
“Now I need to tell you something. I’ve lived my entire life with that same message ringing in my ears. My father was always disappointed in me, and I thought it was because I was a disappointment. But I’ve just come to realize it was because I couldn’t have ever pleased him. I’ve theorized about why, and maybe I’ll never know the answer. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that I know my own value, and that I stop allowing what happened between my parents to dictate how I handle my life.”