“Can I ask why you split up?” She shook her head. “Or if that’s not my business, I totally get it. It’s just that she mentioned she was your wife and conveniently left out the ex part.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose before meeting her gaze again. “She did that out of reflex I think. I don’t know why, honestly, but I cleared it up for her, and now I want to clear it up for you. As for why we split up…” He let out a breath then let the truth spill from him. “We split up because we couldn’t go on like we were. We had a daughter, you see. Cynthia. And she died. It was sudden, and yet not so sudden all at the same time. And when she died, I couldn’t love the woman I’d married anymore, and she couldn’t love me either. They say people do that, couples that is. They say they break up and fall apart when they lose a child. I don’t know about others, but I do know that I couldn’t be with Candice after Cynthia died. We didn’t grieve the same way, and we sure as hell didn’t live the same way.” His voice broke. “And that was the problem, I guess. The fact that I lived and my baby didn’t.” Tears stung at his eyes and he blinked them away. He would weep, would cry when he needed to, but first, he had to get it all out.
Blake moved to him quickly and covered his bearded cheeks with her hands. “My God, Graham. I am so sorry. So fucking sorry.” Tears filled her eyes, surprising the hell out of him. He hadn’t thought she’d cry for him, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “I don’t know what I’d do…” She shook her head. “To lose a child, to outlive them must be one of the hardest things to ever go through. I’m so sorry, Graham.”
He snorted but not at her words. “I guess this doesn’t fall under the no drama category you needed us to be placed in.”
“I’m a bitch for even thinking there can be no drama in a relationship. You have people, you have drama. But this? It’s not drama, Graham. It’s heartache. Tragedy. Something you never should have gone through. And I’m sorry about that. So fucking sorry.” She looked into his eyes. “Will you tell me about her?”
He let out a shaky breath. “Cynthia was everything. So light, bright, and just…everything. She made me and the brothers do tea parties, ink and all. And we sure as hell enjoyed them, even if we lied about it.”
Blake blinked away her tears, and he leaned into her touch. “I can almost imagine the four of you all bearded and tatted up with dainty teacups in your hands.”
He smiled. “Yeah, we did it. And it was a hell of an amazing thing.” He let out another breath. “When she was five, she fell in the backyard. Something all kids do, and I didn’t think much of it. I gave her a princess bandage for her cut and kissed it better. But it didn’t get better. The bruise got bigger and didn’t heal.”
“Oh, Graham,” Blake whispered.
“She had leukemia. I won’t go into the details of it, even though I can name the seven-word-long type she had. It was the rare form, the kind that surprised even the doctors because they’d almost never dealt with it. We started chemo right away. I watched as they put poison in my baby’s veins because they told me it was the only way to keep her with us.” He let the tears fall freely this time. “And when she began to fade, she was the one who kept smiling when I couldn’t. And when Candice started to break because she thought she wasn’t strong enough, it was our daughter who said it was okay to cry.”
Blake kissed his chin, and he kept speaking through the tears. “She only lasted four months in chemo before it was too much. We didn’t have time, Blake. There was never enough time.” He wiped his face, pulling her away from him to do so. She put her hands on his chest, her gaze still on his even if he wasn’t really seeing, not then. “She died in my arms while Candice wept in the chair beside the hospital bed. We’d been taking turns holding our daughter because Cynthia couldn’t sleep without our touch. The pain was too bad, you see. But she died in my arms, a smile on her face because I’d been telling her a story about a princess and a dragon.”
He closed his eyes, the memories hitting him hard, like shrapnel to the chest. “Candice and I buried her, then buried our marriage shortly after. So you see, I’m going to have drama, Blake, that’s a given, but I’m not the man I was with my ex-wife, and I’m never going to be again. If you can deal with the man I am now, even if I don’t know who that is, then I’m here. If not, then I understand.”
She didn’t speak for a while, but tears ran down her cheeks in sheets. When she went to her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his, he sighed.
“I’m here, Graham. For however long we are who we are. And I’m so damned sorry.” She licked her lips. “So damned sorry.”
He held her close to him, her ear on his chest, and his heart slowed from the race it had been running to the steady beat he relied on. He didn’t know what was to come, but he knew he’d already faced the worst of his life. He might never find the happiness he’d once had, but maybe, just maybe, he’d find peace he could live with.
8