Sweet Sinful Nights

“There was nothing to say after that point. The baby was gone. We can’t change the fact that my body failed. There is nothing that will change that. Even if we had been together, the fate would have been the same. The baby was never going to survive. The decision was made by Mother Nature.”

“That’s not true.” He shook his head over and over, repeating the same words. “That’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true.”

Her heart lurched towards him, and all her instincts said to comfort him. Because the man was in denial. “Brent, nothing would have changed,” she said softly.

He smacked his fist into the bed covers. “I would have wanted to know. No matter what. I hate that you went through this alone. I wanted to be there for you, and you didn’t give me the chance.”

She choked back the tears. “I wanted that, too. But how was I to know what you wanted? You left. It was over. You made your choice. You chose work over me. You made it clear I had to go with you or we were through. Why would you expect me to think you wanted to be there for me?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Besides, by the time this happened we’d been apart for four months. Even after it happened, what was I going to say that would have changed a thing? You were gone.”

*

He didn’t see it that way.

Because he’d just learned he was a bigger schmuck. He had done something far worse than walk away from the love of his life. Turns out, he’d abandoned the mother of his child. Thanks to his epic last words, she’d thought he wouldn’t have wanted to be by her side.

She had every reason to think that.

“If you don’t go with me, there’s no point staying together.”

He pictured her in London, alone and scared, not even sure what to tell the father of her child. He stood and paced around the room. He opened his mouth, but he had no clue how to respond. He was a fish out of water, gasping for air. Everything in his life had come easily to him. He had never suffered bad news. He had never lost someone he loved. But now, he felt the sting of devastation the first time in his life. He was experiencing all sorts of things that had become far too normal for Shannon. Unlike her, he had no roadmap to navigate this new terrain.

“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered.

“It’s okay. You don’t have say the perfect thing,” she said softly. She rose, too, and clasped his hands in hers, consoling him.

He couldn’t let her. Not when he’d failed her abysmally. If he hadn’t backed her into a corner, they’d have stayed together and he could have properly cared for her. He pushed her hands away. He didn’t know how to touch her. He didn’t deserve her affection. So he said the one thing he could manage. “I’m sorry I looked through your things.”

She flashed a small smile, absolving him. “I wish you hadn’t, because I was planning on telling you tonight. But it’s okay, and now you know. I was going to tell you as soon as I came back from feeding the cat.”

In a flash, his guilt vanished because that sounded awfully convenient. He arched an eyebrow in a question and shoved all his hurt on her. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

She stepped back. “I only started seeing you again two weeks ago. It’s not really the sort of thing you say at a first meeting. ‘Sorry I haven’t seen you in ten years, but hey, thought you might like to know it turned out I was pregnant when you left.’”

“That’s a start,” he said, even though those words felt all wrong, out of sync.

“Brent, that’s not a start. That’s not how you tell someone something hard.”

“Okay fine, since you’re such an expert. How about over dinner then at the Cromwell?”

Her eyes bugged out. “We were just starting to get to know each other again. I had no idea what we were going to become.”

“Then how about at one of our lunches?” he tossed back, simply throwing things at her, barely knowing where they would land, or how much they would hurt. All he knew was that everything inside him ached terribly, and now that he’d recovered the power of speech, he was using words as missiles lobbed at the nearest target—the woman he loved.

“That hardly seemed to be the time or place either. But since you’re reviewing chapter and verse and naming all the times I saw you, you should know that I actually did plan to tell you on Saturday night when we went out to Alvin Ailey.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, as if he’d caught her red-handed.

“Seriously? You’re seriously asking me? You left town that night. You sprang it on me after the show that you were leaving town in an hour. That’s why,” she said, parking her hands on her hips.

His eyes flared with anger. “Are we going to go over this again, Shannon?” He was sick and tired of having every mistake he’d ever made boomeranged back at him. “Can you ever fucking give me break?”