Both our fathers had been doctors. My mother had worked part-time as a lawyer. “We could have found a way to afford it.”
“Probably, yeah.” Katie sniffed. “But the news, well, it put me in a tailspin. We’d always talked about having kids. The thought of never having that, of denying you that, I just…I couldn’t get my head wrapped around it.” She made a winding motion with her finger at her temple. “The more I thought about it, the more determined I was to give you a chance at finding that with someone else.”
All of her words were landing, but I couldn’t get any of them to stick. I wouldn’t have been able to leave the way she did. There was too much fight in me. If she’d said something, I’d have argued with her, tried to make her see sense, told her none of it mattered if we were together. The time for that was long gone.
My conversation with Emily months ago resurfaced. She’d said she hadn’t loved her high school boyfriend enough to make it work. And Katie hadn’t loved me enough to make our relationship work.
Maybe Mia didn’t either. But she’d been honest and up front about her issues. I’d never questioned her honesty, even when it hadn’t been what I’d wanted to hear.
“You hid your diagnosis from me.”
“I hid it from everyone.” She wiped her eyes. “Well, I hid it from everyonehere. Every boyfriend after you got the ‘I don’t want kids’speech. I convinced myself I didn’t want them. Can’t have them. Don’t want them.” A bitter chuckle escaped her lips.
She’d always been stubborn. That quality was the one thing I’d seen and believed about her departure. Once she decided she was leaving, there hadn’t been anything I could do to persuade her to stay.
“Then I got drunk with a friend back in October and told her the whole story of us. She convinced me to look you up on social media. Everything said you were single, and Mom said she had heard you weren’t seeing anyone. So, I applied for a job back here. A lateral step, not even a promotion. On a whim. Just like that. I got here and you were seeing Danai, but then you asked Dad to help with the Mia situation. My return, your baby—the family we once planned together. It felt like fate.”
Wow.The word bounced around my head, and I rubbed my face. “Fate?” I asked, squinting at her. Exhaustion and annoyance went to war for dominance. “You thought you’d show up and snatch me back like a lost toy? I don’t know what happened to you eight years ago. I know what you’re telling me now, but something doesn’t quite add up for me. You know what I think it is? Eight years ago, you didn’t know how good we had it. We were young. Our relationship was all we’d ever really known. You go out and see other things and then you decide,oh hey, that guy back home wasn’t so bad after all.”
“I always knew how good we had it.”
“But you left. You threw us away. For a long time, I let myself be lost. I chose relationships I knew weren’t quite right for me. I see that now.”
“We can get back what we had. All the pieces are here.”
“We can’t. We really can’t. Maybe a year ago we could have tried, even nine months ago. But now? I…I can’t go back. I want something else now. A different life.”
“With her? But she left, Tyler. She did the same thing as me. Except she’s left a baby behind. A baby. I’d never leave my child.”
Mia left because sheneededto go. Katiechoseto leave. Miahadto go. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“You’d give her a second chance, but not me?”
“If she stays away for eight years, her window might be closed too.” I rose from my seat. “But I know for sure yours is sealed shut. Too much has happened.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “I’m sorry you can’t have kids. I’m sorry you didn’t tell me eight years ago or any of the years in between. It’s too late for us.”
In my pocket, my phone started to chime with email notifications. More online orders for the thrift store, probably. “You can either ask your dad to assign another nurse to me, or I can. But I don’t want to make this harder on you than it needs to be.” Without Mia as a barrier, I didn’t want more of these conversations either. Whatever had been between us years ago had died off—love untended.
“I’ll talk to him.” She wiped at more tears as they slid down her cheeks.
Strange that Mia’s tears made my heart clench and my chest ache, but I felt almost nothing at the sight of Katie’s. I crossed to the door, and she eased her bag back onto her shoulder. When I opened the front entrance, Katie’s hand rested on my shoulder, and then, on her toes, she kissed my cheek.
A cacophony of slamming car doors and scattered conversation hit me at the same moment the flashbulbs went off. Outside, news vans lined the street. Seemed impossible, but I’d missed their arrival. All week, I’dbeen so careful. The noise of the press echoed into the house, and Victoria put the lungs she’d inherited from her mother to work, screaming in rage at the disturbance.
Katie’s hand stayed on my arm; her body positioned too close.
Far, far too close.
My heart pounded. For a moment, I didn’t move, stunned by the booming chaos.
Well, rock bottom, here I come.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mia
For months, I hadn’t worried about the flash of a camera or the roar of the press. In Little Falls, I wasn’t doing anything interesting enough for the paparazzi to care at first, and then I’d stayed housebound once my pregnancy was obvious.
As soon as my leg emerged from the back of the car, my gut clenched in anticipation. Pasha’s hand reached down to help me exit with something resembling grace. The baby weight was still heavy on my frame, but I didn’t look as pregnant as I had a week ago.
