“Baby,” he said, and she almost broke down.
Almost.
Sam stared at the bank of cabinets opposite her.
“Walsh said…I know what happened…” He was gasping. “Tonya…”
The name made her flinch, before she could catch herself.
Aidan saw. “Sam.”
She extended a hand toward him, a staying gesture, with an open palm. “Don’t come over here.” Her voice was frail. “Please. Don’t touch me or I won’t be able…” She couldn’t finish, throat tightening.
He circled the table so he stood on the opposite side, inserting himself into her nice safe view of the cabinets. His face was awful, open and vulnerable and full of grief. He knew. He was going to hash this out with her, but he already knew what she’d decided. “Won’t be able to what?” he asked quietly. “Iwantto touch you.”
Sam dragged in a breath. “She said you’re going to keep the baby yourself.”
His throat rippled as he swallowed. His eyes glimmered. “I haven’t made any kind of–”
“That’s good. A baby should have a father. God knows Erin might have turned out better if she’d had a chance to know our dad.”
“I–”
“You’ll have to give up your apartment, probably. Unless Tango’s going to help out. That would be nice. Uncle Tango.”
“Samantha.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tears flooded her eyes, blurred his face across from her. “I asked youso manytimes what was wrong. I knew you were preoccupied and worried.” She sniffed and had to dash at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I…” He struggled for words, his voice clogged and heavy. “I was…shit, Sam, I was afraid. I thought if I told you you’d walk away.”
“What were you going to do?” she asked through her tears. “Wait until it was born and just bring it home one day?”
“I thought you liked kids.”
She bit her lip, pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. “I do. You know I do. That isn’t the point.”
“You don’t want my kid,” he guessed.
Flooded with a burst of anger, she slapped her hands down on the tabletop. “Of course I want your kid. I love you, Aidan. Why wouldn’t I want it?” She needed more air, and it was so hard to pull it into her lungs. “If you’d told me from the beginning, if you’d let me know up front…But you lied to me,” she ended on a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Completely miserable, he dragged out a chair and fell into it. “Sam,” he said helplessly. “I didn’t…I couldn’t…”
“You chased after me when I wanted to run away, but you couldn’t tell me.”
His big dark eyes, always so sharp, mischievous, and cutting, would haunt her for months, the total open devastation in them, the glazing of tears. “It doesn’t changeanythingthat happened with us. I chased you because I wanted you. You, Sam, and nobody else. Everything we did, everything we said, I wasthere.” He took a big breath. “I’m all in, baby. All the way. I swear to you.”
Sam stared at him a long moment, gathering her spilled tears with her fingertips, getting her breathing under control. “Do you love me?” she asked.
His eye contact never wavered. “Yeah. I love you.”
It gave her a small strange comfort that it had taken a moment of high emotions to bring those words out of him. They hadn’t been said glibly just before a kiss as a way to lure her. She didn’t doubt their sincerity.
But she doubted completely his ability to understand that with love came a responsibility. When someone gave you her heart, you couldn’t drop it carelessly in a lint-filled pocket and treat it like something disposable. The lack of consideration cut her to the quick.
One more big breath. She didn’t try to keep the emotion from her voice. “I saw her today. Tonya. I saw her with all her expensive finery, cold as marble, heartless and bitchy and cruel, not caring even a little bit about the baby she’s carrying…and I think about that baby being yours, about a piece of you insidethat woman. I don’t care if it’s old fashioned – it breaks my heart to think that she’s the one having your baby. To know that you had to have her before you finally saw me…”
He reached across the table. “Sam.”
