On Dublin Street The Bonus Material - Samantha Young Page 0,43

forty eight hours later and I was in hospital.”

“You should have told me you had a son.” She’d said that day. So cold. So empty.

Not empty.

In pain.

In so much fucking pain.

Because… no. God. No. Please, no. “Hannah,” he said, hearing the plea in his voice.

Anything but that. Fuck anything but that.

Her tears began to fall, cutting him to the quick. “I miscarried. But it wasn’t just a miscarriage it was something called an ectopic pregnancy. That means the egg implanted inside one of my tubes instead of the womb, but because I didn’t realize I was pregnant, the egg grew until it ruptured the tube and I started bleeding internally.”

Jesus— “You almost died?” Say ‘no’, Hannah. Say no. I can’t—

“Yes. I had surgery. They removed the damaged tube.” And then what she had to say next was what Marco imagined was the emotional equivalent of a sword slicing open his chest. “I lied to my friends and family about who got me pregnant. I protected you. I protected you but you weren’t there to protect me. I had to cope with having a miscarriage at seventeen.” Her voice quivered with pain and resentment that cut his fucking insides to shreds. “And you weren’t there for me. And I know you had your reasons and I tried to forgive and I tried to forget. But you weren’t even back in Edinburgh a few months when you got Leah pregnant. You were there for her, Marco, and as much as I know it’s not rational, I feel like you betrayed me somehow. You were supposed to be the love of my life, but how can you be? You don’t go through what I went through alone and then discover that the supposed love of your life was there for some other girl when he was never there for you.”

Silence rang out around the office as he looked into the tear-stained face of the woman he loved. A woman he’d loved since she was a girl.

All he’d ever wanted was to protect her.

And not only had she suffered through the unimaginable because of him and without him, but he’d hurt her more than he’d hurt anyone in his life.

Hannah.

Self-directed rage burst out from the depths of him, an explosion of emotion he had to release or it felt like it would burn him alive. He was barely cognizant of putting his fist through the wall of the office until her voice, calling his name, stopped him.

“Marco,” she whispered now. Hearing the concern in that whisper undid him.

He would have moved heaven and earth for this woman.

Instead he fucking shattered her world and left her to bleed without him. For years. Then he’d unwittingly ripped open a wound that had never healed.

He would never regret Dylan.

Marco loved his son. Lived for his son.

But before Dylan there was Hannah.

And he’d broken her.

How could he ever possibly fix that?

That’s what burned the most. Because for weeks he’d held onto hope that somewhere down the line he and Hannah would find their way to each other again. They always did.

But this… this felt insurmountable.

He stared at her in anguish, needing her to know in case it was the last time she let him near her, what she meant to him and that he understood. That her resentment wasn’t fucking irrational. “You were this precious, beautiful gift that came into my life when I needed it the most,” he said, remembering a time in his life when he’d felt nothing but anger. Until her. “I never felt safe as a kid. I knew what it was like to not feel safe and I hated the idea of anyone I cared about ever feeling that way. I started to care about you pretty quickly so it feels like I’ve always only ever wanted to protect you, you know. And I didn’t. So I did betray you. And I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sor...” The emotion overwhelmed him, and tears that fucking unmanned him clogged his throat. He dragged his hand down his face, pushing away from the wall as he turned from her, unable to handle the guilt and pain he felt just looking at her.

He heard the door open behind him and Carmichael’s voice asking, “Do you want me to take you home?”

There was a moment of silence and Marco could feel Hannah’s eyes on him. But he couldn’t look at her. At that moment he was paralyzed by a thousand memories.

Young Hannah beaming light on his