“I’ll have my mom with me,” she said softly, tucking away another shirt into the bottom of the pack. “When our baby comes, I’ll have my mom with me, Nixon. Isn’t that worth something in your eyes?”
My mouth tasted like sawdust. “And just where the hell am I supposed to be? Or am I not a part of this plan?”
She froze momentarily, then folded another set of shorts, reaching the bottom of the pile. “Of course I want you there,” she said softly, looking up at me with heartbroken eyes.
“For fuck’s sake! Don’t you get it? If something happens, I can’t make it there in time. You said yourself, this place is two days away!” My chest tightened. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
“So come down in April.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper, and she rubbed at the center of her chest like her heart hurt just as badly as mine.
But I wasn’t the one running away.
“You come back in April. Do you know how long it will take us to get her a passport once your internship is over if she’s born down there?” Shit, was I even thinking this was possible? What the hell was the infant mortality rate in a camp setup like that? How was I going to protect them?
Liberty tilted her head. “She won’t need it for a while. Breaking Boundaries is set to stay in Brazil for at least another eighteen months, and then I think we’re headed to the DRC, so that gives us—”
I shut down completely and simply stared at the woman I loved lose her ever-loving mind as she walked back into the closet and came back out with another load of clothes that she immediately began packing.
“—at least a year.”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
She packed, packed, packed.
“You aren’t coming back, are you?” I finally managed to ask.
She shoved the last of her maternity clothes into her pack. “Breaking Boundaries mostly hires from within, so there’s an overwhelming chance that I’ll get a job there once the internship is over.” She brought her gaze slowly to mine, then flinched at what she saw. “Oh, God, Nixon—” She walked toward me.
I put my hand out to ward her off. “You were never going to stay.” The realization hit me like a three-hundred-pound linebacker.
She halted two feet and three billion miles away from me. “You knew that. I told you that I don’t know how to stay…anywhere. My mission is out there, helping people.”
“There are people to help right here.” Even as I said the words, I knew they wouldn’t change her mind. She’d never wanted to stay. “You let me build that nursery?” She let me make plans for our future…or maybe I’d done that all on my own, refusing to listen to what she’d really been saying.
She sucked in a quick breath. “I never asked you to do that.”
I rolled my head back on my shoulders and prayed to wake up. This feeling right here was all too familiar. This was the moment you were sacked from the blindside and found yourself staring at the sky, wondering what the hell had just happened.
“I love the nursery.” She moved closer. “It is so perfect. This life is perfect. You…Nixon, you’re—”
“Don’t.” I shook my head. “God, just don’t.”
“Tell me how to make this better.”
“Easy, don’t go!” I gestured to the backpack. “Don’t finish packing. Don’t get your passport. Don’t get on a fucking plane, and don’t take my daughter away from me!”
The color drained from her face as she staggered backward and sat on the bed. “She’s my daughter, too.”
“And I guess possession really is nine-tenths of the law in this case, right? Because it’s not like I can stop you.” My chest ached with every breath I dragged into my lungs. “I thought you loved me?” The words came out just as broken as I felt.
“I do,” she answered softly. “Don’t you see how hard this is? I’ve never put down roots before. I’ve never given my entire soul over to someone because I knew I was leaving or they were. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you, Nixon.”
“It looked pretty damned easy a few minutes ago.”
She rubbed circles on her belly absentmindedly as she looked back at her pack, her face stricken. “I’ve been so focused on achieving the dream that I guess I didn’t realize what it would cost me if I got it.”
“You’re not the only one paying the price. I will. She will.”
“Come with