and the nurses averted their eyes when she asked about the baby—said, “Wait for the doctor, honey. He’ll explain everything.”
She finally lifted the sheet, saw the dressings, felt the emptiness, the pain, the loss. And then the doctor had finally come, had talked about hemorrhaging, and emergency hysterectomy, and baby girl couldn’t be saved, and so, so sorry, and her sobs finally faded away on a Valium cloud.
—
Jess sat on the hay bale, her shoulders deflated, her eyes full of tears as she finished recounting her final night in Smugglers’ Gully. Cole was dead silent beside her, and she bit her lip as she waited for him to say something, anything.
“I’m sorry, Cole. I never wanted you to know this. Never wanted to relive it myself. I’d buried it and left it behind, and I wasn’t ever going to tell anybody. But then I got the letters, and it’s like hell opened up a black hole and is trying to suck me back in.”
Her voice was all catchy and desperate sounding, and she hated it. It reminded her of thirteen years ago. “I was never going to tell, but that’s not fair. Not to you. I’m so sorry, Cole.”
Still he was silent, staring toward the window, breathing evenly, but his body was as tense as a bull in the chute.
She took another shaky breath. “This—this is why I can’t be what you need. I can’t give you the life you just told me you envision. I can’t give you a big, happy house full of kids. I can’t give you any kids. And God, that would kill me. Because if there’s anything, anything in this world that you deserve, it’s that. You were born to be a father, Cole. Anybody who knows you at all knows that. I could never take that away from you—and being with me? That would take it away forever. I just—couldn’t. I won’t.”
He still didn’t speak, and all of her fears blossomed. She’d known the truth could scare him away. She’d known the risk she was taking. And yet, she’d held out hope that even knowing what he now knew, he’d still be able to look at her like he’d been looking at her for two years, with that mix of desire and affection that melted her knees every single time.
But what man could ever look at a woman the same way, knowing the things that had happened? She wore her scars on the outside and the inside, and they were huge, ugly, jagged ones. What man in his right mind would sign up for that, especially one who wanted children as badly as Cole did?
No man, that’s who.
No man.
She pushed herself off the hay bale, brushing bits of hay from her dress, and still he didn’t speak, didn’t look at her.
She stumbled toward the ladder, waited painfully for him to call her back, for him to look at her, for him to do anything at all, but he was frozen.
Four hours later, the flight attendant taking her freshly purchased ticket on the first flight out eyed her dress and whispered, “You’ve got hay in your hair, darlin’,” before she ushered her down the Jetway.
But it didn’t matter. She’d driven Kyla’s car all the way to the airport at three o’clock this morning with dry, defeated eyes.
Nothing mattered.
Chapter 27
“It’s way too early for a meeting.” Cole squeezed his eyes shut as he took a seat across from Decker’s desk in the lodge Sunday morning.
“Aren’t you the one who wanted to have it?” Decker smiled as he put a pile of paper into a box. “Or did getting together this morning sound like a better idea before you spent the night with Jess?” He winked. “Not much sleep, I take it?”
Cole suddenly found his boots really interesting. “Not a lot, no.”
Like, none.
But not for the reasons Decker was thinking. Where he ought to be right now was Jess’s cabin, down on his frigging knees apologizing for his reactions last night.
After she’d delivered her painful bombshell, there were so many ways he could have reacted. There were so many ways he should have reacted. But no. He’d done none of them. Instead of taking her in his arms, he’d had his fists so tightly clasped he couldn’t even reach for her. Instead of soothing her with kind words, he’d gone completely, utterly, painfully silent. He’d been so shocked that he hadn’t been able to form words, for God’s sake.