Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,12
never looked fragile. Sarah was tough enough to kick his ass and tear him a new one.
It was exactly what she’d done the times she’d found him with drugs.
“For the things I said the night you left me”—God, what the fuck had been wrong with him—“and for the bastard I was during our marriage.”
Sarah stared at him before turning to face the lake once more. “Fine.” The word was flat. “Good-bye.”
Abe flinched. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t want it to be easy. He wanted her to be angry with him, wanted her to be full of fire… wanted to know he hadn’t doused that wild, rare fire with his ugliness. “I don’t expect forgiveness,” he began, “but—”
“But what?” Sarah turned on her heel. “This is part of some twelve-step program you have to complete to lay your demons to rest?” She shoved at his chest with her hands, the shawl dropping unnoticed to the soft green grass. “How damn noble of you!”
Her touch rocked him to the core. It always had. “Sarah—”
“I don’t want your apologies! In fact, I don’t want to see your face ever again!” Each word was punctuated by fists pounding against his chest. “Go. Away!”
Abe was a big man. He could take Sarah’s fury. What he couldn’t take was the shimmer of tears he glimpsed the moment before she spun away. “Sarah.” He pulled her into his arms without thinking about it.
“Go away.” A whisper this time, her voice wet and her body no longer of the valkyrie who’d launched into him. “Please go away and let me grieve in peace.”
It hit him then. Today’s date. Eighteen months to the day since Sarah’s baby had been born, a painful fact Abe knew because he’d never been able to stop himself from listening for anything to do with her. The little guy had never taken a breath outside the womb, never known his mother’s smile or her love. Because Sarah would’ve loved her child with a fierce will. It was what she did: love so deeply that she didn’t hold anything back, didn’t protect herself.
Sarah had no walls or shields when she loved.
And that was when Abe knew he was wrong. The baby had known Sarah’s love—she would’ve loved him from the day she first learned of his existence.
“Ah, sweetheart.” He didn’t release her, couldn’t release her when she was so very hurt. He just held her as the sun inched lower in the sky, and at some point, she began to talk about her baby, about her boy.
“I named him Aaron,” she said in a voice husky with withheld tears. “I always liked that name, but originally I planned to call him Luther, one of my other favorite names.” She stared out at the water, her cheek against his chest and her arms folded up between them. “But he looked like an Aaron when he came out.”
She swallowed. “When I talked to him, I called him Baby Boots because of how he’d kick inside me… But it was important he have a proper grown-up name too, so officially I named him Aaron.”
Speaking through her sobs, she described her baby boy with his perfect little nose and his tiny hands and his round belly. “Why didn’t he breathe, Abe?” It was difficult to understand her now, she was crying so much. “Why couldn’t I keep him alive? I tried so hard. I did everything the doctors said. I ate the right foods—”
And then there were no more words, only Sarah breaking in his arms.
Lost, helpless, Abe just held her and he wished to God that he could take her pain. He knew what it was to lose a young life, what it was to watch small hands go still and a small face stop smiling. But unlike Abe with his sister, Sarah didn’t have any living memories of her baby, no echoes of joy to balance out the agony of loss.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so goddamned sorry.” He rocked her in his arms, and when he saw a security guard heading toward them as if to say it was closing time, he gave the man a look that said his life was forfeit if he came any closer.
The guard went in another direction.
And Sarah, she just cried until he didn’t think he could bear it… but he did, because no way in hell was he leaving her alone. Not this time. Not even if her tears tore him in two.