Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,53
left her before that last tour. It would’ve been easy to convince himself that he didn’t know why he’d left her behind rather than bringing her along, but Abe was through with self-deluding lies. He hadn’t taken Sarah on tour because she’d meant too much to him. He’d been in no headspace to love anyone as much as he’d loved this sweet, smart, beautiful woman who’d tumbled unexpectedly into his life. So he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.
He’d been a coward and she’d paid the price for his spinelessness.
“I want to be there,” he said today. “For the whole deal.”
Sarah walked into the kitchen, busied herself chopping up ingredients for a salad. “We can work out visitation for after the baby is—”
“No, Sarah.” Having followed her, he took a seat on the stool directly opposite her, only the speckled gray of her counter between them. “I want to be there for the pregnancy too.” If she’d made a different decision, he’d have gone with her then too. “The scans and the vitamins and all that shit.”
Sarah’s knife stopped moving on the carrots she’d cut into teeny, tiny slivers. Huge, dark eyes lifted to his. “What?” Open disbelief.
He didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. It was time for him to man up and step up. No more hurting her because he was so fucking scared of how much she could hurt him if he let her in. No more being so terrified of losing her to death one day that he’d rather push her away. No more being an asshole who left her alone.
“I want to be there to drive you to the doctor’s,” he said, “and I want to be there when you find out if it’s a boy or a girl.” He took a deep breath, his chest shuddering with the force of his emotions. “I might have been a failure as a husband, but please give me the chance to be a good dad.”
Sarah blinked really fast, then returned her attention to the pale wood of her chopping board. Scraping the demolished carrot into a bowl, she picked up an orange bell pepper and, slicing it in half, began to clean out the seeds. “What about your music?”
The sharp words bit hard. But Sarah had more than earned the right to demand an answer, demand certain promises. “We’re not planning to tour again for at least a year or two, and any other appearances that come up, I’ll check first with you to make sure it doesn’t clash with baby-related stuff.”
Sarah began to cut the bell pepper into thin, rectangular pieces. “The others won’t mind? Fox, Noah, David?”
“Hell no.” He rubbed his face. “It was never about them, Sarah. You know my behavior was my responsibility.”
The magnificent Amazon who was his ex-wife continued to slice the bell pepper, her expression difficult to read. “It’s not a short-term commitment, Abe.”
Putting down the knife at last, she placed her hands on the counter and took a deep breath. “If… if this baby makes it”—one hand going to her belly—“he or she is going to need you always. Do you understand that? It doesn’t matter if life gets hard or if your addictions start howling, or if something horribly sad happens, you still have to be a dad.”
She held up a hand when he would’ve spoken. “I know losing Tessie hurt you. So much.” A thickness in her voice. “But what if your mom dies or one of the guys in the band? Would you still be able to maintain?”
Taking a quick breath, she continued. “Because if you can’t, if you have even the slightest inkling that you might break, then you need to walk away.” No anger in her tone, nothing but a passionate conviction. “I don’t want my child exposed to a father who’s here one minute, gone the next. I won’t have a little boy or girl heartbroken because their daddy disappears for weeks or months at a time.”
Abe took the quiet verbal blows without attempting to defend himself. Hell, those blows were far softer than he deserved. “I’ll maintain,” he vowed. “You can trust me.”
No response.
Panic knotted his gut. “Give me the pregnancy to prove myself. That’s nine months—”
“Four weeks less,” Sarah corrected, a sudden heat in her face as she stole a glance at the counter where they’d come together in naked passion.
Abe’s blood pounded. “Right, eight months, give or take.” He coughed past the roughness in his throat, damn glad she couldn’t see his