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And crying? It didn’t take a genius to figure out where he’d been.
He didn’t belong up there. He didn’t belong in there.
“Genevieve—”
“Get out.”
“Genevieve—”
“Get out,” I reiterated when he tried again. “Get out!”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Killian demanded, ignoring me. He pointed hard up the stairs as he asked, “Why haven’t you changed the goddamn room? Sleeping in the guest room? And his nursery? You can’t live—”
“Can’t?” I repeated incredulously. The audacity of this man! My hold on my temper shattered as three years of buried anger and pain bubbled to the surface uncontrollably. “You don’t get to tell me what to do! You left me! You left me, Killian! Alone and bleeding in the hospital! You lost every right you had to say anything! About anything!”
“You can’t live like this, Genevieve!” he exclaimed, matching my anger. “It’s not healthy!”
“You know what’s not healthy? Telling the hospital staff that I didn’t have a clue where you went! Having to go file paperwork to register his stillbirth alone! Having to figure out if I should have him cremated or buried alone! Going to pick up our son’s ashes alone!” I shouted. My chest heaved painfully, sobs tearing through me. Each memory decimated one more wall I’d built to protect myself—the pain and guilt of it all was unbearable. “I did that! Me! Not you! No, because you couldn’t be bothered with any of it!”
“Don’t you fucking dare act like that’s why I left,” he growled.
“I wouldn’t know, would I? Because you didn’t tell me! You just walked out of my life and left me there to deal with all of it!”
“I never meant for you to go through all of that alone! You should’ve told someone!”
“Told who?” I shrieked. I gestured around us wildly as if that’d help demonstrate my point. “Tell who what? I didn’t have a clue where you were! And no one knew about him! It was supposed to be you and me! You were supposed to be there for me! I only wanted you.”
“I’m sorry!” Killian hollered.
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? What good does that do me? Where was your sorry when I had to come home? By myself? And try to recover?” I demanded. “Where was your sorry when I got sick because part of my placenta had been retained, and I had to drive myself back to the hospital? Alone!”
“I got that call,” he admitted quietly. I balked. I knew he was my emergency contact, and I didn’t remember much about that first day back in the hospital. How I managed to even drive myself was a God-given miracle.
“You got that call?” I repeated with disbelief. “You got that call, and you… what? Dismissed it? Told them to fuck off in true Killian Byrne style? Did you even answer the call?”
He fell silent, staring at me hard. That told more than he ever could.
“You coward,” I said, and my voice stuck in my throat. “You never even answered the call. You listened to a goddamn voicemail. You didn’t care.”
Together, we shattered.
The next thing I knew we were both yelling—screaming and spewing three years of pent-up anger at one another. I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, and my words definitely fell on deaf ears. There weren’t enough words to say what I needed to say—what I needed him to hear after three years.
Three years of crying myself to sleep.
Three years of smiling so the whole damn town didn’t know.
Three years of dodging questions I couldn’t answer.
Three years of wondering who he was with and what he was doing.
Three years of hating the woman in the mirror for what happened between us.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t.
I grabbed the nearest thing I could—a coffee mug—and threw it across the room. It smashed against the wall behind him, shutting him up.
