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CHAPTER 10
Kylie
I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d expected Dylan to say, but what he’d just uttered was way more horrific than I could have imagined.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Jesus! No wonder he was carrying so much pain.
The only thing Damian or Nic knew was that Dylan had tragically lost a woman he was apparently dating.
So really, nobody had ever known the real depth of his loss.
Until…now.
He’d lost a woman he loved, and his unborn child in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, he also seemed willing to shoulder all the burden for what happened, even though it was an accident, and it wasn’t his fault at all.
“I know this means nothing, but I’m so sorry, Dylan,” I said as tears of sorrow for him flowed down my face. “It was an accident. It certainly wasn’t your fault, but I can only imagine how hard it was to lose someone you loved and your child in a matter of seconds. So you kept seeing her death over and over again in your head?”
God, how horrific would that be? To witness something like that once, and then not be able to stop seeing it happen countless times every day.
“Yes. I couldn’t seem to get it out of my brain that if she hadn’t impulsively decided to cross that street because she was angry, the accident never would have happened. She would have still been talking to me at the curb, and that bus would have rounded that corner without killing her,” he said grimly as he shifted positions.
Dylan fell back onto the pillow and wrapped his arms around me as I sprawled next to him, one leg still over his thigh and my head cradled on his shoulder.
He kept his hand buried in my unruly hair like he needed that connection, and I wasn’t about to complain. If he was willing to relive the most painful moments of his life, I wanted nothing more than to give him any kind of support I could.
“You can’t torture yourself with those kinds of thoughts, Dylan. It will drive you completely insane. All of the ‘what ifs’ are easy in hindsight, but they could go on forever and ever. What if the bus had left just a little sooner or seconds later? What if that impulsive move had happened ten seconds later? What if, what if, what if. It was out of your control. You couldn’t have prevented it from happening any more than you could have controlled Charlotte’s actions. Grieve your fiancée and your child for as long as you need to, but you have to let go of the guilt. It will eat you alive,” I said solemnly.
“I think it already has, don’t you?” he asked. “It’s not just the guilt. It was a pretty gruesome scene, and I relived those five or ten seconds of watching her die. For a while, it was like a loop in my head that just kept playing over and over. The sound of her body hitting the bus, the blood, and the way her broken body flew through the air before she landed on top of another vehicle. She was unrecognizable, Kylie. And I wish I could have just grieved, but it was a little more complicated than that.”
My heart was breaking, and I couldn’t imagine being that close to someone I loved and watching them die in front of my eyes. Even worse, Dylan had been seeing his child die right along with Charlotte.
I have to focus on him right now. I can’t get distracted. He needs me to be the rational one while he’s telling this story.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“Her death left a lot of unanswered questions that I’ll never know the answers to, and that was probably one of the hardest things to accept,” he said in raspy baritone. “Long story.”
“I have nothing but time,” I replied, knowing that Dylan really needed to tell someone what really happened. “Tell me the whole story,” I coaxed gently.
“It’s not pretty,” he warned.
“It doesn’t matter. Just talk.”
“Charlotte’s family and mine have known each other for a long time. We were acquainted as children, and we ran in the same circles. I was four years older than she was, so we lost touch when I went to university, and we didn’t reconnect until a few months before her accident. I was attracted to her, but I never intended to have sex with her right after that charity event. It just…happened. She seemed determined to seduce me, and as you’ve pointed out before, I’m no innocent. We started dating after that. Two months later, she told me she was pregnant.”
“So you were in love, and you asked her to marry you,” I surmised.
“I was shocked at first,” he explained. “I never had unprotected sex, even with Charlotte, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think it couldn’t happen. I’m not convinced I was actually in love with her, but I cared about her, and I told myself that those feelings would eventually grow over time. After the initial surprise wore off, I was honestly excited about being a father. The whole idea grew on me until I was determined to make things work with Charlotte. She told me she wanted to get married as soon as possible, before she started to really show, and I agreed a few days after she told me she was expecting. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance to tell my family before Charlotte died. Mum knew that Charlotte and I had reconnected and that we’d gone out a few times, but that’s all she knew. Damian and Leo were out of the country, so I was waiting until they came back so I could share the news with all of them together and in person. Leo and Damian were both coming back that week, and Mum already had a family dinner planned.”
“So no one knew she was pregnant except you? Or that you were engaged?” I asked.
“Only her parents, and I told Charlotte to ask them not to share the information until I could tell my own family. I was planning on taking Charlotte to that family dinner to break the news. I thought it was rather unusual that she wasn’t in any hurry to actually get her engagement ring, even though I’d proposed that shopping trip several times. Once the decision to get married was made, and she told her parents, it was like she lost interest in any of the details.”
“It’s definitely odd,” I mused.
“It gets even stranger,” he said drily. “Charlotte moved in with me two days before her accident. Everything seemed to be going well until the night before her death, when I mentioned that I wanted to be with her for her first ultrasound. She was only ten weeks, so I knew I couldn’t find out the sex, but she said they wanted to pin down her due date. I was anxious to get my first glimpse of my child and hear his or her heartbeat. By that time, I was a very enthusiastic future father. However, Charlotte made it very clear she didn’t want me there, even when I told her I wanted to be with her the night before. That’s what we were arguing about on the street the next day. She didn’t want me there. She didn’t want me to drive her. She didn’t want a car or driver. All she wanted was to leave, and for me to go away. Nothing she was doing made any sense, but I followed her down the street, trying to reason with her.”
