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Stiffening, he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought we talked about this and you agreed we were better off not getting married.”
“Yes!” she snapped. “Because I can’t trust you. Because you left me to deal with everything by myself. I’m thrilled we didn’t get married if that’s the kind of man you are.”
He didn’t flinch and God Almighty she didn’t want to respect him for taking whatever she dished out. But it happened all the same.
“Isn’t that the point of not being over it?” he asked more gently than she would have thought him capable of. “Deep down, you’re still mad because I walked away from our wedding.”
Is that what he thought she wasn’t over? Agape, she stared at him for a moment, but he didn’t seem to catch how very far off base he’d veered.
“Are you that dense? I lost a baby, Keith. My future child. Then you walked away. I was expecting to grieve together. To process, with you holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be okay.”
“Cara... I...” A dark shadow passed through his expression and he clamped his lips into a thin line. Without a word, he slid his palm into hers, squeezing tight. Painfully tight, but she barely registered the pain when it couldn’t compete with the ache in her chest.
He’d reached out. Finally.
Eyes closed, he sat frozen, anguish playing across his features. Speechless. Keith’s silver tongue had deserted him, and it touched her more profoundly than anything else he could have done or said.
This was clearly difficult for him. But he was here and it encouraged her to go on, to spill the blackness inside that had become frighteningly real, very fast.
“The pregnancy was an accident. But I wanted that baby,” she began slowly, sorting her thoughts as they came to her. “Then it was gone. Well, not really gone. They don’t tell you that. Instead of going to Aruba on our honeymoon, I got to have a D & C.”
“What is that?”
“It’s...not something I care to relive.” She shuddered and Keith pulled the blanket up higher around her shoulders with his free hand. “Look it up later if you think you can handle it.”
With a small growl of warning, Keith tipped her chin up to force her to look him in the eye. “You handled it. By yourself. I’d like to think I’m at least as strong as you. Tell me. I want to know what happened.”
The fire in his expression rendered her as speechless as he’d been mere moments ago. A strange flutter in her midsection scared her because it felt a bit like panic. Panic. If he’d morphed into a man she could lean on, who wouldn’t desert her to deal with the horrors of a miscarriage aftermath by herself, did that mean she could trust him this time?
How would she know?
There was only one way to find out. “I think I need more wine for this.”
Instantly, he complied, filling her glass nearly to the brim. And then he listened without interrupting as she told the unvarnished tale of the day before the wedding when she’d felt shuddery and nauseated but assumed it was nerves until the bleeding started. He didn’t butt in when she mentioned how Meredith had sat with her through the interminably long wait in the doctor’s office until the miscarriage was confirmed.
And then Cara described how she silently carried the knowledge that the pregnancy had terminated through the rehearsal dinner, smiling woodenly while friends and family toasted the couple, but slowly fading on the inside. Over the past two years, she’d often wondered if he’d picked up on the vibe because he’d been so quiet that night.
But in retrospect, he’d probably been dreading the ceremony and mentally preparing himself to enter into a union with a woman he didn’t want to marry.
In the cold light of the current conversation, she realized he had been there for her in the simple fact of being willing to marry her. Had she failed to give him enough credit for that? It couldn’t have been an easy decision to make or to carry out.
Coupled with his solid presence tonight, she just didn’t know what to make of the still-present flutter that felt a lot less like panic now and more like anticipation.
Over half of her glass of wine remained, but she abbreviated the story of the day after the abandoned wedding. Some details were too much to repeat, but judging by the increased pressure on her hand and the bleakness in Keith’s gaze, she’d given him enough of an idea what happened during a D & C to make the point.
When she stopped talking, Keith pulled her against his chest and held her fiercely, wordlessly. But no words were necessary to absorb the strength he’d offered her.
