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Besides him, he meant?
“No. I don’t need a man, Charlie. I forgot that for a while with you, but the reality is I do just fine on my own. Always have. Always will.”
“You’re right. You’re the strongest woman I know.”
She wasn’t that strong. Not really. But she’d fake it until she made it. Or something like that.
Their conversation remained light through the rest of their meal, mostly with Charlie telling her stories about his class at the university and the research he’d gotten involved with. All of which fascinated Savannah.
“How did you end up in cardiology?” she asked after the waiter had taken their dessert order.
“For as long as I can remember, I knew I was going to be a doctor. My grandfather had congestive heart failure and was in and out of the hospital with exacerbations. I remember sitting at his bedside with my mother. His cardiologist came in and I listened to him and knew at that moment that I wanted to specialize in cardiology. From that point on, I’ve never considered doing anything else.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“You’ve known what you wanted to do since you were eleven years old?” she asked incredulously.
He nodded. “I’ve no regrets. I enjoy what I do.”
A memory of the night he’d told her he was leaving for Nashville flashed through her mind. “That’s right. Your career means everything to you.”
* * *
Did it? Charlie wondered. If life were different, if he were different, he wasn’t so sure he’d feel that way.
But life wasn’t different. He wasn’t different. He was a person his own parents hadn’t loved. A person who had caused his own mother to take her life.
Yeah, it was much better for him to focus on his career.
He could control his career.
Emotions and relationships were things that were unpredictable. You couldn’t make someone love you. He’d tried his entire childhood. And even if a person thought they loved you...he’d witnessed time and again over the years as “love” had faded into fights and eventually a breakup. He didn’t fool himself that he was any better than his friends and colleagues. Eventually, he and Savannah would have reached crisis point and everything would have fallen apart. She’d have realized she didn’t really care about him, that he was unlovable.
He’d just sped that process up by taking the job in Nashville. Only he’d been too late. He’d already gotten her pregnant.
“Do you have names picked out?”
Her gaze lifted to his and a myriad of emotions swam across the deep blue of her eyes. “Not really. Any family names you’ve always considered passing along to one of your kids?”
“I never planned to have children.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I guess the responsible thing would have been for me to have had a vasectomy, but I thought we were always careful.”
“I’m sorry I messed up your plans.”
Her words cut deep, echoing how he’d felt most of his childhood, most of his life. Never did he want Savannah to feel that way, for their child to feel that way.
“It’s my fault, not yours. But no, there’s nothing I’d want to pass from my family to our child. My grandfather is the only pleasant memory I have of anyone related to me.”
“The one who died when you were eleven?”
He nodded. “He was the only person who ever seemed to want me around.”
“That’s sad.”
He shook his head. “Nope. That’s life.”
“Not my life.”
