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“Can’t?” I ask, not sure I’m understanding him correctly. I can’t be. He wouldn’t do this to me. Make me fall in love with him, knowing he can’t give me everything I’ve ever told him I wanted. He shakes his head again.
“I had the surgery about a year after I left. I was hurting so bad, angry at the world for taking our baby. I didn’t, couldn’t, go through that again. So, I found a doctor that would do it and had a vasectomy.”
My world stops and everything goes fuzzy, my ears ringing. Surgery. Can’t have kids.
“How could you make such a reckless decision?” I whisper harshly and Dean flinches as if I’ve slapped him.
“Reckless?” He grits out, shoving away from me. “Reckless was getting pregnant at seventeen. Reckless, was thinking our relationship would have survived a teen pregnancy. You and I wouldn’t be sitting here today if Everly hadn’t died, Whitley, and you fuckin’ know it.” He says and I shake my head, tears streaming down my cheeks, absolutely devastated. He doesn’t know that. None of us do.
“Did you ever really want her?” My voice cracks with the question, right along with my heart.
“Of course I wanted her!” He punches the countertop, causing me to flinch. “I wanted her just as much as you did, Whit. Don’t twist my fuckin’ words. What I’m telling you is, if we had been dealt a different hand, you and I would not be a we. We were so young, so immature, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
I grip my head, his words whirling around me like a tornado and I stand so abruptly that the bar stool crashes to the ground. I try to breathe through the panic that’s buildi
ng in my chest, something I haven’t felt in years.
“I have to get out of here.”
“Whitley, just listen...” He starts but I cut him off.
“No. No!” I hiss, unable to stop the words tumbling out of my mouth. “I begged you not to break my fuckin’ heart again, Dean. You came back to this town. YOU pursued ME, not the other way around. You chased me knowin’ you didn’t want kids. Knowin’ you couldn’t ever give that to me, and you never once thought about how I would feel?” My chest is rising and falling with each word, each crack in my heart. I’ve never loved anyone, anything, as much as I love this man and Everly, and for him to sit here and tell me that she was a mistake? I storm through the house to the entryway, shoving my feet into a pair of my boots that are sitting by the door. I snatch my purse off the hook, desperate to get out of this house and away from him. I throw the door open and hit the porch.
“God damnitt, Whitley, stop walkin’ away from me.” Dean demands, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me around.
“STOP!” I scream, my voice echoing in the night, bouncing off the trees. The cicadas singing a song in the distance. Crickets chirping. Dean scrubs his hands over his face, his broken, beautiful face.
“Please. Please, let us just go back inside and talk about this.”
“I can’t do this with you, Dean.” I say, breaking his heart and mine. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t want babies with me.” Shaking my head as more tears fall, “I’m not sure I ever really knew you at all. Please, don’t follow me.”
“Let me at least take you home,” he begs, desperation lacing his voice. I shake my head, vehemently.
“No. No, I don’t even want to be near you right now. I’ll walk,” I hitch my purse up over my shoulder and leave him behind, same as he did to me all those years ago.
Dean
I wake with a start, my head pounding. I came inside after Whit stormed off and drank until I passed out. My stomach rolls with the memories, replaying last night in my head. I don’t blame her for being upset with me, I should have been honest with her from the beginning. I could never regret Everly. Was it a reckless decision? Absolutely. I was barely twenty-one. I may not have known a lot back then, but what I did know was that I couldn’t go through that pain again.
I roll over on the couch and am met with a wet nose. Ranger lets out a pathetic wine, making it known that he has to go out. I drag myself off the couch with a groan, letting him out to do his business, and go about starting a pot of coffee. Gonna need an entire truck load to get through this day.
The clock on the stove tells me it’s eleven in the morning. Going in search of my phone once I’ve let Ranger back in, it’s still in my jeans from last night. It doesn’t light up so it must be dead. Once it’s plugged in, I hop in the shower, hoping it will make me feel at least halfway human. I’m toweling off when I hear my phone dinging from the nightstand where I put it. Notification after notification blowing my phone up. What the fuck.
Group message between Ford, Jax, and me -
Ford: Dude. What the fuck did you do?
Jax: Me? Uh… nothing. Why?
Ford: Not you, dumbass. Dean. But you sound defensive. We’ll circle back to that.
Jax: Bite me. What did Dean do this time? Skip town again?
Ford: ::cat laughing emoji:: Not yet. But Lex got a call from Whitley last night, something about walking home from Dean’s because he’s, and I quote, “a piece of shit who broke her heart twice.”
Jax: Ouch.
Jax: Also, walking home. What the fuck, Dean?
