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She could have argued, but it didn’t matter anymore. That part of her life was gone. She didn’t know if he wanted to sleep with her again, or to be her friend, or what, but she didn’t want any of it. She’d talk to him because Ellie was right…she needed to, but then he was leaving and she didn’t want to see him again.
“Anyway, I didn’t take care of myself. Not your fault. Mine. I should have, but I didn’t. I fell asleep at the wheel while driving to a shoot. I woke up in Emergency and my baby was gone.”
“Your baby?” he asked in a faint voice, surging up from the bed and falling almost immediately back to sit on it—as if his legs would not hold him. “You were pregnant?” he croaked.
Should she have softened the blow some way? Probably, only she didn’t know how. What else could she say? “Yes. And we were so careful, I don’t know how it happened, but it did and I didn’t protect my baby and I’ll never forgive myself,” she admitted the deepest pain of her heart.
“The first time…we were not so careful.” He was gray beneath the dusky tone of his skin. “Our baby…is dead.” This time, the shimmer in his eyes was obvious moisture and a tear slid down that he seemed totally unaware of. “You almost died. I did not protect either of you,” he grated in a voice like sandpaper.
“It wasn’t your job.” It had been hers and she had messed up. Horribly.
“So…after the…” He paused, swallowed and made a visible effort to pull himself together. “After the baby, you stopped eating altogether?”
“I starved our baby…I deserved to starve myself.”
“No!” He grabbed her shoulders, his expression like the damned. “No, Amber. Do not say this…do not think this…not ever again!”
“I can’t help thinking it.” Truth was like that. It wouldn’t leave you alone.
“You must. It is wrong. So very wrong. You lost the baby after the accident, no?”
“Yes.”
“If you had starved the baby, you would have lost it before that…the baby depleted your strength when you had none to give. You gave the last of yourself to the baby and nearly killed yourself in the process.” Another tear slid down his cheek and he swiped at with impatience this time, as if annoyed with his own weakness.
“I killed our baby.”
Miguel thought he might be sick. He had thought he had hurt before, but the pain of missing her was nothing like this. To know that she had almost died…that their baby was dead. It was worse than anything he could imagine…except maybe if she had died. And for her to believe it was her fault when he had been the one to let her down.
Every word was a slashing knife wound in his heart. He did not know the words to convince her otherwise, but he had to try. “You might as well say I killed her, because you would not have been so distraught if I had not rejected our love.”
He wished he could believe she thought that, even a little. She should, but it was so clear she was taking all the blame on herself and he could not stand it.
“We never said we loved each other.”
“But it was there all the same, was it not?”
She shook her head.
But he knew she lied. She had loved and so had he even if he had been too stupid to see it until too late. However, he was not going to push that particular issue right now.
This was more important. “You are not responsible for the death of our baby.”
“Yes, I am. If I had been taking proper care of myself—”
“Which you would have been if I had not hurt you, if you had realized you were pregnant, but you did not.”
“I should have.”
“No, why would you? You had never even had sex before me…you had no experience with these things. You had every reason to believe the nausea was a result of stress. You’d learned your father was not who you believed him to be, your life was changed irrevocably…I had let you down when you needed me most.” Would he ever forgive himself for that? He did not know, but he would do his best to spend a lifetime not repeating that mistake. “Your stress level was phenomenal. I should have recognized love when it smacked me in the face, but I did not and you and our baby paid the price.”
He shuddered inside with the knowledge of how close he’d come to losing them both.
“No…I…You don’t love me, Miguel.”
“I do.”
She shook her head and he almost smiled. But he was hurting too much for even dark humor to get through. Only if he had ever considered a woman’s reaction to him saying he loved her, it would not have been denial. But maybe with this woman and the way he’d treated her, it was the only reaction that made sense.
