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Instead, I slipped my fingers around the black chain I always wore and pulled the pendant from where it was hidden under my shirt. I pressed the black pendant between my fingertips and held it tightly for a few more seconds before lifting it between us.
“This is my son…” I risked a glance at Ronan.
His brow furrowed as he stared at what I held. “I don’t understand.”
I flipped the circle of life symbol over, set it on the center of my palm and stretched my hand out as far as the long chain allowed. “We named him Connor.”
Ronan lifted the round pendant from my palm and leaned forward to read Connor’s name and the date of his birth I had engraved on the back. The writing was small but no one really needed to see it but me.
And now Ronan.
“It’s actually an urn that’s filled with some of my son’s ashes. I never remove it.”
His dark eyes flicked from the pendant in his fingers to my face. “Never?”
“I’ve never had a reason to. Not yet. I wear it so he’s always with me.”
Ronan rubbed the pad of his thumb back and forth over the tiny engraved letters and numbers as he stared at it. His face not giving away anything.
But watching that gesture…
I was just glad I was already sitting because I might have fallen to my knees.
When he was done, instead of simply releasing the pendant and letting it fall back to my chest, he stretched forward and placed it back where it belonged. Near my heart.
I wanted to touch him when he was that close, but I refrained and waited for him to sit back and get settled again.
The pendant was still warm from his touch when I picked it up and dropped it back under my shirt. Then his lingering warmth touched the skin of my chest.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Tate. I am. It had to be devastating and I’m not sure if anyone can fully recover from that kind of loss, but…” He paused as if he was carefully considering his next words. “You asked me to come up here tonight to hash things out, right?”
That was true. “Yes, I was hoping to.”
“Then I’m going to be brutally honest. Even after what you just told me.”
“That’s all I want.”
He nodded. “I’m going to give you what you want. Brutal honesty.”
I struggled to swallow.
Ronan had been out of my life for twelve years. I didn’t know what happened to him between then and now, so I wasn’t sure how brutal he could get. But, again, I was willing to do whatever needed to be done.
Even if it meant him slicing me open.
I mentally prepared myself by taking a long, deep inhale, planting both hands on my thighs and making sure my feet were flat on the ground. I nodded, signaling that I was ready.
“If you only married her because she accidentally got pregnant… I understand staying for a while after a loss that great, but… And this is where it doesn’t make sense to me… After supporting and helping each other grieve, you stayed. You stayed long enough to have two more children. Two, Tate. Two who I assumed were planned. I could be wrong but I bet I’m not.”
“I know you can’t understand it, Roe—”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“Tell me how I could have left after that? We were both devastated. It was a huge loss that crushed us both. What made it worse was that she carried our baby to full term. Only to… Only to…”
“Again, if I look past the reason you married her, the reason you stayed after the loss of your son, that’s where I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.”
“Guilt. Expectations. The list is endless, Roe. Why does anyone stay? Did I love her? Yes. Did I love you? Of course. Did I love her more than you? No. But I made a vow to her and I really wanted to keep it. Truthfully, it wasn’t just my guilt that made me stay, it was the fact I wasn’t convinced I was strictly gay. I convinced myself I could live a straight life and be happy. I was wrong.” I tried to live my life in accordance to the expectations of the people around me. My family. Dahlia and her family. My job.
When I was desperate to do right, I ended up doing more wrong.
“Yes, you were wrong because in the end, you didn’t keep your vows, did you?”
That blade he wielded was sharp and sliced right through me. “You’re right. I didn’t keep my vows.”
“Vows you shouldn’t have made in the first place. Yes, I’m being harsh. And I’m not going to apologize for it… Because, Tate—again, keeping with being brutally honest—for years, I suspected her pregnancy wasn’t an accident back then, either. That made it even worse for me.”
