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Her heartbeat hitched into an uneven rhythm. Ten years ago that admission would have had her bursting with happiness. She would have taken it as a sign. A sign that she meant something to him. Something beyond the obvious. But she wasn’t that optimistic any more. Or as much of a pushover. And she couldn’t risk letting herself believe again. Because it had already cost her far too much.
‘I guess we’ve both been pretty busy...’ She tried to smile, but the crooked tilt of her lips felt weak and forced.
‘I guess,’ he said.
The husky agreement let them both off the hook. Until he spoke again.
‘That scar—low under your belly button. How did you get it?’
She stilled, unable to talk, struggling to stop her eyes filling with unshed tears.
‘Was it the baby?’
The hint of hesitation in his voice made her heart pound even harder, emotion closing her throat.
She nodded.
His arm tightened.
She needed to talk about this. To tell him all the things she’d been robbed of the chance to tell him then.
Perhaps this was why it had always felt as if there was more between them? She clung to the thought. So much of their past remained unresolved. Maybe if she took this opportunity to remedy that they could go their separate ways without so many regrets?
All she had to do was get enough breath into her lungs to actually speak.
* * *
Dane’s heart thudded against his collarbone. He could feel the tension in her body, her silent struggle to draw a full breath. He’d known it had been bad for her. He hadn’t meant to bring all that agony back. But the question had slipped out, his desire to know as desperate as his desire to comfort her. And for once his anger at her father was nowhere near as huge as his anger with himself.
Whatever the old bastard had done after the fact, Dane was the one who’d stormed out of that motel room and hadn’t contacted her for days.
So when all was said and done it was down to him that he hadn’t been there when she’d needed him. However much he had tried to put the blame on her old man.
‘Can you talk about it?’ he asked, the husk of his voice barely audible.
She nodded again and cleared her throat. The raw sound scraped over his temper and dug into the guilt beneath. When her voice finally came it wasn’t loud, but it was steady.
‘I have a scar because they had to operate. I was bleeding heavily and they...’
She hesitated for a moment, and the slight hitch in her breathing was like a knife straight into his heart.
‘They couldn’t get a heartbeat.’
Hell.
He settled his hand on her head, tugged her closer. The urge to lend her his strength impossible to deny, however useless it might be now.
‘I’m so damn sorry, Red. I should never have insisted on marrying you and taking you to that damn motel. It was a dive. You would have been okay if you’d stayed on daddy’s estate...’
She pulled out of his arms, her
eyes fierce and full of raw feeling as she silenced him with a finger across his lips.
‘Stop it!’
Her voice sounded choked. And he could see the sheen of tears in her eyes, crucifying him even more.
‘That’s not true. It would have happened regardless. And I wanted to be with you.’
