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‘I’m clean, I swear. I aced all the tests a year ago for my insurance. And I’ve never done it without.’ His lips stretched into a thin smile. ‘Except with you.’
‘I’m clean, too, but I’m not using any form of birth control. I haven’t had a sexual partner for over a year.’ She began to tremble. ‘Do you have some condoms?’
He cursed and dropped back on the bed, his erection thrusting up, thick and hard. He covered his face with his arm, his breathing ragged. ‘What if I told you, you won’t get pregnant?’
‘Oh, shit. You don’t have any?’ He’d started this without even thinking about protection? With their history? Was he nuts?
So much for Mr Confident-and-Experienced.
He dropped his arm. ‘No, I don’t. I wasn’t prepared to be consumed with lust on this trip. Sorry.’
‘But surely you get into these situations a lot?’ she accused. After sixteen years, she felt like a horny teenager again. And, while she might have had a misguided, misty-eyed moment over that lost boy, she so was not up for a return trip to the sexual frustrations of her youth.
‘Apparently not,’ he snapped.
She looked at his erection, desperate to feel him inside her. But at least she’d had an orgasm. ‘I guess we’ll have to settle for doing it without penetration.’ She wrapped her fingers round his shaft, felt it leap in her palm.
But, to her astonishment, he dragged her hand away. ‘No, we don’t. Listen to what I’m saying. If we’re both sure we’re clean, we don’t have a problem. I can’t get you pregnant.’
Her eyes nearly crossed with frustration. ‘Yes, you could. I’m only thirty-six. I have not gone through menopause yet. Granted, it’s less likely than it was when I was eighteen, but there is no way on earth I’m taking that risk. Especially with you.’
He straddled her, grasping both her wrists to push her into the mattress until they were nose to nose. ‘There is no risk with me. I’m sterile. Firing blanks. Get it? I had a vasectomy nearly nineteen years ago.’
She stopped struggling, her whole body going slack with shock as understanding dawned. ‘How many years ago?’
‘Shit.’ He let go and rolled off her.
‘You had a vasectomy right after I got pregnant?’ She sat up, crossing her arms over her breasts, feeling hideously exposed when he didn’t deny it. ‘Why?’
He swore under his breath, his expression tight. ‘Because I never wanted to get anyone accidentally pregnant again.’ The curt revelation felt like a blow. He caught her wrist. ‘Please tell me we’re not going to talk about this now.’
‘Of course we bloody are.’ She tugged her wrist out of his grasp.
He slapped a pillow over his lap. ‘So much for batting for England. At this rate I may never get another stiffy again.’
She walked over to the dresser, ignoring the pained tone. She pulled out a T-shirt and put it on, her fingers shaking. She knew the black hole opening up in the pit of her stomach was an overreaction. But overreaction or not, she couldn’t seem to stop it.
‘What do you want me to say, Hal? I panicked, OK? I was terrified of becoming a father. That was who I was then. That’s not who I am now. I spent two years in therapy after that breakdown getting myself straight. I made a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes, but I can’t go back and undo them now.’
Firm hands settled on her shoulders, and he turned her to face him.
He stood close, the towel tucked back around his waist. ‘So what’s the point of dredging it up all over again?’
She stared into his eyes. And saw regret and confusion.
How was it possible that he really genuinely didn’t get it?
‘The point is, I still don’t know why you left me.’ Her voice sounded surprisingly calm, she realised, considering the way her heart was battering her ribs. ‘I understand you had a breakdown, but now I know exactly how terrified you were of becoming a father. Enough to go out and do something that would ensure you would never become a father again.’ She gulped down a breath, forced to finally voice the fear that had haunted her but she’d never been strong enough to say then. ‘Did you think I’d tricked you? That I’d got pregnant deliberately? Is that why you didn’t trust me enough to talk about it?’
To know now how much he hadn’t wanted to be a dad, though, brought all the old guilt rushing back. Guilt she’d refused to acknowledge for sixteen years but unfortunately had just found out was still there, festering under her breastbone.
She’d adored being a mum. Because loving Lizzie had been so much simpler and more rewarding than loving Luke. If Lizzie cried or fussed, fixing the problem was easy. With a cuddle, or a fresh nappy, or a quick schlurp of breast milk, or a dose of gripe water and a jiggle until she burped. When Luke looked haunted or hunted and eventually became more and more remote, she couldn’t fix it, because she didn’t know how. Until eventually she stopped caring enough to try.
‘Jesus, Hal, no, of course I didn’t. I knew it was an accident. That’s not it at all.’
He drew his thumb across her cheek, his hand trembling, and the painful sting of tears lodged in her throat.
She caught his hand, pulled it away from her face, the tightness in her chest refusing to go away. ‘Then why did you have to keep so many secrets? Why couldn’t you just be honest with me about how you felt? I spent months after you left torturing myself, convinced it was all my fault. That I’d shut you out somehow after Lizzie was born, that I hadn’t done enough to keep you, and it nearly destroyed me.’
