AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She nodded. “I know that. Unfortunately, my bleeding couldn’t be stopped.”
He waited, his patience diminishing and his need for details almost insatiable.
“I would have died if they hadn’t … if they didn’t … I had a hysterectomy. I had to.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Her chest felt hollow. “I can’t have any more children. It’s just not possible. They took… they took … I can’t have another child. Milly’s it. And so if you want a bigger family … if you want more children … you need to know that I can never give you that.”
He let her words sink in. Her sweet, beautiful, selfless words. “Ava…” His whisper carried the burden of his grief.
“No, Cris.” She cut him off angrily. “You don’t understand. You’ve missed so much with Milly. That was my fault. I should have told you. I could have. I took it as a sign when you turned me away, and I was scared, and so I told myself that it was just better this way.” Her breath was shaky. “You’ve missed the baby stuff. You’ll never get that again. Not with Milly. And not with anyone else, if you want to be with me.”
His chest was throbbing. He loved her, but her words dug into his core, as they had been designed to do. “I can’t miss any more,” he said finally, simply.
Ava’s eyes were wet. She blinked them furiously, but still didn’t raise them to his face.
“How can I explain this to you?” He said, reaching over and covering her small hands with one of his. “I don’t feel anything right now except for you. I feel pain at your loss. I feel anger – no, fury – at what has been taken from you. At the injustice of this, when you deserve only good things. I will never forgive myself for having not been there for you. I want to always be here for you now, Ava. I want to meet any challenge in your life by your side. By Milly’s side. We are a family, sim?”
But he still didn’t know everything. The past was slamming back into Ava, making her tremble with its strength. Would he want to be a family when he knew how awful things had been for her? Or would he see her as somehow broken and weak? “I was a mess. At first, I thought it was normal. That I was just in shock at having had the …procedure, and such a tiny, prem baby. But Sophie and Olivia suspected otherwise. I was diagnosed with post natal depression.” She dared a glance at him. “I’m fine now. I was lucky to have two sisters who were so supportive. They gave me time to seek proper treatment. It could have been worse.”
“Good God,” he said, pushing to his feet and stalking to the other side of the room. He stared out of the window at the star lit vista beyond. “All this you suffered through, and without me.” His back was moving as he tried to draw breath. “You honestly worry about what you can give me? When I have given you so little? For the rest of my life, I will never be able to make up for this failing.”
“It’s not your failing,” she snapped. “It’s me. It’s mine. My stupid body.”
“Ava,” he groaned, and moved quickly back to her side. “You’re never to say this again. You are perfect.” He kissed her forehead. “None of this is your fault.” He stroked her hair and she was ridiculously comforted by both his words and the gesture.
“Three years ago, I wanted to marry you. I wanted to throw myself at your feet and beg you to promise that you would never leave me. I knew then that a life without you would be meaningless. And it has been. For three years, I have existed and I have survived, but I have not lived. I have not enjoyed a single moment that I have been parted from you, particularly because I believed us to be parted forever. I have cursed my own stupidity and believe me, I have cursed your stubbornness and misguided loyalty to a man who could never please you. And I have hoped with the kind of hope that only a fool would feel that somehow we would find our way back to each other. And we have. Do you truly think I could value more children over a life with you? I will not make the same mistake twice. You pushed me away and I went. I will not go again, Ava. I won’t do it.”
His words danced around her mind. They were music and meaning. But still she tried to be sensible. “You need to think about it.”
“To think about it? About what? About how much I love you? About how I cannot possibly imagine another day without knowing, for certain, that you love me too?”
“What if you change your mind? What if you desperately want more children in a year’s time?”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for? Do you truly believe I would ever leave you and Milly? You alone would always have been enough, Ava. Just you. Milly is, as I said, the perfect silver lining. But you are the meaning to my life, and you have been for years.”
“I just can’t believe it,” she said determinedly. “Is this because you feel sorry for me?”
His groan was mingled with laughter. “I feel sorry for myself, not you. How many times and in how many ways do I need to say that I love you before you believe it?” He felt his heart swell with the truth of his statement. He lowered his voice, hoping his tone would help her see his certainty. “No part of my loving you is a sacrifice. Do you get it?”
He leaned up a little higher. “I want to marry you, more than I’ve ever wanted another thing in my life. I want to marry you as quickly as we can arrange it, and I want to skywrite it all across the world. You are heaven-sent. Please stop worrying that I feel anything for you but desperate, all-consuming adoration.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. Was it possible to feel such joy after so much heartache? One look at his face convinced her that she was right to trust him. “I must admit, you’re starting to convince even me.”
“I should hope so.” He pressed his lips lightly to hers. “You are the only person I want to convince. Well, maybe Milly. We are a family, but Milly didn’t make us one. We did. We were a family three years ago and we were idiots to run from that. Never again. I’m not letting you go again.”
“No,” she let out a huge sigh of relief. “You’re not.”
He stared at her long and hard. “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”
She laughed. “It means I love you. Marriage is … maybe one day. But for now, let’s just enjoy being together. There’s so much for us both to get used to.”
His eyes sparkled. “That sounds an awful lot like a challenge, Miss Henderson.”
“You better believe it.” She cupped his face. “In all seriousness, Cris, you need to be certain. We can’t rush into this, no matter how we feel. Milly is …”
“Going to be an adorable flower girl,” he said with a smile. “When you’re ready. Until then, I shall spend every day showing you just what an excellent husband I’ll be.”
“Mmm,” she grinned. “I like the sound of that.”
* * *
