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“We tried for the second one. The third one, if I’m being honest, we were trying to save the marriage. When we lost it, it broke her. She still had all the hormones, but she’d lost three babies and I think we both knew the marriage was over. I came home that night and she was on the bathroom floor.”
I’m quiet and he doesn’t blink. Just stares straight ahead.
“The thing is, I knew it was bad. I didn’t realize it was that bad for her. But I thought that it would just take some time. We’d talked about separating, but we wanted to stay friends. I’d agreed to go to counseling with her, but I hadn’t made the time for it. If I’d just gone to counseling, maybe… or if we hadn’t been so damned stubborn and called it what it was after the second time, maybe we wouldn’t have put her body through all of that, and maybe…”
He clears his throat and pinches between his eyebrows.
“Anyway, we separated. It was hard. I took the assistant job at Portland and she stayed in New York.
“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t waste any time getting back out there. One of my first nights here, I, uh… I took a woman home. The next morning, I woke up and she was gone. And I had a panic attack.” His voice is soft and almost frantic, like now that he’s started, he can’t stop telling me everything.
“I couldn’t stop going into the bathroom to check the trash for the used condom. I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t broken, or that I hadn’t imagined using one. The woman hadn’t left a number and for the next nine months, I was broken. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I’d been reckless. Or that she might show up, pregnant.
“I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for me,” he says, letting out a shaky breath. “And I’m embarrassed that I have to tell you about a one-night stand I had five years ago. But at that point, I was working in Portland with this guy, Sam Hirschfeld, and we went to Vegas and he hired a couple of girls.
“I knew what they were, that they were being paid to spend the evening with us. And then it was too easy to fall into that. The woman I was with, she reassured me that she was on birth control and that we would use a condom, and she… God, you don’t deserve this—” he cuts himself off, his face pale, and he sits on the top step.
I slide down to the same step he’s sitting on and thread my arm through his. He stares at me, his face blank as if he doesn’t know what’s happening or what to think of it.
“It’s okay,” I say. And I realize as I say it, that I mean it. He’s been through trauma, and over the past few years, he got through it the only way he knew how.
“You don’t mean that,” he says. “I haven’t even told you the worst of it.”
“What’s the worst of it?” I ask, blinking up at him. Somehow, deep down, I know that it’s not going to make any of this worse. “Did you get someone pregnant?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head.
I arch an eyebrow.
He catches my expression and lets out a short, wry chuckle. “No one other than you.”
“Well, that’s something.”
He lets out a deep sigh but doesn’t move, as if he’s afraid that if he shifts even ever so slightly, I might shift away from him.
“I know it’s no excuse,” he says. “But I was a thirty-year-old man with a healthy libido. And after a couple of recruiting trips to Vegas, I realized I needed something more regular. So I let Sam fix me up with this woman here. An escort.”
“Karlie?” I ask.
He nods. “She only wanted to take on one client if she could. So it worked out for a while.”
“Was she married the whole time?” I ask.
He nods again.
“And I’m pretty sure he knows. I didn’t really dig for those answers. You met him. He has some medical issues and was supportive in whatever way a spouse can be supportive. It’s not really my thing to judge someone else’s marriage. But I got the sense they’re both reasonable, consenting people.
“Anyway, it just became easier to stick with that, knowing it was never going to go anywhere. We would never evolve our feelings. She would never ask for a child. I wouldn’t have to worry about getting her pregnant. I wouldn’t have to worry about what my getting her pregnant would do to her.”
He takes a deep breath and turns his head, his cloudy blue eyes capturing mine.
“And then I met you.”
“And then I got pregnant,” I say.
He nods slowly, not taking his eyes off me.
“If you hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would’ve come for you exactly the same way I did. I hope you know that.”
