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“Nothingin my life has ever hurt as much as that night. I still remember the confusion over knowing I wasn’t ready to be a mom but being devastated over what happened. I spent the next two months refusing to talk to anyone. Mom forbid me to tell anyone what had happened. Apparently, that would have been a blight on our family name. Looking back on it from an adult’s perspective, I can understand why she’d think that way. But she chose not to see how acting like nothing had ever happened would fuck me up. And it really did.”
It’s so hard to remember the shell of myself I turned into that following year.
Cade drops back down onto my couch and stares at the floor.
He holds his shoulders tight as he tries to process everything I just laid at his feet.
So I push on while I still have the strength. “I spent the next year withdrawn. Max and Becks were away at college. You were gone. You know I’ve never really had a big circle of friends to start with. So I existed. I went through the motions until I graduated and left for college. My trust kicked in when I turned eighteen, so I was truly on my own for the first time. I found myself a good therapist and worked through my issues. But it took a long time to stop feeling like it was my fault. My brain knows it sometimes happens in pregnancies, and there isn’t anything I could have done about it. But my heart will always hurt and wonder if what happened was my fault. Logic doesn’t factor into it.” My lips tremble as I tear open all these old wounds that healed so many years ago but now feel as fresh as they once were.
Cade slides my hair away from my shoulders and cups my face. Agony coursing through his veins, visible in his every movement. “There are no words that can tell you how sorry I am you had to go through that alone, Scarlet. I’m so sorry I hurt you so badly.”
I step out of his hold, desperate for the distance as much as I crave his comfort. “You didn’t hurt me, Cade. I had a lot of growing up to do. I was a young girl who thought she knew it all. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like. I’d never seen one in person. Not between my parents. Not between my mother and me. Even my relationship with my father was strained. He knew how to parent the boys. He just tucked Lenny and me into our Fabergé boxes and placed us on our pedestals. We were pretty to look at and good for decoration but not much else in his eyes. I had to learn who I was and that I was worthy. Then I needed to make my own healthy decisions as I figured out how I wanted to live my life on my own terms.”
“Why not tell me years ago when it happened? My cell phone number has been the same since I was fifteen. If not then, what about months ago when we first reconnected? Why keep this from me when I should have been there to help you?”
I dig through the shoebox filled with the story of Cade and me until I pull out a bundle of envelopes tied together by a red string. They’re all sealed and addressed to Cade. “I did tell you. I told you so many times. I told you twice that summer after it happened. Then I told you once I started therapy. They’re all there.”
I hand him the envelopes, then cross the room to stare out my window at the city beneath us. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger, Cade.”
Cade looks at the envelopes for a long moment, then moves next to me.
His hand grabs my shoulder and turns me to face him.
What I worried I’d see in his eyes is nothing compared to the mix of hurt and anger pouring off him in waves. “Were you ever going to tell me? What the fuck, Scarlet? I didn’t know my own daughter existed until she was practically dumped on my doorstep after she’d been born. Did you think I wouldn’t want to know this? That I wouldn’t care? Don’t you trust me?”
“Cade. I...” I don’t know how to answer him.
He drops his hand from my shoulder. “I trusted you completely. With my heart. With my daughter.” He shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how hard that was? You broke my heart in high school. Then you came back into my life, and it was like things just clicked into place. They fit. We fit. It was hard to trust you, but I got over it before we became an us. It’s been months. You could have told me at any point, and you chose not to. You chose to lie to my face.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No. I never lied.”
“A lie by omission is still a lie, Scarlet.” He swallows and clenches his jaw. “It’s been months. Months. You could have told me at any point. But you didn’t. You told me you loved me but not that we lost a baby. A baby I never knew existed.”
Cade backs away from me and throws the letters I handed him moments ago at my feet. “I need some space.”
“You’re leaving? I thought you said you wouldn’t leave, that you’d always fight for us.” I may have thought I was prepared for what this would feel like, but I was wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for this—having my heart ripped out of my chest. “That’s it? You’re giving up?”
He shakes his head and pulls his keys from his pocket. “I need some space.”
Cade walks out without so much as a backward glance.
Slamming the door behind him.
I knew this was how it would end.
But it still didn’t prepare me for this misery.
