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Her mom seemed to think about it. “I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the other factors.”
“What other factors?” Alexa asked.
“If he was compassionate when you talked about the accident, if he understood withholding the information was wrong, if he was sorry.”
He was all of those things, but Alexa wasn’t sure she wanted her mom to know that.
“Did you tell him about your medical situation?” her mom asked. “I imagine that’s something he didn’t have access to, even as a police officer. HIPAA is no joke.”
“I haven’t talked to him since our fight last weekend,” Alexa said.
“So he doesn’t know about the hysterectomy,” her mom said.
Even after all these years, the words still hit her like a punch in the stomach, just like they had when she’d woken up and the doctor had told her about her punctured uterus, the bleeding that had been so profuse they’d had no choice but to give her a hysterectomy to save her life.
Up until then, she’d never given much thought to having children. Why would she? She was young. Her whole life was ahead of her. She had decades to think about whether she wanted a family.
But having the choices, even the possibility, taken away so suddenly had hurt more than any of her other wounds. Of all her injuries, it was that one that made her feel most broken, most incomplete.
“He doesn’t know,” Alexa said.
Her mom nodded. “Do you think maybe that’s what’s really scaring you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The accident is out in the open now,” her mom said. “How much further behind can the conversation about your injuries be? How long before you feel like you have to tell him about the hysterectomy?”
“You think I sent him away because I’m scared of what he’ll say when he finds out?” Alexa asked.
“I don’t think anything,” her mom said. “But I know you haven’t dated anyone seriously, and the fact that you’re upset about this man makes me wonder if you don’t like him more than you’re willing to admit to yourself.”
She knew it was the truth as soon as her mom said the words. She’d lashed out at Nick because she liked him.
She really, really liked him.
She’d spent twelve years focused on her health and her career, taking pride in the fact that she didn’t need anybody else to feel complete. Then Nick Murphy peeled her off the sidewalk at Copley Square and for the first time, she’d begun to feel like maybe something had been missing.
It was terrifying. She was terrified.
Telling him about her leg, pieced together with enough hardware to set off metal detectors in the airport, was one thing. Telling her she would never be able to have children was something else.
It didn’t matter that it was the twenty-first century, that she knew she was so much more than her ability to bear children: losing that ability, that choice, made her feel like less than a woman.
What if Nick saw her that way too?
She’d pushed him away, hadn’t even really given him time to explain. In the wake of his confession, in the moment before she’d told him to leave, there had been a feeling she hadn’t been able to define.
Now she knew it for it what it had been — relief.
It had been the out she’d been subconsciously looking for, the excuse she needed to reconstruct the walls she’d built around her heart, walls she’d torn down for him. Now no one could blame her for pushing him away.
Not even him.
“I liked him,” Alexa admitted.
“I’m getting that feeling.” Her mom smiled. “Don’t look so grim, honey. It’s not a death sentence.”
“What if he can’t… be with me?” It was the big question, the one she was most afraid to ask, the one that assumed Nick could forgive her for the way she’d behaved, that assumed the allegations against MIS were false, that there was a future for them in spite of all the obstacles.
