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But she couldn’t tell him that. She needed some other kind of honesty that would keep him at arm’s length.
Perhaps she should be up front about what happened after she’d lost her baby. It would mean giving him a window into the poor, sad, weak Beth she’d been back in Deep River, and that was uncomfortable. But there was nothing like mental health issues to keep people at bay.
She sighed. “The issue? You don’t really want to know, Finn. But since you asked…I had some pretty awful postpartum depression. I was sick for…quite a while, and it took me a long time to pull myself out of it. But…” She took a breath and turned to face him, meeting his gaze, because she was brave now. She was brave and positive, and most of all she wasnotfalling back into that pit again. “I got a good doctor and some medicine, and I got better. And I guess it’s an issue because I don’t know whether it’ll happen again with this baby. It might. In which case you’ll have a front row seat, and are you ready for that?”
His gaze didn’t even flicker, as if people told him about their mental health issues every day and it was no big deal. “Of course. If I can handle cancer, I can handle postnatal depression.”
“Finn, it’s not—”
“Let’s just see what happens when the time comes,” he said calmly.
Except she knew what happened when the time came. People couldn’t handle it. People only wanted to support you when you were feeling good. They didn’t want to do the hard work and support you when you were struggling.
Ah, but there was no point in thinking about that. In the end, that had been for the best because it had taught her a certain amount of strength and self-reliance. It had also taught her that no one was going to rescue you.
You always had to rescue yourself.
“So…that’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?” she asked, a little surprised by his acceptance. “Just ‘let’s see when the time comes’?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to talk about it.” He lifted one brow. “Unless youdowant to talk about it?”
Something inside her tugged, as if she really did want to talk about it. Because she had the sense that she could tell Finn Kelly anything and he’d simply nod in that calm, accepting way he had.
Another reason why having him around all the time is a very bad idea.
True. Then again, if she refused, she suspected he’d probably put up a tent in the farmhouse’s yard and camp there for the next nine months, the idiot.
“No,” she said. “No, I do not want to talk about it.”
“Okay. So where are we at? Am I going to move in with you, or do you want to stay at mine?”
God, he was like a dog with a bone.
Beth sighed. “I’d like to see your place before I make any firm decisions.”
“Fair enough. How about I give you a tour when we get back, then? You can take a look around, see what you think.”
Gah. He was being so reasonable. She couldn’t think of a good enough excuse to refuse.
“Yeah, okay.” She tried to hide her reluctance because she didn’t want him asking any more questions. “That sounds good. And what about telling people?”
“How do you want to play it? Shall we wait until we’ve got our living arrangements sorted out?”
She didn’t want people to know at all, at least not until everything was certain, but people would notice if Finn was suddenly in her vicinity all the time. And she couldn’t exactly hide it if they were living in the same place.
Telling Izzy and Indigo was a drama she wasn’t looking forward to though. Not because she was afraid they’d be judgmental. More because of the questions that would be asked about her relationship with Finn.
“We could wait until then,” she said. “Except I don’t know what to tell them.”
“You mean about the pregnancy?”
“No, about us. About our relationship.” She met his dark gaze. “Like…what exactlyisour relationship?”
Something hot glittered briefly in his eyes and then it was gone, that door shutting again.
“Well,” he said, “we’re friends, aren’t we?”
Yes, she supposed that they were friends, though that implied the kind of warm, long-standing relationship that they didn’t have. They were more like…distant friends. Acquaintances even.
