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“Sure,” I say, wondering where this is going.
“Can you tell me about Sara?”
Oh shit. My heart stops.
Can I tell this woman about her without completely breaking down? I don’t fucking know. I’m going to have to tell her about Sara at some point, she’s a massive part of both mine and Georgie’s life, and if this is going to go anywhere, I have to be open and honest about everything. Gigi deserves no less.
My hands start to shake, and a part of me feels as though I need to keep this all to myself, but not sharing with Gigi how amazing Sara was would be a tragedy. “Sara was my high school sweetheart,” I tell her, finding the words coming out much easier than I ever thought. “She transferred to my high school when I was sixteen, and the second I saw her, I had to have her. She was this blonde goddess and she blew me away. I’d never met a girl like that before. Naturally, she refused to go out with me because she wanted to settle into the school, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
“I can imagine,” Gigi says, listening to my story intently.
“I have to admit, I was a bit of a ladies’ man back in high school, so she caved pretty quickly, and the rest is history. I married her as soon as I could, and two years later, she fell pregnant.”
“Then you had Georgie,” she says.
“And then we had Georgie.”
“Your message said that she passed during childbirth?” she questions.
I let out a breath as the memory of that day hits me. “Yeah, Georgie was stuck and going into distress, so Sara had to have an emergency C-section. Georgie was born and placed on Sara’s chest, and she instantly fell in love with her. It was honestly the best moment of my life.” A smile settles across my lips, remembering the feeling like it was yesterday. “It happened so quickly. One second, she was being stitched up, the next, Sara was unresponsive and bleeding out. She’d hemorrhaged and they couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
I finish off my story and look up at her, only her eyes are down and that crease between her eyebrow is there once again. “What hospital was this at?” she questions.
“Yours,” I tell her.
Her eyes close and she looks broken. “Sara Waters,” she breathes, as if realizing something I can’t quite figure out.
“Yeah.”
“Shit,” she curses under her breath.
“What’s going on, Gigi?” I ask, already dreading her answer.
She looks up at me with tears in her big eyes and her heart on her sleeve. She tries to blink them away, but all that does is make them fall down her cheeks. “I remember it. I was working that day,” she whispers. “Sara wasn’t one of my patients, but I was there at the end.”
Fuck.
I don’t know what to say. The woman I want to date was present for the worst moment in my life. She was there when I fell to my knees and screamed for my wife. She was there when I broke down into tears. She was there when I refused to look at my daughter.
I feel fucking sick.
I bring my elbows up on the table and rest my head in my hands. I honestly have no idea how to feel about this. She witnessed it all. How am I supposed to move forward from this? Would something like this make a relationship stronger, or should I just back out now before I start pushing her away?
“Are you okay?” her soft voice asks from across the table, her hand dropping to my arm.
I raise my head out of my hands and look at her. “I, ahh . . . don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I think that’s going to take a second to process.”
“Okay,” she says, tightening her lips and pushing herself up from the table. She makes her way around and takes a seat next to me, sitting as close as possible without actually touching me, and I find it somehow puts me at ease. “I’m sorry I said anything. I just thought it would be best to be upfront and honest rather than having you find out later.”
“No,” I say. “I’m glad you told me. I was just blindsided by it. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Me either,” she says.
“I should have known it could be a possibility,” I tell her. “You work exactly where it happened, same ward and everything. I was stupid not to consider it.”
“No, you weren’t,” she murmurs quietly beside me, a sadness in her eyes. “Do you need me to go?”
My eyes flick up to her, and I realize that’s the last thing I want. I turn my body to face her and reach out. I pull her hand into both of mine and look down at them connected. Her hand is soft and welcoming in mine, and I find I really like it there.
