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“Don’t feel bad for not asking.” He lets out a long, heavy sigh. “Honestly, I appreciated that you didn’t pry. People usually want to poke and pester me with questions or offer their apologies and I hate it.”
“I just want you to know it wasn’t because I don’t care.”
He reaches over and slides his hand over mine. “I know that.” He turns and studies my face for a few seconds. “I never talk about it with anyone.”
“Okay.” Does that mean I should ask him more questions or keep my mouth shut? The air around us still feels too uneasy. So, I wait.
His haunted eyes seem to search mine, like he’s trying to see right into my soul. Or steel himself for returning to a time he’d rather forget.
“I mentioned to you once how I got her pregnant when we were in high school,” he starts.
“You did. That must’ve been…rough.”
He nods once. “Her parents went…nuclear. We got married right away. Did all the wedding stuff her mom wanted. But that didn’t make them any happier about the situation. I didn’t care. I planned to ask her to marry me after she graduated anyway. We just moved up our timetable. But they made it clear we were on our own.”
“What did you guys do?”
“We lived with my grandmother for a while. But that was…not a great situation. I was already a prospect for the club. Grinder and Lucky, got me fully-patched into the club and gave me work, so I could afford a decent apartment for Debbie and me.”
“Lucky? You never mentioned him before.”
He swallows and stares at the ceiling. “He and Grinder were best friends back then. He helped bring me into the club too. He died a few years later.”
So much loss and yet Dex is such a caring man. “I’m sorry.”
“Even though things were rough, we were excited about the baby. We…joked about how we were starting our family young, so we could send the kids off to college and still be young enough to enjoy an empty nest. Stuff like that.”
This is excruciating. “You tried to make the best of it.”
“Yeah, it was fucking dumb too because we barely kept a roof over our own heads. I don’t know how we thought we were ever going to save money to send a kid to college.”
“Things could’ve changed,” I insist, although I don’t know why. “You’re a hard worker, I can see that now. I’m sure you were back then too.”
He nods absently like he’s still flipping through pages of his past to share with me. “No one really tells you teen pregnancies can be high risk,” he says. “I mean, they just told us don’t have sex because you could get a girl pregnant. But nothing about how she might fucking die giving birth.”
I gasp but don’t say a word.
Now I have a better idea of how this tragic story ends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EMILY
Sharing my past pain with Dex—telling him about my parents’ murder, admitting the guilt I felt about what Libby had witnessed—had been surprisingly liberating at the time. Dex knows the real me. He accepts and loves every part. I want to help him experience the same kind of unburdening. So maybe we can both heal from our pasts and truly move forward. Together.
I wait through his silence while he battles old demons. I understand his hesitation. The dread of sharing your deepest, darkest pain. I imagine it’s worse for him. For an honorable man like Dex, explaining the death of your wife to a new girlfriend probably feels like a betrayal. Maybe he’s afraid that once I know the truth, I’ll judge him harshly. I understand because I’d felt the same way when I’d shared my stories.
So, patient but prepared, I wait.
He clears his throat, clamping down tight on his emotions.
“I’m so sorry.” I squeeze his hand. “You don’t have to talk about it now, if you don’t want to,” I offer.
He swings his gaze my way and the chilling regret in his eyes freezes my mouth shut.
After a few tense beats, he opens his mouth and I brace myself.
“Carrie was born premature.” He swallows hard and stares straight ahead. “Everyone was so focused on her. No one paid attention to Debbie—my wife.” He grinds his teeth together. “The doctor made some flip joke about ‘the wife is the wrapper; the baby is the candy.’”
I blink and stare at him. “Someone actually said that to you?” Holy shit. That’s so gross.
He dips his chin. “I wanted to fucking strangle him. Debbie wasn’t some fucking wrapper to be discarded. But they made me feel like an asshole for not being as worried about my daughter.” He curls his hand around his neck. “I was worried about both of them.”
“Of course you were worried about both of them.” I can’t even imagine the horror he went through at such a young age. “You were only, what—eighteen, nineteen?”
