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But it’s the dark expression that finally lands on Lucas’s face that shatters my world.
44
Lucas
Ever since I got the call Monday morning about the boy lost in the mountains, I’d prayed he would be found quickly and alive.
With each passing hour, the odds of that grew steadily worse. And then the flashback hit me while Sheldon and I were retrieving the boy’s body.
Simone’s words feel like that moment when I was barely holding on to the cliff, trying to get purchase.
Only now, I’m not wearing the safety harness.
The accident happened ten years ago, and not once did Simone mention she’d been pregnant. Not once did she mention the baby was mine. I’ve opened up to her about my flashbacks, and she’s been keeping this from me? Every time I told her I wanted to have kids, she’d known that we couldn’t and effectively lied by withholding the truth? I’ve been honest with her, but she’s betrayed me with nothing but lies.
I feel cold, empty. Emptier than knowing I could be spending life in prison. I want to rewind time to when she told me the reason she was upset could wait. Snatch my words before I can say them, delay this moment of truth.
I…I can’t deal with her confession right now—not after everything that has happened over the past three days.
I shove away from the table and stand. I can’t look at Simone. I’m scared I’ll say something I’ll regret later.
So I don’t.
I stalk out of the living room, phone in hand, grab my keys from the hallway table, and bail out the front door.
Simone doesn’t make a sound. She doesn’t try to stop me.
She does what she did when she found out she was pregnant—nothing.
She hadn’t even bothered to tell me I was going to be a father. She was five months pregnant when she lost our baby, and not once—not once did she inform me I was going to be a father.
Not once did she contact me.
I’m not in the mood to push myself on my usual running trail, so I drive toward the lake, to a place where no one will be around to bother me.
“Fuck.” I might have muttered it, but the word screams in my head, ricocheting against the inside of my skull. I want to throw something. Kick it. Whatever it takes.
I might be mad at Simone, but I’m also angry at myself.
I failed her brother and I failed Simone. I fucked up when I returned from my final deployment and never contacted her. Never bothered to check how she was doing. She had stopped writing to me while I was away without giving me a reason or explanation. As far as I was concerned, she was no longer part of my life.
It was the same mistake I made with Aiden. Because of the PTSD and my fucked-up shoulder, I hadn’t made sure he was getting help. I was drowning. Drowning and unable to see he was struggling. And then I stayed away while pursuing my physical therapy degree. I never bothered to reach out to Simone.
When her brother died and I knew she would be devastated, I still didn’t reach out to her.
I’d fucked up in so many ways.
I park my SUV to the side of a dirt road that usually doesn’t see much traffic, and hike through the trees and undergrowth to the narrow path that skirts a portion of the lake.
Christ, how many people knew about the baby when I didn’t?
I think back to the last time we were together while I was in the Marines. I grab a stone from the path and hurl it into the lake. My stream of curses carries in the wind.
Why didn’t anyone tell me Simone was pregnant? Her friends and Rose never so much as hinted there was a baby. My daughter died while I was deployed, but why not say anything when I returned? Not once in all these years had they said or given anything away about a baby.
Zara, Kim, and Emily are good at keeping secrets, but they aren’t that good. Nor are they great actors.
The same goes for Rose.
