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He grins. “Y.A.I.E.”
He’s playing the code game with her. I melt, but she frowns at him.
“That’stoo hard,” she says, placing her hands on her hips.
“It stood for ‘your accent is exquisite.’”
Her mouth curves upward as she returns to her pizza.
All his bullshit about children being a pain in the ass—is it really what he thinks, or is it simply easier than admitting they were something he once wanted but didn’t receive?
He reaches for another slice. “You’ve gotten very quiet.”
I force a smile. “It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.”
“There are worse things. At least I’m not alone while locked in your attic.”
“Are you still on that? You know I wouldn’t have gotten around to soundproofing the room. You’d have heard her screaming by now.”
I laugh and then fall silent. I want to ask him about the crib. I want to know if, once upon a time, hedidwant kids. Except I can’t think of a single way to broach these topics without potentially causing him pain.
After another long moment of silence, he sighs heavily. “You saw the crib, didn’t you? I forgot all about it until you were halfway down the stairs.”
I turn toward him. “I did. It’s none of my business. I was just surprised.”
He swallows. “Kate and I had a daughter. Hannah. She only lived for a few minutes.”
My stomach sinks like a stone. The day they handed me my twins was the happiest of my entire life, the one I’d spent nine months building toward. I can’t imagine reaching that point and having them taken from me. I can’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally reply. “What happened?”
“Meconium aspiration,” he says. My brow furrows and he reluctantly continues. “Meconium is held in the baby’s intestines, but sometimes during labor it gets expelled, and if the baby inhales it …” He stops talking. His voice is lower and quieter when he continues. “She lost lung function. It happened so fast. Kate was holding her and trying to nurse, and then Hannah started gasping.”
“Oh, Caleb,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard for you both.”
“It was hard on Kate,” he corrects, excluding himself entirely. “I wasn’t even there when it happened...I’d gone to this meeting in San Diego and by the time I got to the hospital, itwas too late. She went through the whole goddamn thing alone.”
He hasn’t said it directly, but there’s blame in his voice. He’s holding himself responsible for some reason, but then…he’s the sort that would. There are men in the world who blame everyone but themselves. He’s the opposite.
“It wasn’t your fault, Caleb,” I reply. “You know that, right?”
“I should have been there. There were signs I might have noticed. And I wasn’t there for Kate afterward, either. She completely fell apart. I avoided it because work was easy and she was hard. This whole fucking thing, start to finish, was my fault.”
This is why he waited for a woman he hasn’t heard from in nearly a year, a woman who stole from his corporate accounts and God knows what else. Because he thinks he’s the reason she did it.
“Caleb, you were grieving too. Maybe you couldn’t deal with Kate because you were trying to keep yourself afloat.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t grieving, Lucie. I just wanted to work. My dad was exactly the same way. Sometimes it’s best to accept your limitations early on.”
“So you work too much. People change more significant pieces of themselves than that.”
“Except I don’twantto change,” he replies. “I’m responsible for a company and I don’t ever want to be responsible for anything or anyone else.”
It seems like a really lonely way to go through life. And I also don’t believe him. He says he didn’t grieve. He says it was hard on Kate. But Caleb cares about things a lot more than he lets on, and there’s no way what happened didn’t hit him hard.
He’s punishing himself with all this enforced isolation, and some ridiculous part of me is already hoping I can change his mind.
