“Jeezus, sweetheart,” he murmured now, gently rocking her, his entire frame shuddering, his voice sounding deeper, gruffer.
Despite the urgency to get home, to wash, to thrust herself into her work, to hammer out her catharsis, she instead opted to remain right where she was. Upon his lap, in his arms. Against his bare, scarred chest, just breathing.
“I haven’t wanted to face this,” she finally said, her crying calming, but the tears still pooling and blinking down her cheeks. “When I lost you, I lost this little part of you, too. In one swoop, I felt like I’d had everything, and then, it was all yanked away in the span of a day. And I didn’t know how I was going to go on. I couldn’t function. Couldn’t call your parents. Couldn’t go to class, didn’t have insurance, couldn’t go to a counselor. I flunked out of school, I spiraled downhill, I tried to date but couldn’t form a decent relationship with any other guy because they weren’t you and I was so afraid of this happening whenever we were intimate. I worked and worked and worked to get back on track. I did what you did. I threw my all into my studies, my accomplishments, and did the only thing I knew how to do and founded All Creatures.
“When I look at Brandon, I see a kid who has no one and was born around the same time our baby would have been due. His mother lost her husband overseas, and she couldn’t cope. She moved from New Mexico to El Paso for a job but lost her soul to substance abuse, signed Brandon away to the state when they removed him. I don’t know how to do anything different than just try to love those who needed it as much as I once did.”
She felt his chest convulse, though no sound came out of him. But he was holding her still, his biceps rock hard and curled around her, his face buried into her as she buried her own into him. She sagged against him, letting his solid arms hold her steady as the broken dam flowed free.
“And then you just walked into that ER,” she whispered, “and it was such a slap in the face. You’d been alive all this time, and everything I’d built in your memory, in the memory of the baby we never got to have seemed like one big lie.”
“It’s not a lie,” he murmured against her, his voice sounding thick and low.
Silence fell upon them. The sound of the trickling water, the shards of glowing sunlight, the swishing of Patches’s tail, the creaking of Handsome’s saddle as he shifted his weight from one heel to the other, the buzzing of insects, played on her senses. She simply basked in his arms and let him hold her.
“My body failed me then, and I lost everything I wanted most.” Having finally given voice to the fear rooted deeply within her, she pulled up and looked at him. “I wanted a family so badly. You say you want that family with me, still, but…what if it fails me again?”
His eyes were red rimmed. One of his hands released its tight, muscled grip, and his palm slid onto her belly, cupping it, holding it.
“Baby, I’m so sorry you were so alone and afraid and that I wasn’t there for you,” he said, his head shaking slightly. “We’re gonna get through this.” His palm tightened upon her stomach, holding her steady, reassuring her. “You’re gonna get through this. I’m gonna damn well make sure of it.”
That protectiveness. She loved him for it.