I won’t look at him. If this is what he’s doing, he doesn’t deserve to see me cry. Then again, maybe it would be good for him to see my pain.
“See that hill over there?” he asks, bringing the car to a crawl. He points to the other side of the lake. “This road used to go right through there. That lake was really two lakes until a few years ago. We had a flood and they joined, the road went underwater, and they never separated.”
“I didn’t even know that could happen,” I offer.
“One night, when I was younger,” he gulps, clearly fighting with the words to this story, “I was out here screwing around with a friend. We’d been to this campfire at a barn out that way and were racing to see who could get to town first.”
The car stops along the side of the road. He turns the top of his body to me, but his eyes are glued to the hill.
I look from where he’s looking and back to him. “What happened?”
“I was going too fast. My tires hit the gravel the wrong way and I caught air.” He cringes, balling one hand in a fist. “It rolled, almost going into the water right down there.” He points again to a little spot dotted with tall grasses.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I gasp.
He nods, forcing a swallow. “I am. It’s one of those blessings Mom used to talk about. Out of a really ugly situation came one positive. I survived.”
Reaching out, not sure who needs the contact more, I place my hand on his arm. I feel him relax beneath my touch, but he doesn’t say a word about it.
Instead, he takes a deep breath. “I … um .. I was dating a girl then. Britt was her name. And she broke up with me right after that.”
“Good for you,” I tell him. “She sounds like a jerk.”
The car fills with a silence that comes right before a shoe drops. The air is heavy, pregnant, even, and I can barely breathe through the weight of it all.
I drop my hand as he puts the car in park and flips off the ignition. I consider getting out and walking back to town because I’m not sure if I want to hear whatever it is he’s going to say.
“Lance—”
“A couple more minutes. Please,” he chokes out. He waits for me to indicate my willingness to hear him out before continuing. “You don’t deserve to think that me telling you this won’t work out between us has anything to do with you.”
“Lance, stop it.”
“I should’ve been completely honest with you. I thought … I thought I was protecting us both by just walking away. I’d keep you from having to make a hard choice and me from having to hurt my ego a little.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, my heart threatening to beat so hard it sends me into cardiac arrest. The uncertainty about where he’s going with this is killing me and my hand is on the door to get out of the car. It feels too cramped in here, too small, not nearly big enough for whatever this bomb is that’s going to fall.
“Britt left me because I couldn’t meet the conditions she had for her life. She, like you,” he says, eyeing me carefully, “wanted the entire thing—marriage, a little house … a family.”
“I don’t understand …”
The gorgeous green eyes I love blur with unshed tears. It causes mine to react the same way, even though I don’t know why.
I grab his hand, holding it in my own, even though I shouldn’t. Even though I know better than to get any more tangled up with this man who’s already broken my heart once.
“Mariah …” He looks at me completely unguarded. Completely broken. “I can’t have kids.”
I feel myself flinch, hear the rush of a swallow drop into my stomach. “What?”
“The accident fucked me up.” He hesitates. “I’m sterile.”
Sterile.
I sort through my mental dictionary and make sure I’m not confusing that word with another. This is not a word you mistake and react to incorrectly.
As it dawns on me what he’s saying, his features smoothen into an emotionless mask, it breaks my heart. This is why he lied to me by omission.
“Oh, Lance,” I say, the words bound up together as I force them by my lips.
He works a finger around the inside corner of his eye and then around his nose. He sniffles, like he’s just clearing out his nostrils, but I hear the fear, the sadness.
I reach across the console, my arms going around his neck. Right or wrong, I can’t stop myself from hugging this beautiful, broken man as a tear slips down his cheek. He squeezes me so tight I can barely breathe, but I’m positive I don’t need air to survive right now. I just need him and for him to know I’m here.