Both so hard I couldn’t breathe.

But I heard Mom sobbing. I felt the wet of her tears in my hair.

“We thought we’d lost you. Oh, my precious baby girl, we thought we’d lost you.”

Dad’s voice in my ear. Agonized. Pain so bad, it cut right through me then burrowed in, never to leave.

Never to leave.

“We thought we’d lost you.”

Lost you.

Lost you.

“Baby, you don’t say something, I’m calling an ambulance.”

I looked at Jacob.

We were on the couch. I was in his lap. His arms were tight around me.

“I can’t lose you,” I whispered.

His chin jerked back. “What?”

“I can’t have babies.”

“Emme—”

“I can’t lose them.”

His eyes went from alarmed to wary and his mouth closed.

“I can’t do it,” I told him. “I can still see their faces.”

Gently, Jacob asked, “Whose faces, baby?”

“Dad and Mom at the police station.”

Understanding sparked in his eyes. His head dropped. His eyes closed. Then they opened and he pulled me closer.

“Harvey knows,” I told him.

“What does he know?” he asked on a whisper.

“What losing someone means.”

Jacob pulled me even closer.

“You don’t identify with him, honey.”

“I know loss,” I contradicted.

“You were lost. You don’t know loss,” he corrected.

“I know loss. For three days, that’s all I saw. And I saw it in Harvey.”

His arms tightened around me as the alarm came back to mix with the wary in his eyes.

“I need to call someone to see to you. It kills me but I don’t know how to give you what you need right now, baby.”

I ignored what he said and announced, “You scare me.”

“Emme—”

“No, you terrify me.”

“Baby—”

I lifted a hand and cupped his jaw. “I can’t lose you.”

“Fuck, Emme.” His words were anguished.

“If you gave me babies, I couldn’t lose them.”

“Honey, let me—”

It was pouring out of me. Truth. Undiluted. I didn’t hold it back. I couldn’t anymore.

I’d been holding on to it for too long.

I could see their faces.

“I’ve loved you since Elsbeth first introduced me to you,” I declared, and Jacob’s mouth closed. “You smiled at me, shook my hand and said something to make me laugh. You were so beautiful. You were so nice. I took one look at you and it felt like I’d been asleep for decades and seeing you, feeling your big strong hand wrap around mine, woke me up.”

He pulled my hand from his jaw, pressed it tight over his heart and didn’t say anything.

Not with his mouth.

His eyes were speaking though.

And what they were saying was amazing.

“I was the fairy-tale princess waiting for her prince to wake her from a deep sleep. And there you were.”

He curled his fingers around mine and he did it tight.

“But I couldn’t have you,” I went on. “If I had something as glorious as you and lost it, I’d be Harvey. Crazy. Alone. Buried under despair. Unable to go on.”

“You aren’t Harvey, Emmanuelle.”

I closed my eyes tight, bent my neck, pressed my forehead against his lips and only moved back when I felt him kiss me there.

And when I moved back, I looked direct in Jacob’s eyes.

“I know I’m not Harvey, honey. But that’s what he taught me. He showed me that despair and he gave it to my parents and then they showed it to me. That’s what he taught me. That’s what he left me. That’s what’s been buried in me for…” I leaned closer, “forever.”

His hand gave mine a squeeze as he murmured a hoarse, “Baby.”

I took in a stuttering breath and continued.

“I understood it. Logically, it came to me and I told you about it. But I didn’t understand it. I didn’t panic about it until I knew I loved you and you told me you loved me. I didn’t put it together that I saw Harvey how lost everything, everything he loved, and what that did to him. I didn’t put it together that, even as I was reaching for it because I wanted it so badly, I wasn’t going to allow myself to build any of that because he’d taught me to be terrified of losing it. Then I saw you with little Jake and you two were so beautiful.” I pressed closer to him and my voice dropped lower. “So, so beautiful, honey.”

He closed his eyes but opened them again when I kept talking.

“I wanted that. I wanted you to give me that, giving it to me by holding the baby we made in your arms. I wanted it more than anything else I’ve ever wanted in this world, except you. But Harvey lost his daughter and for three days my parents lost me and I couldn’t hack it. So I did what was safe. What was familiar. What you knew I was doing. But I couldn’t help it because I didn’t even know I was doing it. I felt the terror of possibly losing you, losing a child I’d made with you, and did what I’d trained myself to do since he took me. I retreated to protect myself from the possibility of that ever happening to me.”

“Baby, I love it that you’re seeing this. That you get this. But we’ve been here before and you still pulled away from me. What happened five minutes ago, it’s clear you aren’t dealing, and like your dad, you haven’t been dealing for twenty-two years. To do that and do it right, you have to talk with somebody,” Jacob said gently.

“I know.”

I watched him blink right before relief, sweet and pure, suffused his features.

“They’re burned on the backs of my eyelids, honey,” I told him.

“Who?” he asked.

“Mom and Dad at the station. But I trained myself not to see.”

He nodded. More understanding.

God. Jacob Decker.

So f**king amazing.

“Are you good with letting someone help you erase that?” he asked carefully.

I didn’t answer. Instead I stated what I knew. What I’d been denying. What, if I allowed myself to understand it, I knew would kill me.

“Dad sees it, like me. I know he does sometimes in the way he looks at me.”

“He loves you, baby.”

Yeah. Oh yeah. My dad so, so loved me.

Tears filled my eyes. “Yeah.”

“You can’t see Harvey anymore.”

Poor Harvey.

Poor me.

I should never have gone to him. It probably wounded him every time.

But I needed him.

Now I didn’t.

But I’d miss him.

Tears slid down my cheeks. “Yeah.”

“And I’m gonna see to you.”

I knew it. I knew he would.

Jacob loved me.

Jacob had always loved me.

My breath hitched and I repeated, “Yeah.”

Then I dissolved.

Jacob pulled me closer, tucking my face in his neck.

And as I leaked everywhere, finally let it out after holding it for so long inside me, Jacob didn’t allow me to fall apart.

In his lap, on my couch, his big strong arms around me, he held me together so maybe… maybe…

I could finally find me.

And then be happy.

* * *

Deck

Twenty hours later…

Deck pulled up to the curb, shut down his truck and swung out.

Before he was halfway up the walk, the door opened.

He stopped at the bottom of the two-step stoop and took in Harvey Feldman.

Not surprisingly, the man looked old and beaten.

Surprisingly, he also looked kind.

“Emmanuelle will not be coming to see you again but if you attempt any form of contact, you’ll be seein’ me,” he stated.

Harvey Feldman closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank God.”

Deck stared.

The man opened his eyes and Deck spoke.

“I see you’re down with that.”

“No, sir. I am not down with that. I get the impression you know what it would be like to lose Emme. What I am is relieved to know that Emme finally has someone looking after her.”

The last part was a surprise.

The first part he did not like.

“I suggest you get down with it,” Deck warned.

His eyes grew intent and he asked, “I assume you’re Jacob Decker?”

This also wasn’t surprising. In the last day, when she wasn’t sleeping, Emme had shared everything including the fact she’d told Feldman everything.

So Deck didn’t answer. Instead, he jerked up his chin.

Feldman nodded. “Then, Mr. Decker, I’ll tell you that the first time Emme came to see me, I knew I had not yet endured my penance. No prison can accomplish that. Being locked away with men like the men I shared time with was not fun. But it is no penance. No.” He shook his head. “My penance was different. My penance was doing what I did because I lost all that I had lost and then God giving me the opportunity to get to know Emme knowing someday I’d lose her too.”