He shut his eyes, and I turned his head just so, pressing my lips gently to the pulse in his neck.  I held them there for a prolonged moment, then pulled back, tilted his head down, and rubbed my lips against his forehead, then down, brushing against his stubbly cheek, his jaw.

He held still and let me, compliant, even passive, under my soothing hands, my forgiving lips.

He was shivering relentlessly, and I warmed him with my touch.  I warmed us both.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I was in his large foyer, about to leave for work the next morning, when he stopped me with a question.

He said it from behind me.  I’d left him soundly asleep and had hoped he’d stay that way for a few more hours.  It had been a rough night.  He needed it.

Also, I’d wanted to avoid this.

“Wh-what—“ his voice trembled, and I thought that perhaps he’d guessed the next part.  “What changed to make you want to work things out?”

The closest chair just seemed so far away.  Like a limp doll, I leaned against the closest wall, then sank down to the floor.

What could it hurt at this point to just tell him?  What more damage could it possibly do?  All of the damage had already been done.  Of course, it had.  Years ago.  No one knew that better than I did.

So why had I run so hard from telling him?

We’d been on borrowed time, and I’d wanted to borrow more.  Another minute.  Another day.  I wasn’t picky.

No.  Just greedy.

I looked up at him as I answered.  I could give him at least that much.  “I was pregnant.”

The words barely carried, and the journey seemed to take forever, but when they hit their mark, it was a solid blow.

He just sort of folded in on himself, his shoulder hitting the wall next to him.

I shuddered, looking away.

A gross miscalculation.  There was so very much left to damage here.

Our ragged breaths were the only sounds to be heard for long, painful minutes.

He came at me then in a way that I had not expected or prepared for.

“How could you keep that from me?  How could you hide that from me?”

Was that anger in his voice?

Outrage?

I was outraged just to hear it, so my answer, when it came, was inflammatory.  “I wasn’t hiding it.  I didn’t need to hide it.  It was no one’s business but mine.”

He came at me then in a way that I had not expected or prepared for.

“How dare you!” he shouted, his voice booming as he pointed at me.  He didn’t come even one step closer to me, as though he couldn’t trust himself.  “You had no right!  No right to keep that from me!”

I was shocked.  I was appalled.

Furious.

“No right?  I had every right!”

“That was my child too!  I had a right to know about its existence and of its loss.  You kept it from me.  That was wrong.  You know it was wrong.”  There was a fine tremor in his low, pain roughened voice and madness in his eyes.

I shook my head, over and over, eyes wide on his face, studying it in hopes that I’d find something I could understand there, because his words were not something I could stomach.  “You have the nerve to talk to me about rights?  Maybe once, for a brief moment, you had a right,” I bit out scathingly.  “And I did tell you.  I came to your apartment and told you to your face, and that is when you sent me home in a car with a ra**st.  You lost all of your rights in that car, along with our child.”

I was shaking in rage, in remorse.  I hated myself for saying those things, even if they were true.

I made my trembling way to a trembling stand, turning to leave, but his words stopped me.

“Liar!  You’re a liar!” he shouted, voice shaking with fury.

I turned back, wondering what awful thing I was about to say or do, because I felt provoked beyond all reason.  “What did you just say?”

He crumpled where he stood, his knees hitting the floor hard, his hands pushing out in front of him to keep him upright.

It was incongruous, a man so huge, so powerful, brought so low with a few awful words.

He knelt, prostrate in front of me.  His pose was a direct contradiction to his tone.

“I called you a liar.”  The shaking in his voice turned to a quaver.  “You said you forgave me.  You told me that six years ago, and you’ve told me since, and that was a lie.  There is no forgiveness in the things you’re holding onto.  You don’t even have a concept of what that word means.  Tell me I’m wrong.”

I took a few steps closer, fists clenched hard.  Even in my fury, I could not help but want to comfort him in his pain.

It was a sickness, I thought.

“Forgiving is not forgetting.”

“You are doing more than remembering, and you know it.  I don’t remember that night.  To this day, the vital parts still escape me, but I want to know.  I hate myself for it.  Don’t you see that?  No matter how horrible, no matter how much it will damage me, I can’t move on, no more than you can, until I hear it all.”

I sat down on the ground, slowly lowered myself until I mirrored his defeated pose just a few feet away from him.  “I will tell you,” I conceded.

We stayed how we were, on the floor, heads bowed for a very long time, and I told him almost everything.