Love Survives (Love's Suicide #2)(60)

She stared at her hands as she replied. “I’m not mad at you for coming. I don’t even think Bobby’s mad. He’s just scared.”

I crossed my arms. “Scared of what?”

“He’s scared of losing B. He was there for me when I found out I was pregnant. He married me so that I could be on his insurance. I suppose he’s been in love with me since then, but it wasn’t until recently that we really started living as a married couple. Now, out of nowhere, you’re in the picture and no matter how he plays this out in his head he loses.”

“Why would he think that? I told him that all I wanted was to have a relationship with my daughter. I stressed to him that I meant your marriage no harm. My word is the truth, Kat.” It appalled me that this guy thought I’d swoop in and steal her away. Yeah, I was still in love with her, but I knew being with her was out of the question.

She wiped her face and sniffled more. I couldn’t look into her eyes and not feel bad for her. After she’d told me that her husband married her to take care of her and our daughter, I had a new respect for him. It takes a lot for a man to step up like that. “I know, but he doesn’t know you like I do.”

“Look, I’m not here to discuss your marriage. I’m here because I have a right to see my child whenever I want. I have a right to introduce her to my family.” I pointed at her, determined to get my point across. “Let me get something clear with you right now. You will not keep me from her ever again. Do you understand me?”

She nodded.

“I can’t believe you did this to me. My God, why? Why would you write me those letters, professing your undying love and devotion to me, when all the while you’re hiding my child from me? How could you ever think that I would be alright with that?”

She curled her face and looked away. Apparently the truth was too much for her to handle. It was too damn bad. I wasn’t going to let up until I had answers. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I couldn’t tell you. After the first letter, I wanted to. I even told myself that if a second one came I was going to tell you all about her. Then you wrote me back and when I got it all I could think about was being with you again. I knew if I told you about Bobby and B it would change everything and so I got scared. The longer it went, the more scared I became until finally the letters stopped coming. Brooks, you have to believe me. I wanted you to know. I’ve always wanted you to know.”

I ran my hands through my hair while trying to keep my cool. “It doesn’t even matter now, does it? We can’t go back. What’s done is done.”

She raised her shoulders and sighed. “Yeah. I’m the devil and you wish you never grew up loving me, right?”

“I never said that. Don’t even make this about you.”

“It is about me though. It’s about me and my mistakes. It’s about me holding onto some kind of false hope that someday we could ride off into the sunset with our daughter and live happily ever after.”

All I could do was shake my head. This was impossible. “That’s never going to happen, Kat, not anymore.”

Kat brought her legs up to her chest and put her head down on her knees. “I know.”

For a few minutes we sat there in silence. I didn’t know what else to say to her. I couldn’t change the past, and neither could she. We were both faced with a future. The chain of events that had brought us to this point was from years of miscommunication. We had to fix this because now there was a child involved.

Our child.

Since it was clear she had nothing left to say, I took it upon myself to say goodbye. “I better get going. I need to check in.” I grabbed my keys out of my pocket. “I’ve got a lot of figuring out to do, but I’m coming by here once a day to see Brooklyn. You can choose to be here, or arrange to meet me somewhere that I can spend time alone with her. The choice is up to you.”

When I started to walk toward the door she ran after me. “Brooks, wait.”

I needed to get out of there. Holding it together in front of her was becoming harder as the time passed. I required space; time to take it all in. “Kat, don’t ask me for anything right now. You can’t just throw all this on me and expect us to go back to being the way we were. I’m really biting my tongue from saying what’s on my mind. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. I probably have every right to, but I’d like to think I’m better than that. Besides, I’d never want you to feel the betrayal that you’ve made me feel. So, let’s just call it a night and we’ll see if tomorrow it gets easier.”

She closed her eyes, peering down at the floor. “For what it’s worth, I think she knows you’re important to her. I could see it when you were holding her. She’s young, Brooks. She’ll never be able to remember a time when you weren’t in her life.”

I let out an air-filled laugh, feeling so betrayed. If she thought for a second this would make me feel better, she was dead wrong. “She may not remember, but I will. For nearly seven hundred days she’s been here on this earth and I never knew she existed.”

Then she became defensive. “You were in another country. Even if you knew, what were you going to do? Would you have escaped the country just to get court marshaled and ordered back? Think about it, Brooks. How hard would it have been for you knowing that I left town with only the clothes on my back? I didn’t know anyone here and then found out I was carrying the child of a man who wasn’t going to return for years. Even if I told you, what would it have changed? You missed contact with her since you got here, which has only been a couple of months, in which if I knew you were here, I would have come to you. So tell me, Brooks. Look at me and tell me how all of this is my fault. You left me too, you know. You left me before we even had a chance. No matter if I would have stayed in that hotel room with you, I would have still watched you leave for Afghanistan and that would have been even harder to do. You think I did all of this to spite you. I did it because I knew that either way I was going to lose you.”