Written in the Scars(50)

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

“Just open your mouth and say it and be done.”

When she pulls her hands away, the wateriness is back. Her gaze is heavy on mine, like she’s trying to tell me without words.

I can’t look away. Not that I want to, but if I did, I couldn’t.

“Ty,” she says before her voice breaks and the tears stream again. I don’t reach for her, not this time. I’m pinned in place, frozen to the spot on the ground just a foot or so in front of her. “I . . . I . . .” She presses her lips together, her face turning a warm shade of pink. “I was pregnant. And I lost the baby.”

Everything stops.

Everything except the steady flow of tears down her beautiful, pink cheeks and the drop of my stomach into an abyss that’s more bottomless than I ever imagined.

I’m sure I misheard her, something about her miscarrying a baby? Does she mean the one we lost a few years ago?

Looking into her tear-stained face, I know that’s not the case.

I think I’m going to be sick.

“What?” I ask, taking a short step back in case I spew my dinner at her feet. “What did you say?”

She doesn’t answer me, but she doesn’t have to. The pained look on her face, the sadness that is smeared across her features, the devastation I can see plain as day written all over her tells me all I have to know. My hand shakes as I draw it over my eyes, trying to break the numbness settling over me.

“I . . .” Words are on the tip of my tongue, yet evade me. “When? How did I not know this?”

“I’m sorry,” she says before a full-blown sob breaks the night air.

Her cries are muffled as I press her against me, unable to do anything but hold her. Her agony rips from her body and into mine, shredding the fibers of my soul. It’s a slow, agonizing torture listening to her grieve for a child I didn’t know existed, a life I can’t yet bring myself to believe was real.

“I called to tell you . . .” she says into my shirt. “So many times. You didn’t answer.”

My mind spins like a top, trying to grab something to work from. “When did you find out?”

“A few days after you left. I went to the doctor because I thought I was having a nervous breakdown and found out that I had been pregnant.”

Coughing back the vomit that creeps up my throat, I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again, her word as broken as my heart. “I’m so sorry, Ty.”

“My God, Elin. Don’t apologize,” I scoff, fighting back the first set of tears I’ve felt since my father passed away.

Her hands twist in my shirt, her knuckles pressing into my back. They shake as she unfurls the suffering she’s been holding in.

Kissing the top of her head, I take a deep breath and try to calm my nerves. “I don’t know what to say.”

She places a single kiss to my sternum before letting me go. Her face is streaked with mascara, her lips swollen. “There’s nothing for you to say, nothing you can say. I lost the baby. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry!” I say gruffly, my throat clenching shut. “Damn it, Elin. This is not your fault.” I pace a circle, my sneakers stomping against the brown grass. “I just . . . I should’ve f*cking been there for you. Damn it!”

“I needed you.”

My mouth opens in an attempt to respond, but nothing comes out. They say the truth hurts. That’s not true. The truth blisters, and I feel it in every cell in my body.

“There’s nothing I can say right now that will tell you how sorry I am,” I choke out. “I should’ve been there for you.” I look at her stomach.

Would it have been different had I stayed? Did I cause this? If so . . .

“I needed you so much, prayed so hard you’d come home and help me,” she whimpers. “I was so scared, and I just felt like I’d failed. First I couldn’t get pregnant, and then I couldn’t keep it. I was so scared.” Her words are cut with an agony I’ve never heard before, a sound I’d give anything to make go away.

“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “Don’t go there. Don’t even go there, Elin.”

Tugging at my hair, feeling the pull of my roots stinging as they rip away from my scalp, devastation hits me full-force.

“If I’d known, I would’ve been here. I swear to God I would’ve.” I bite back a surge of emotions I can’t explain. “Were you alone?”

“I had Lindsay,” she whispers. “I was just dealing with this, sitting on the bed with Lindsay and feeling . . . ripped apart, I guess. Destroyed. As time went on, I got madder at you for not being there. All the sadness just consumed me, Ty. I was so—I am so—angry. Bitter, even.”

My hand finds her shoulder and I pull her into me before she can fight it. “I can’t handle the idea that you experienced that without me.”

“Me either,” she breathes. “I don’t know if I ever will. It’s like this entire process is now stained, every piece of it just another terrible memory.”

“I get that,” I say softly, “I do. But it’s not a good enough reason to end us.”

She nuzzles into my chest, her arms clasping around my waist. “You had a right to know, and I was wrong for not telling you.”