More Than Anything (Broken Pieces #1)(80)

She was starting to hyperventilate. Fuck! What the hell?

“Tina? Shit. Calm down.” He stepped away from the sink, bottle forgotten, as his concern for Tina took precedence over even Clara’s angry cries. He placed a tentative hand on her back. “Come on, sweetheart, follow my lead: in . . . slowly . . .” She attempted to follow his breathing, clearly familiar with the technique. “Good girl. Now out. Through the mouth. That’s right.”

His soothing tone was starting to calm Clara down as well, and the baby’s shrieks were dwindling to sad, hiccupping snuffles.

“I’m sorry,” Tina was saying, repeating the words over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to help. I want to. But I can’t. I can’t, please don’t ask me to. I can’t.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he reassured her, confused and alarmed and so damned terrified to ask her why she couldn’t help. “I won’t ask you to. I promise. She’s better now, see? I’ll give her a bottle. I think she’s exhausted herself.”

Tina let out a heartbroken sob as her tear-drenched eyes took in the no-longer-crying, but still fussing, infant.

“She’s not sick?” she asked again, still rocking back and forth.

“No. She’s fine,” he repeated, keeping his voice gentle even though he was screaming inside. Helpless to do anything to make this better for her, when he had no idea where it was coming from.

Tina knew how she must look, how she must sound. And she knew she owed him an explanation.

“Better now?” he asked quietly, and she nodded, sucking in a deep, cleansing breath as she attempted to return to normalcy. He gave her an intense, probing stare before striding to Clara’s baby seat and checking on the fretful infant. Tina watched him enviously; he was so adept at that, so good with the baby. She owed him more than an explanation: she owed him the truth.

He returned to the kitchen sink, picking the bottle up again and darting the occasional wary glance to where Tina still stood, her feet seemingly glued to the living room floor.

“I had a baby.” The words came tumbling out, louder than she’d anticipated, and Clara, who had been blessedly quiet, started crying again. Tina cringed at the sound, but she continued. Determinedly avoiding Harris’s eyes. “I had a baby, and he died. He died . . . and I can’t stand the thought . . . I can’t hold . . . I can’t. I can’t. Please. I can’t. I want to. I wish . . .” She shook her head, knowing she was making no sense, hating how crazy and illogical she must sound. But she couldn’t find her words, couldn’t control her emotions, and—when she found the courage to sneak a glance at him—she hated the look of complete shock on Harris’s pale face as he stared at her in horror and dismay.

Clara’s cries were building, and Tina clapped her hands over her ears in an attempt to block the sound out. She couldn’t stop shaking—her teeth felt like they were rattling around in her skull, and she could do little to disguise violent trembling. Harris seemed to snap out of his reverie and walked to the baby seat to lift Clara and soothingly rock her. He passed Tina again on his way back to the kitchen and removed the baby’s bottle from the counter where he had left it. He tested the temperature on the back of his hand, the one cradling Clara, before transferring the rubber nipple to her eager mouth.

Tina wiped her wet face with the backs of her hands and turned away from him. She was desperate to escape and retreated to her bedroom, excruciatingly aware of his eyes on her back as she fled.

The knock on the door—when it came half an hour later—was quiet. She had been expecting it, but it still made her flinch. She hadn’t locked the door, knowing that to do so would only delay the inevitable, and—even though she didn’t call for him to enter—the sound of the handle turning didn’t surprise her.

She was curled up on her bed, her back to the door, and couldn’t see him as he entered the room. She felt the bed depress behind her and tensed even further, bracing herself for what was to come.

She expected angry demands, furious questions . . . but what she got was a gentle hand on her back and a quiet, achingly tender voice with a simple invitation. “Please. Won’t you tell me what happened?”

“I got pregnant,” she said, after a long, fraught silence as she debated what to tell him and how much. “I had a boy. A beautiful baby boy. I named him Fletcher. He was perfect. I had him for nearly two months. My parents had sent me to my aunt in Edinburgh, and they were all trying to pressure me into giving him up. They kept reminding me of my future, of college. But I refused to give him up. I knew it would be hard, but I fully intended to keep my baby and go to medical school when he was older. He was mine, my perfect boy, and I loved him.”

His hand never paused in its gentle stroking of her back, and it encouraged her to reveal more. Secrets, long held, pouring from her in a soft, halting voice.

“My pregnancy was difficult, complicated. I was young and stupid, and I didn’t take care of myself the way I should have. He was born two weeks early . . . there were complications, and they were on the verge of performing a C-section. But after a long labor, he was born naturally. He was so small and needed respiratory support. I was terrified I would lose him, but he was such a fighter. After he gained another half a kilogram and his lungs strengthened, they allowed me to take him home.