The Boss Project(93)
“Give it a rub. It looks like you could use it.”
His eyes washed over my face before he shook his head. “I’ve treated you like shit the last two weeks, and you offer me something you treasure.”
I shrugged. “It hasn’t been doing its job anyway, lately. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Merrick reached over and closed my open palm, leaving the glass tucked inside my hand. He stared down at my fist for the longest time before lifting his eyes to meet mine. “The day of Amelia’s accident, I found out she was having an affair and was also more than four months pregnant. I knew it was possible it could be someone else’s child, but I somehow convinced myself it wasn’t.” He shook his head. “I was certain the baby was mine. I was so damn angry at Amelia for what she’d done. But I eventually found a way to let some of that go by falling in love with my daughter.” Merrick swallowed. “It was like I had all this hatred and animosity in my heart, and the more I fell in love with a child I’d never met, the more those feelings pushed out the bad ones. I read to her for hours every night, played her all of my favorite songs, and even told her stories about her mother and me when we met in college. The nurses gave me my own stethoscope because I would borrow theirs to listen to her heartbeat all the time.”
It didn’t matter that Merrick had broken my heart, I opened my hand and entwined my fingers with his, keeping my sea glass inside our meshed palms.
“Over the next few months, I had to make a lot of difficult medical decisions. The more time that passed, the more Amelia’s life was at risk. But Eloise needed her mother because she wouldn’t have survived if she was born too early.”
“You had to make all those decisions for them by yourself?”
He nodded. “Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she wasn’t close to many people. But at the time, I wasn’t even sure I knew what she’d want, considering I’d had no idea she was having a long-term affair with another man. After a few months, Amelia’s health took a turn for the worse. It turned out she had some blood clots that were breaking off. It was still pretty early for the baby to be born—only twenty-nine weeks. But I agreed to try a new drug because they were both at risk. It caused Amelia to go into early labor. Eloise was born and went right to the NICU, but Amelia just kept declining. None of the medications were working.”
Merrick paused for a breath, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse. “In the meantime, the hospital had been served with a court-ordered paternity test by the guy she’d been sleeping with. A few days after they swabbed Eloise, Amelia flatlined, and they were able to bring her back. The next morning the social worker came in and told me…”
Tears streamed down Merrick’s face, and mine followed.
He shook his head. “It’s been three years, and I still can’t bring myself to say I’m not Eloise’s…”
The look of pain on his face sliced right through me. I reached up and wiped his tears. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.”
He took a minute to pull himself together before continuing. “When they told me about Eloise, I left the hospital, went to the closest bar, and got piss drunk. I came back and found Amelia’s bed empty.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, God. She…”
Merrick nodded. “Alone. Amelia died alone. I lost them both that day.”
I could barely wrap my head around what he’d gone through. After months of agonizing struggle, everything had come crashing down around him.
He took a deep breath. “I went to see Aaron the other day—the other man.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “He actually seems like a pretty nice guy. He offered to let me get to know Eloise.”
“Wow. Did you say yes?”
“I told him I needed to think about it. But I think I’m going to. There’s a big part of me that feels like I lost a daughter. I know I can never get that back. But maybe having Eloise in my life in some capacity is important.”
“I don’t even know what to say, Merrick.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing you need to say. It’s me who owes you all the words. There’s no excuse for what I did to you, running away when you’d just opened your heart to me. Before you walked into my office that first time, I thought I’d moved on and was back to living. But I hadn’t healed. I’d just shut off that part of my heart. Falling in love with you opened me again. And when we ran into Eloise, everything just came rushing back, so my gut reaction was to shut down again, because that was the way I moved on last time.”
I blinked a few times, stuck on his words. “You love me?”
Merrick cupped my cheeks and looked into my eyes. “I was a goner the day you called me out for being an asshole and walked out of my office. I stupidly tried to fight it because I was a coward, but it was useless.” He pulled my face closer, so our noses were almost touching. “I am so in love with you that it scares the living shit out of me. What I feel is more than a want. I need you, Evie.”
Tears rained down my face again. This time, happy ones. “I love you, too.”
“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Evie. But if you’ll give me the chance, I promise to spend the next, I don’t know—ten years making it up to you.”