Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(94)

More silence, more things breaking in the kitchen.  I could hear his heavy, ragged breaths catching as he moved.  He was not taking this well.

“I did.  I set them on the coffee table and went to pour some shots.  I didn’t want to read the papers without a drink.  I didn’t think I could handle them.”

There it was.  All of the puzzle pieces fit right into place.

“And Dean, I take it he was near the coffee table when you turned your back?”

More things broke in the kitchen.  And then his ragged breaths were directly behind me.  “What did that letter say, Danika?”

I took a few deep, steadying breaths.  “It was short.  An ultimatum.  Essentially, it said that if you went to rehab, I wouldn’t divorce you.”

I sat there for a long time, even after he’d left the room, my mind in dark places.

Regrets were such useless things, and even so, it seemed impossible to dislodge some of them.

So many mistakes on both our parts, and here we were, six years later, still dealing with the aftermath.

I loved him every bit as much as I ever had, and that love was more useless than it had ever been, even now, when I could get through to him.

I found him out back sitting on a lawn chair, staring into his pool.  He was bent forward, fists clenched.  He looked wound up so tight that he might just curl into a ball at any second.

I stroked his shoulder and he jerked like he’d been shocked.

I touched him again, and this time he seemed prepared for it.  “Come on.  Let’s go to bed.”

I led him by the hand up to his bedroom, and he let me.  I certainly couldn’t have moved him otherwise.

Slowly, tenderly, I stripped him and then he me.  I tugged him under the covers with me.  I hugged him tight, trying to ease the frigid remorse that was gripping him.  It had me in its grip as well, so I knew better than anyone how the touching helped.

We held each other for a very long time before he spoke, his voice rasping out, breaking on some of the words.  “I would have gone to rehab, even as f**ked up as I was back then, if I had seen that, I would have gone.  I thought you were dead set on staying away.  I thought you were so done with me.  If I had read that letter, everything would be different.”

“It’s no use,” I told him gently.  “We have enough to contend with.  We don’t need to harbor these regrets, as well.  We’ve got to let it go.  The past is the past, and we cannot go back.”

Those words weren’t only for him.  I was still convincing myself, as well.

I pulled his face closer, and laid my lips very softly on the corner of his mouth.

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!”