Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2)(65)

My mind focused, with morbid determination, on the things I could have done differently.

I sat in that hospital room, moving as close to a sleeping Danika as I could get, and went through every call I’d missed, every message I’d ignored. For hours, she’d reached out to me, but I hadn’t been there, and look what had happened. No woman should have to go through something like that alone. Her phone had died, I’d heard her mumbling to the paramedics earlier. She’d been stranded there, no help in sight.

No matter which way I turned that over in my brain, I was to blame.

I kept vigil over her prone figure through that long night and hated myself. It was a poison, that hate, and once it got in my bloodstream, it stayed there.

The abject horror of finding her the way I had, not knowing if she would live or die, the horror turning into pain at our loss, and finally, that pain turning into a quiet resolve.

What was I doing? What was I thinking? Did I have a right to keep this woman, this beautiful creature with her bright future, in my twisted disaster of a life? Was I strong enough to let her go?

I had no answers. Or at least none that I was willing to acknowledge just then. I had lost too much already.

When she finally woke, she barely looked at me. When I asked her how she was doing, she only closed her eyes, tears seeping out of her lowered lids.

Did she hate me now, too? I didn’t have the courage to ask.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I told her, clutching her hand and crying with her.

I was driving her home before she delivered the final blow, her whisper ragged with grief.

“It was a boy.”

I pulled the car over, my shoulders shaking. Her hand touched my arm, and I turned to her, sobbing into her neck.

“Jared Jeremiah Vega,” she said, her voice devastated.

Broken.

“Jeremiah for Jerry?” I finally found the strength to ask.

I felt her nodding against my cheek.

“It was the perfect name, Danika.”

She’d been crying silently, but now she began to sob. It came out of her in a great, heaving flood.

“This is all my fault,” she told me. “I fell down in the shower that morning, then just went on with my day, thinking everything would be fine. I should have gone straight to the hospital. Then none of this would have happened. We’d still be having our baby boy.”

I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take that she was blaming herself for an accident. “No, no, no,” I whispered tenderly into her hair. “It’s not your fault. Don’t ever say that. I can’t bear it. It’s my fault. I should have been there.”

She protested, telling me it wasn’t, and I didn’t know if it was her tone or my conscience, but I didn’t believe her.

Tragedy never took its full chunk out of you right away. It always took a while to hit you head on, and sink in and for something substantial, some hint of the real feeling, the real reaction, to come to the surface, and this loss was not done taking its toll on us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

DANIKA

After that, it was a slow motion free fall for us.

A quiet, helpless unraveling.

Some days I raged against it with every fiber of my being, but others…others I was as far gone as Tristan, and I didn’t even need to be drunk to get there.

So much had been torn apart with the miscarriage, so many little pieces of us that needed to be sewn back together. Only, there was hardly any thread left. Barely enough for one of us, and certainly not enough for both.

He was gone nearly all the time after that, it seemed. I had no one to comfort me, no one to share in the pain.

I never told Bev or Jerry what had happened. As far as they knew, I’d simply spent a few days at Tristan’s apartment. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I couldn’t make myself talk about it, and though Bev’s keen eyes told me that she knew that something was wrong, I never admitted it out loud.

I visited his apartment for one of his rare visits to town. He was supposed to be expecting me, but it was obvious that he wasn’t prepared when I walked into his bedroom.

I found him alone, lying back against his headboard. I could tell that he was wasted at a glance. With what, I couldn’t say, and didn’t ask.

The what of it didn’t matter.

What mattered was the cause. And the fact that he didn’t hide it from me, when he’d always put some filter on it before, for my sake.

I could tell that he’d just given up.

I didn’t blink. I didn’t look away from his bloodshot eyes, or his shaky hands as he lit a smoke, trying and failing to meet my eyes.

I took it all in, the brutal reality of it, my face wet with tears, my jaw trembling nearly as hard as my voice when I spoke. “What can I do? Tell me, and I’ll do it. Tell me how to help you.”

To save you, I thought.

He didn’t flinch. His sensitivity, his feelings for me, had just deteriorated that much, or he was just that high. It could have been either, or both. There was nothing in his voice when he spoke. Nothing at all, not even an echo of the things he should have been feeling in response to my pain. “You can’t. I can’t.”

“Well, someone has to. Can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself? Can’t you see what it’s doing to me? Don’t you care that it’s tearing me apart?”