Hawke (Carolina Cold Fury Hockey #5)(50)

“Was your period late?” he butts in, demanding the details.

“I guess,” I say lamely.

“You guess?” he sneers. “Don’t you keep track of that shit?”

“Yes,” I yell at him. “I guess it just didn’t register to me that I was a little late.”

“Didn’t register?” he says incredulously. “How can that not register? You get it once a month; hell, you timed your f*cking mood swings practically down to the minute.”

His condemnation of me has my hackles rising, and I yell right back at him with derision. “Well, shit, Hawke, you were f*cking me every day, period or no period. Why didn’t you keep track of it? You had the same data I did.”

Hawke drops his ass to the mattress, swings his legs to the floor, and turns his back on me. Resting his elbows on his knees, his head bows low for just a moment. I watch as his muscular back expands with a deep breath and comes out as a misery-filled sigh. He pushes up from the bed, shoulders hunched and with the tired posture of a ninety-year-old man.

When he turns to me, his voice is broken, barely audible. “You should have called me from the hospital.”

I offer a sharp nod of agreement. “I know. As I sit here and look back on it all, I know I should have.”

“And because you were pissed at me,” he accuses, “you cut me out of knowing. You prevented me from sharing in that with you, and giving you comfort. You took away my right to be there with you, all because you were mad at me that night.”

“You chose your buddies over me,” I point out, defending my right to have felt abandoned.

“I chose them over your period cramps, Vale. It was my last night in Sydney. I thought you’d understand that.”

“I didn’t,” I tell him softly…oh, so tiredly. “I didn’t understand. All I knew was that I was in a hospital bed with bloody clots coming out of me with every wave of pain, and it was more important for you to party on your last night in Sydney. It was more important to be with your friends than with the girl you claimed to love.”

“I would have come if you called,” he reminds me again, and this I know is true. The only reason I didn’t call was because I was pissed. And even in that moment, as I lay there with Avery holding my hand and cursing Hawke, I knew deep in my gut that he’d feel terrible about all of this. That the next day, he’d beg my forgiveness, take me in his arms, and soothe away the hurt. He’d share in my grief and make me feel cherished again. I just knew all of that would happen eventually, so it was easy to hold on to my immature anger and not call him from the hospital.

But then something else happened altogether.

Hawke is looking at the opposite wall vacantly, his hands shoved down deep in his pockets. The fight has gone out of him, but he wanted the whole truth, so I’m going to give it to him.

“I didn’t break up with you because of that,” I tell him.

His head jerks my way, his eyes widening with confusion and curiosity. Pulling his hands out of his pockets, he steps around the corner of the bed that separates us and comes to stand before me. “Why, then?”

Taking a step closer to Hawke, I reach out and put my hand on his chest. Right over the middle of his sternum, where I feel his heart beating steady and true. I can almost imagine each beat sucking in knowledge and truth, pumping out pain and grief. “Because you and I were bad for each other.”

“What?” he says, stepping back in surprise. I drop my hand, grab his, and pull it up. I curl both my hands around his and pull it into my own chest, holding it over my heart.

“Something else happened in the hospital,” I begin slowly, hoping I can paint a clear picture of the tailspin I was thrown into. “When the doctor came in to talk to me, she wasn’t very sympathetic to my plight. She smelled the beer on my breath, looked at my tattoos and piercings, wrinkled her nose in disdain. You know how that goes sometimes.”

Hawke doesn’t nod in agreement with me, but I know he does agree. We often talked about people and first impressions. Hell, I know I made an impression on him the first time he saw me. He loved my wildness and piercings; it’s what attracted him, but we also knew it repelled others.

“The doctor told me something that hit me deeply. In hindsight, I think it was wrong of her to do it, but I didn’t know. Not at twenty.”

Hawke’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows hard, but his voice is gruff with uneasiness. “What did she do?”

I squeeze his hand still locked between both of mine and level my gaze at him. I tell him as simply as I can, and try to keep the emotion out of my voice. “She told me it was probably my fault I had miscarried. Went on to list the hazards of drinking and drugs and what they can do to a fetus that early on in a pregnancy. Didn’t matter to her that I hadn’t done drugs, and she never really even asked me my history with alcohol. She just assumed I was a party girl and was pretty clear that, although you could never know for certain, that’s probably what caused the miscarriage.”

“That f*cking cunt,” Hawke growls, jerking his hand out of my hold. His arms immediately circle around my shoulders and he slams me into him. He hugs me tight, protectively, and growls again. “I should track her down and—”

“She was right,” I say calmly, cutting through his anger with the one thing I believe to be true about that night.