Love Online(50)

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “She blamed you?”

“Not entirely, but she’d say things like ‘Are you happy now?’ or ‘Admit it, you’re relieved’. That killed me. That killed me so much. I never would’ve wished for the miscarriage.”

I closed my eyes to fend off tears. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d been carrying so much guilt over this.

“The thing is, I wasn’t relieved. I’d committed to giving fatherhood a hundred-percent effort. I just never had a chance to prove myself.” He paused. “She had to have a D and C, and they somehow were able to determine that it had been a boy. That was fucking painful to know. But she wanted to know the gender.”

My heart broke as I imagined the little boy who never was, one who looked just like Ryder, with his eyes and smile. That choked my heart.

“So, you couldn’t come back from it—the loss. You and she…”

“No. We couldn’t. She resented me—hated me at times. And I distanced myself even more after that. We eventually broke up.”

“You never fell out of love with her, though.” I braced myself for his answer.

“Not immediately, no.”

“So, you don’t love her anymore?”

He looked like he was struggling with how to answer that. “A part of me will always love her, but not in the same way I once did. I’m gonna be honest with you and tell you that before you came along, I wasn’t fully over her. But that changed when I met you.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, knowing he’d still had feelings for her right before we met.

“Do you have a photo of her?” I asked.

He stopped to think. “Yeah…somewhere on my phone. Why? You want to see a picture?”

“Yes.”

Ryder gave me a look like he thought my curiosity was cute, then reached over for his phone and began scrolling through his photos. I didn’t feel like I was being cute at all. I felt like a jealous bitch, but my curiosity would have killed me.

He handed me the phone. “This was taken probably a month before we broke up.”

Now I regretted asking. She was beautiful—tall with long, thick black hair. Her eyes were almond-shaped, and she had plump lips that I suspected were natural and not injected.

I cleared my throat. “You said she’s engaged now?”

“Yeah. Actually, I never told you this, but right before I first came out to Utah, I ran into her and her fiancé. It was the first time that had happened, and it was easier than I’d expected it to be. I wished them well.”

That’s closure, right? “Thank you for sharing all of this with me. I’d always wondered what happened with you and her. Although I never imagined it was something like this.”

“It’s pretty crazy to think I’d have a toddler now. I try not to think about that, but sometimes it crosses my mind.”

I brought his face to mine and kissed him on the lips. “Just seeing how you are with Ollie, I know you would have been an amazing father.”

“Once I got my head out of my ass, maybe.” He sighed. “I’ve changed a lot since then, matured a lot. But it doesn’t change what happened and the pain associated with it. It’s something I’ll always have to live with.”

I placed my hand on his stubbled face and turned his head toward me. “Look at me. You did not cause that miscarriage. Do you understand? No matter how you felt at the time, your feelings had nothing to do with her losing the baby. Nothing.”

“Rationally, I know that…”

“But you have to believe it. It’s okay to feel guilty about feeling the way you did, but please don’t ever blame yourself for what happened. Let go of that idea right now, Ryder. It’s not true. You can’t terminate a pregnancy with thoughts.”

His eyes softened. “I’ll try to believe that.”

“Now that I know about this, please don’t hesitate to talk to me if you need to. Sometimes guilt over the past can creep up when you’re stressed about other things.”

“Okay. Thank you for listening. I haven’t told many people what happened. Only a few people even knew she was pregnant. It’s good for me to talk about it with someone I trust.”

The hurt in his eyes was still fresh. What happened was most definitely still having an impact on his life. Maybe you never really get over a loss like that. But I wanted to help him work through it.

“What about you, Eden? Anything you need to get off your chest?” he asked. “Anything you haven’t told me?”

I tried to think on that, but there wasn’t anything significant to confess. My independent life had been cut short before I had a chance to make too many mistakes.

“No, not really.”

He searched my eyes. “I feel like I had this idea of you before we met, and then when I met you, while I still recognize your soul, there’s so much I don’t know about your life, who you were before these responsibilities fell into your lap.”

“I’m not sure I remember who I was.”

He rubbed my thigh. “That makes me sad.”

I attempted to answer his question. “I was a girl who loved music, who was a little boy crazy but hadn’t fallen in love yet. I loved my life. It was simple. My mother was my best friend. I could tell her anything. Ollie was an unexpected gift, the sibling I never thought I’d have. At twenty, I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do with my life yet, but that was okay. I had a good life. I still do—just different now. A lot different.”