Worth the Fall (The McKinney Brothers, #1)(95)

And he didn’t want anything standing between them on their wedding day—a day that was forty-eight hours away and neither of them had mentioned. He knew there was a very real possibility she was having second thoughts, but he didn’t have the courage to ask. There would be a wedding. Even if he had to wait a lifetime.

Matt slipped into their bedroom and took a moment just to look at her where she stood at the window. She looked so small and delicate, with the afternoon sunlight spilling over her. The scene reminded him of the night he’d proposed, when he’d watched her from one knee, standing in the moonlight. The night he’d promised to spend his life making her happy, then before he’d even said “I do,” he’d broken her heart, been one more person who’d left. The knowledge made him sick.

Abby turned at the sound of him closing the door, and his stomach clenched. Her face was still too thin; dark smudges still lay under her eyes, fading but there. And she was still so damn beautiful it took his breath away.

She stood stiffly, arms wrapped around her body as if she needed to shield herself. From him?

“Hey,” he said, moving into the room.

She bent to pick up a pillow beside the bed. “Hey.”

He watched, waited, hoping she’d say more, but she only sidestepped him as she made her way around the bed, jerking up the sheets and comforter. On her third pass he stepped in front of her, blocking her way. He’d been patient, hadn’t pushed, but no more. Ignoring a problem was not in his makeup.

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice flat, controlled.

She wouldn’t look at him, and that scared him more than anything. “Abby, you have to talk to me.” His hands fisted at his sides, wanting so badly to grab her when she turned to the bed. “Please. Scream at me. Yell. Hit me, for God’s sake. Anything. I know I hurt you. I know you were devastated when you thought—”

She whirled on him. “Devastated? Are you surprised?”

He started to say no, but she was in his face before he could speak.

“Damn right I was devastated.” Her eyes no longer flat, flashed with anger and pain. “How would you feel if you woke up and I was gone? Would you be devastated? Would you be devastated if I drove my car off a cliff one day? After I’d promised you, sworn to you, that I wouldn’t? Would you be devastated while you explained to the kids that, yes, I loved them, but, no, you didn’t know why I left them? While you searched closets for little black dresses and tiny black shoes to wear to a funeral. A funeral that would never happen because there— was no b-body?”

“Stop.” He raised a hand to comfort her. “Abby—”

“When Gracie looked at you with tears in her eyes and asked why did God want her new d-daddy too?”

“Shh. Stop. I’m sorry.” He’d wanted her angry, not broken. Every tear she shed cut deep, but the ones she shed because of him? Those were like swallowing shards of glass.

He grabbed her and pulled her close, forcing back his own tears. “I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you, so I—”

“Then why?” She drew back and looked up at him, her face wet, her eyes red and pleading. “Tell me why.”

How could he explain it to her when he was still trying to explain it to himself? He sat in the bedroom chair and pulled her into his lap.

He took a shaky breath and told her everything, recapping the meeting, leaving out nothing. She listened silently to every word, her fingers twisting in the hem of her shirt.

“My chest hurt until I thought the cabin pressure must be off. And I was sick. First time in my life to puke in an aircraft. Everything in me screamed, but there was no going back.” And the finality of what he’d done and what he could be losing had eaten a hole in him the entire way.

“I didn’t think I had a choice.”

A voice inside him, the same one that had damned Josh, shouted, You always have a choice.

“There was a moment in that meeting when…I just thought leaving someone to die couldn’t be the right thing.” And he still didn’t know. The idea of coming home that day to Abby, his heart and soul, eating dinner and kissing his children while another man was tortured, made him sick.

Break someone’s heart or let a man die? But seeing her now, broken and crying, he couldn’t help but wish he’d done things differently.

“I’m sorry, baby. I know it doesn’t help, but I am.”

She leaned into him a fraction, then little by little relaxed. They sat that way for a long time, his hands moving lightly over her back, her head tucked under his chin. He thought about how she’d told him about her mom, the anger and helplessness he’d felt.

Never in a million years had he thought he would do the same. That he’d make her question his love or her worth. “It wasn’t because of you, baby. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.”

She nodded but pushed up and out of his arms.

Tony’s words came back to him. There were consequences.

He’d broken his word. He’d left her. And that might be the one thing she could never forgive.

An ice-cold sensation ran through him. His heart pounded as he stood and again closed the gap between them. “Please tell me I’m not losing you.”

Abby turned and looked up at him, her expression full of pain and hurt. The long seconds of silence were deafening.