of his family together?
‘He’ll have met your mom,’ Mila said softly. ‘I always wished I could have met her, you know. Your father used to talk about her sometimes.’
Jordan could tell that Mila was looking at him, but he stared steadily ahead. He didn’t want to talk about his mother. That would mean telling her about his father. About his childhood. About his fears.
‘She sounded amazing.’
He didn’t respond, and then he tilted his head. ‘Come on. Before it gets dark.’
He got out of the car, aware of the disappointment that shrouded her, and waited for her to join him as he stood outside the house they’d lived in during their short marriage. The first time he had seen the house he had thought it timeless and elegant—exactly what he had been looking for for his sweet, beautiful bride.
A marble pathway led to large oak doors that looked newly polished yet still antiquated. Large glass windows overlooked the road, and gave the white façade a modern feel. The pathway was lined with palm trees, which had always made him feel as if he was walking into an oasis of some kind. It still looked the same to him now, though all the memories made him feel more than he had the first time he had seen it.
Now he thought about those days when they’d had breakfast on the patio, just as the sun went up. She had always moaned about getting up that early, but the peace on her face when she was curled up on a chair, a cup of coffee in her hand, made him think she’d thought it worth it. He remembered walking hand in hand with her through their garden, where the roses that were planted there were always the perfect gift for her. And he could still see her lying next to the pool, the slight swell of her stomach obvious in her swimming costume. Could still feel the surge of protectiveness that had gone through him when he’d looked at her.
‘It looks the same...but it feels different,’ she said beside him, and he looked down at her to see a mixture of emotions playing over her face that had him grabbing for her hand.
He could feel that she was shaking, and just like that he realised what he’d been missing in the car—why she’d been anxious about coming back.
‘It reminds you of your fall, doesn’t it?’
She didn’t have to answer him—he could see the truth of his words on her face.
I’m an idiot, he thought, and wondered how he hadn’t thought about it before.
His mind had been too focused on showing her the secret he’d kept since he’d found out that she was pregnant. He hadn’t wanted today to end, hadn’t wanted her guard to come up, and in the process his actions to prevent it had hurt her.
He was a selfish man, he thought in disgust.
‘I sometimes still dream about it,’ she said quietly, and he immediately wanted to hold her in his arms.
But her words told him that she was forcing herself to face it—it was that fire he’d noticed in her when he’d returned again—and he told himself to be content with holding her hand.
‘I can feel myself falling, reaching for a railing that wasn’t there for support. And then the impact of rolling down the stairs.’ She drew a shaky breath. ‘I still feel foolish for falling down five steps.’
‘It had been raining,’ he said immediately, his heart clenching in pain at the anguish—the guilt—that he heard in her voice.
She ignored him. ‘I lay there, my breath gone, with shock keeping me from feeling the true pain of what my body had just gone through, and I felt warmth between my legs and realised...’
Her hand was so tight on his that he could tell there was no blood flowing through it, but that didn’t matter to him. Not when he could feel the pain of what she had gone through—what she had never spoken of before. Not when he could hear the quickness of her breath. He drew her in, though she didn’t seem to notice.
‘I realised that something was wrong...that I had done something wrong...and then I saw you, and your face told me that I was right.’
Tears fell from her eyes and he didn’t care this time if he was interrupting her. His arms went around her and she sobbed—heart-wrenching sobs that broke everything inside him each time he heard them.
‘I’m sorry, Jordan. I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful. I’m sorry I didn’t slow down like you asked me to. I’m sorry I didn’t look after him like I should have.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Mila.’ He felt his own tears as he said the words. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to slow down. It was just...fear. My own. I think I was hoping to slow us down.’ He paused, held her tightly. ‘Everything was happening so quickly.’
He could feel her body shake, knew his words weren’t having any effect. So he told her the facts, hoping their simplicity would help her.
‘You were walking down stairs we’d both used a million times before. It had been raining—a light summer rain that had come from nowhere. You slipped. It was an accident.’
He said the words over and over again—to himself just as much as to her—until her shaking dissipated and everything went still. They stood in each other’s arms longer than was necessary, their grief finally—finally—something they shared.
Not completely, a voice reminded him, and he stepped back. His heart thudded painfully in his chest as a reminder of what he needed to tell her—worse now that he knew about the guilt she felt. And the expression on her face—the completely exhausted expression—tempted him to ignore it, to tell her some other time.
But he knew that was just an excuse. He wouldn’t ever get to that other time—not when he had been meaning to tell her since the accident. And now she had bared her soul to him he knew he couldn’t keep it a secret from her any more.
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He said it quickly, afraid that he wouldn’t get through it otherwise. ‘I had to give them permission to operate on you, Mila. You were bleeding from the abruption, losing consciousness...’
He shook his head.
‘Waiting for the bleeding to subside would have put you and the baby at risk.’ He took a shaky breath, not daring to look at her—not yet. ‘I had to approve the C-section knowing there was a chance our baby wouldn’t survive. But I couldn’t take a chance on losing both of you...’
His voice had gone completely hoarse at this admission of something he had carried with him for what felt like for ever, and he forced himself to look at her before he lost his courage. She was staring at him, those eyes more haunting than ever before, carefully blank of all the emotion he wished he could read in her.
Her hand reached up, and he braced himself for the pain of a slap, but she only brushed away the remnants of her tears from her cheeks. Then she cleared her throat.
‘I know.’
He looked at her, his eyes wide. ‘What?’
‘The doctor told me when I went back for my check-up. And then I asked Greg about it and he confirmed it.’
‘Your check-up was...’ He sorted through the memories ‘I
