Hawke

My hands come to his chest and I give a mighty heave. I try to make my words calm but they still come out gritted and angry. “I’ll tell you what you want to know but get off me. Give me some space.”

Hawke looks slightly chastened but doesn’t make a move. So I push harder against his chest and reiterate. “Get off. Let me sit up.”

With a frustrated sad sigh, Hawke pushes off, slides his half-hard dick out of me, and drops to the side of the bed on his back. Digging his feet into the mattress, he lifts his hips and pulls his jeans up, tugging the zipper into place but not bothering with the button. While I scramble up to sit cross-legged, he merely rolls to his side, head cushioned in the palm of his hand with his elbow on the mattress. I self-consciously pull the sheet up over my lap now that the glow of lust and intimacy is gone, particularly now that Hawke is fully dressed. Hawke reaches out and pulls it off me, murmuring, “Don’t. Nothing between us right now.”

My cheeks flame a little, but I don’t fight him on this. The sooner we have this conversation, the sooner the fallout can occur. I know I’ve been putting this off, but it can’t be hidden any longer. I’m tired of carrying the burden of what I did to him, and while I have no clue where he and I stand in the long term, I know that nothing good will ever happen to us if we continue to let this fester.

Turning to face him, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. His face tilts, eyes pinned to mine with naked expectation to finally hear the truth.

“That night of the party,” I say quietly, refusing to drop my gaze from his. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Period cramps,” he supplies, letting me know exactly what he remembered from that night.

“Not period cramps,” I tell him bluntly. This surprises Hawke and he pushes up, tense and alert. His hand now presses into the mattress, supporting his weight. His gaze is now looking at me with trepidation but still a need to know. “I was pregnant. Six weeks. And I miscarried that night. It started not long after you left with everyone to get more beer.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t what I got.

Hawke lets out a pained moan and rolls off the bed away from me. His eyes are filled with grief and regret. He brings his hands to the sides of his head, grasps his hair, and pulls on it. He starts pacing up and down beside his bed, eyes to me, then dropping to the floor.

Back to me again as he halts, this time pleading for me to tell him it was a lie. I just shake my head and drop my own gaze to the sheet resting near my crossed knees. I now pull it up again over my lap, feeling completely uncomfortable in my nakedness.

The mattress dips and my head shoots up as Hawke now crawls toward me. His eyes bore into mine as he kneels beside me. With his hands to my shoulders, he pulls me up and closer to him so I raise to my knees. With his nose almost brushing mine, he asks ever so gently, “A baby. We had a baby?”

Tears brim and then fall unabashedly from my eyes. Hawke blinks furiously to make his own tears go away. I nod my head, confirming the worst news and feel his fingers dig into my shoulders.

“Did you know?” he asks, voice raw like his throat had been scraped with sandpaper.

I shake my head. “No. I mean…when I started cramping, I just assumed it was my period. I was pissed you wouldn’t leave with me, so Avery and I left after you went on the beer run. I started really hurting in her car and that’s when I started bleeding. She took me to the hospital.”

“Goddamn it, Vale,” he shouts, and gives me a little shake. Eyes now blazing in fury and pain. “Why didn’t you call me?”

His voice is laced with so much condemnation it brings back all of the anger I was feeling toward him that night. I wrench away from his grasp, roll to my side and right out of the bed. He doesn’t make a move for me but watches me like a hawk—ironic—as I move to the end and pull my underwear free from the tangle of my jeans lying on the floor. Since Hawke never bothered with my top, I instantly feel more protected the minute I slip them on. I also feel incredibly connected to him in this moment, as I feel his semen seeping out of me and soaking my panties.

The same semen that had knocked me up seven years ago.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks again, teeth clenched in anger.

Throwing my hands out to the side, I shout, “I was pissed, okay? It was more important for you to stay with your buds that night than be with me when I wasn’t feeling well.”

“You said it was your period,” he defends.

“Well, it wasn’t my fucking period,” I snarl, feeling somewhat vindicated when he at least looks sad again over the bitter reminder. Immediately, my temper cools because I know how painful this is for him to be hearing he had lost a baby. So I try to explain to him. “I didn’t know what was going on at first. I had no clue I was pregnant.”

“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 fucking 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 fucking 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.