If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(50)
Author: A.L. Jackson

She choked over the emotion in her chest. I held her tighter. Never again would I allow enough space for a wedge to be driven between us. I’d never sit silent. I’d no longer wait.

I whispered into her hair softly, “It is time, Elizabeth.”

I said those three words again, the ones that had continually been our ruin. I wasn’t scared saying them now. “It’s time to talk about it. To talk about her. Talk about us. You have to tell me what you’re feeling.”

Elizabeth burrowed deeper, her tears wet on my flesh. “It hurts,” she said again.

“I know. It hurts me, too, but we have to.”

Hiding only ruined us, destroyed what we had.

Slowly, she lifted her face to me, and I stared down at the woman I loved, silently encouraging her to open up to me.

She swallowed hard before her face pinched and a rush of tears streamed from the creases of her eyes. “That day, Christian.” Her lids closed as if she were trying to block the memory, or maybe she was finally allowing it in. The words were rough, pained. “Going through labor…it was torture.” She glanced at me, searching for understanding. “It felt like I was rejecting her when all I wanted to do was hang onto her. But then they brought her to me…”

She wet her lips, her attention darting away before it flitted back to search my face, agony set in every line. “All that time when I was holding her, I kept begging her to breathe. She felt so whole in my arms that I kept thinking she had to. She just had to take a breath, and everything would be okay.”

I could feel her panic, the pain as it rolled through her, as it tightened in her throat and hammered furiously in her chest.

I wanted to fix it, to fix her, to shield her, but I knew we had to face it, and facing it was going to hurt. All of it, the pain in what we’d lost and the disaster we’d created in its wake.

My arms constricted around her body. She felt so frail in my arms, so delicate. Shudders wracked through her as she trembled in my hold.

“Baby, I know it hurts, but you have to tell me. We’re never going to get past this if we don’t talk to each other.”

Her fingers burrowed into my skin, as if seeking an anchor. Her words came with a crush of sorrow, unbearable as she once again broke down.

“When they took her away, it was like reality finally hit me, and that was the moment when I realized she never would, Christian. My little girl was never going to breathe, and when they walked out the door with her, she took my ability to breathe with her.”

And I was there again, with her, seeing it through her eyes. And God, it was f**king devastating.

“I felt like I was suffocating, Christian, and I thought I was going to die. And you…you were the one who made me do it. You were the one who told me it was time.” She pinched her eyes closed. “God, this is so hard to talk about, I’ve kept it inside for so long.”

“Baby…take your time.”

She took a deep breath, blinking as she slowly shook her head. “I know now how crazy that was, Christian. I blamed you for something you couldn’t control, but it felt like you were against me, like you weren’t fighting for her the way I was. I hated you for it.”

Hearing her say it again punched me in the gut. I knew she had, but I also knew it’d come from trauma, from shock, that she’d been lost to skewed emotions because she didn’t know how to deal with the loss.

I cupped her cheek, my thumb making a pass over the apple of her cheek. “It’s okay, Elizabeth. Just tell me…I want to hear it. I need to hear it so I can understand.”

She looked up at me through watery eyes, her expression intense.

“You didn’t hold her.” Her mouth quivered as she said it. She glanced away, then brought her attention back to me. “I know what I said to you was selfish because I know you loved her. But that hurt me, and it just added to the anger I felt toward you. Every time I saw you, the pain almost knocked me from my feet. I couldn’t feel anything else but the pain and the hurt and the hate. And the pain is still there,” she emphasized, “I need you to know that I’m scared and I’m confused lying here with you, but the pain is not obscuring what I really feel for you anymore.”

Hope wound into her voice. “The last few weeks, I’ve been feeling it, little flashes of something that felt as if it were calling to me. It took me kissing Logan tonight for me to realize what it was. It was you.”

“Seeing that tonight…it killed me, Elizabeth. It made me insane with jealousy.” I rolled her on her back and I propped myself up, hovering over her. My fingers crawled out to splay wide across her chest, and I pressed my hand over her heart as I stared down at the brown eyes that searched me through our misery. “Because I already knew that, Elizabeth. I already knew you belonged to me just like I belong to you.” I dropped my gaze to the empty spot near her head. I tried to rein in the depth of the rage that jealousy had evoked in me. Then I sealed my eyes on hers. “You hurt me, Elizabeth. I’m not going to lie and tell you it’s okay, because it’s not. You are my life, but you have to make the decision you’re going to live it with me, even when that life brings hardships we don’t want to face.”

Grief twisted her face, but I continued.

“And I’ll never be able to express to you how sorry I am that I pushed you to let her go. It was stupid, but I thought I was protecting you and that you were just harming yourself by continuing to hang onto her all that time. I should have let you make the decision when you were ready.”

Hesitant fingers fluttered along my chest. Sadness deepened the lines on her face. She fisted her hand as if she had to work up to what she wanted to say. Her voice came quiet, ragged in its admission.

“But that’s the thing, Christian, I would never have been ready to let her go. And I think you knew that. You know me. Know me the way no one else does, in a way no one else ever will. I blamed you for what you were never responsible for. I couldn’t even look at you because you represented everything I had wanted, all of my hopes, my hopes for this little girl and for our marriage. In one day it was shattered.”

She slipped her hand up my neck, cupped my jaw, her eyes burning into mine.

“I’m scared that when you and I are together, I’m so happy. It feels like every time I give myself to you, I’m hit with the worst kind of devastation. I’m scared of what you make me feel. It’s so intense that sometimes it’s overwhelming. But tonight, with Logan…” Frantically she gathered my hand, arched her back so she could place my palm over her heart. “No one can touch this but you. My heart, it belongs to you just like every other part of me does. All of it…all of me. I’m yours.”