The racing thoughts made me feel sick. I felt like . . . like I deserved this. Like some kind of punishment had been handed down. I’d messed up and I didn’t even know what I’d done.
Roxy scooted closer, placing her hand on my shoulder. “This isn’t your fault.”
I opened my tired eyes.
“These things happen,” she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know that sounds lame right now and doesn’t help anything, but these things do happen, Steph, and no one is to blame.”
My gaze fell to the Christmas tree and my thoughts immediately drifted to the day I picked out the tree with Nick. How we’d roamed into the baby section and looked at all—
I cut those thoughts off as I inhaled sharply, but I couldn’t look away from the tree. God, was that really only two weeks ago? Was the baby even still alive then?
Roxy squeezed my shoulder. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” I whispered.
“Do you think you can eat?” she asked, and I shook my head. “What about something to drink? Or something for pain?” When I didn’t say anything, she dropped her hand. “I’m not leaving you, so you should make use of me being here.”
I pressed my lips together. “There’s nothing I need right now.”
A moment passed. “I don’t think that’s true. You need Nick right now.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I stiffened.
“And he needs you right now,” she added.
I shook my head again. “He . . . he doesn’t need me.”
“He sounded like he was about ten seconds away from losing his shit.” Her eyes met mine when I looked at her. “Maybe you don’t need to hear that right now, but I’ve never really seen Nick upset. Ever. And he was really upset.”
“I don’t want him to be upset.” My voice was hoarse. “The last thing I wanted is for him to get hurt again. He’s lost . . .” I trailed off, partly because I didn’t want to share his personal business and because Katie’s words rushed back to haunt me.
You’re going to break his heart.
My lips slowly parted. Holy shit. Katie and her super stripping psychic power had been on point. I had thought it was crazy for, well, obvious reasons, and because this whole time I wasn’t convinced that I had the power to break Nick’s heart. But I did. It was the baby, I realized—losing the baby. It sounded crazy, but Katie had been right.
“What happened with Nick?” Roxy asked gently.
I drew in a shaky breath. “I . . . I broke his heart.”
Thursday afternoon blurred into the night.
At some point I migrated from the couch to my bedroom, and as I lay in bed, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. My mind turned over everything I had done and hadn’t done since I found out I was pregnant, searching tirelessly for that one misstep I took.
Roxy didn’t leave, but she gave me space, only coming into the bedroom when enough hours had past for her to pester me into eating the chicken soup that I had no idea how she obtained, because I didn’t have any in the house, but that soup reminded me of Nick.
And that made the hurt so much fresher.
I thought I heard Reece’s voice Thursday night, and then later I thought I heard Calla. At first I assumed I was imagining it, but then I realized dimly that Calla was home now. The semester at Shepherd was over. I prayed that she wouldn’t come into the room, and she didn’t.
All night long I lay awake and didn’t cry. There was a vast emptiness that consumed my thoughts. I couldn’t turn any of it off like I had in the emergency room Wednesday night. I just wanted it to be over—the physical pain and the deeper, sharper, and more hurtful pain.
Sometime in the quiet early morning hours, I came to the realization that I had wanted this baby far more than I ever recognized. It was like that cheesy saying, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” and that was so damn true. The burning in my throat and eyes increased.
I curled up, tucking my legs in. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair, and I hadn’t hurt this badly since those two uniformed marines showed up at our front door when I was fifteen.
In the back of my head I knew I needed to pull myself out of this. I needed to get up, brush myself off, and I needed to get on with life. That’s what I always did, and I would have to do it again, but I hadn’t just lost the baby.
I’d lost a future.
Roxy attempted to get me to eat breakfast Friday morning, and I thought she looked as bad as I felt when she left the bedroom, her brown hair falling out of the topknot. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to stay. She had a life she needed to get back to. I would be fine.
I was always fine.
A few minutes before eleven in the morning, I heard the door open and I was expecting to see Roxy, but it was Katie who walked into my bedroom, closing the door behind her, and I almost didn’t recognize her.
Face cleared of all traces of makeup and her long blond hair pulled up in a high ponytail, she was wearing the plainest outfit I’d ever seen her in. Blue jeans and a white wool sweater. I’d never seen her so . . . low key.
Katie made her way to the bed and sat on the edge, her blue eyes bright without any of the eye shadow or dark liner. “Roxy had to run home.”
My throat was dry as I spoke. “You didn’t have to come. I’m just . . . taking it easy.”
“Kind of hard to take it easy after losing a baby.”
I sucked in a shallow breath. Apparently her normal bluntness was not missing. I didn’t know what to say to that.