Page 73 of Burden to Bear

He stepped forward, making his way into the house, and following a beat of silence, he said, “I want another chance.”

I took two steps back. “Another chance? Are you joking?”

“No. No, Mia, I’m not. I know I screwed up. I’ve had time to think over these last six months or so, and life’s just not the same without you. I want you back.”

He couldn’t be serious. This was insane.

“You can’t have me back,” I informed him.

“What? You don’t mean that. Please, we need to talk this out.”

I shook my head. “You aren’t the only one who had time to think over the last six months, Todd. I did, too.”

“I know. I get it. It was wrong for me to do what I did, to walk out on you like that. But I was confused. We weren’t trying for a baby, and when you told me you were pregnant, I just… I freaked out. I’m sorry.”

He was too late.

There was a time when he could have come back to me and said all of this, and it would have been precisely what I needed to hear, everything I wanted to hear, from him. It didn’t mean now what it would have meant then.

Susie had been right.

“And I’m sorry, too. Because this is no longer what I want.”

“We’re going to have a baby, Mia. We can be a family.”

More.

More of the words I’d wished he would have said to me months ago.

“No, Todd, we can’t. I’ll never stop you from being in your child’s life, but I don’t want anything to do with you beyond co-parenting this baby. That’s it. That’s all. There’s nothing left here for us.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “Here. This is for you. This is me proving to you just how serious I am about this.”

I held my hand out, giving him the opportunity to place a ring box in my palm. It was official. Todd had lost his mind.

He couldn’t have possibly believed he could do what he’d done to me when I told him about this pregnancy, then gone missing for months and expect I’d just take him back and accept a proposal like nothing happened.

I stared down at the ring box, wondering what brought him to this decision. What happened that made him suddenly think this was what he wanted?

Todd’s fingers curled around my wrists. “Marry me, Mia. Let’s be a family.”

Before I could respond, noise from the open front door pulled my stare in that direction. Brock was standing there, and I couldn’t read his expression.

But I knew what I felt.

As he stood there, looking at the ring box in my hand with such disdain, something squeezed in my chest. Was I crazy for wanting to run into his arms when my ex was standing here with a ring and asking me to marry him?

I didn’t want to believe that was the case. Why would it be irrational to want to run toward the man who’d treated me like I was valued and precious, who’d done everything to look out for and take care of me for months with no expectation of anything in return?

It wasn’t irrational. It wasn’t crazy.

Or, if it was, maybe that’s what love really was.

Love.

Staring at Brock standing in the doorway, I felt it wash over me. It was warm, inviting, patient, and understanding. It was conversations by the mailbox and long walks after work. It was peanut butter sandwiches and lemon cookies. It was building cribs and mowing grass and carrying groceries. It was beach trips, meeting family, and attending block parties. It was standing in the doorway, seeing another man’s proposal happening, and looking like the world had stopped spinning.

The weight of that realization hit me hard.

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