Page 66 of First Surrender

Natalie

There is no point to my existence. I was a mistake when I was put on this earth and I’ve been a mistake ever since. I was a burden to my mother and I was a burden to myself. Now, I’m a burden to Jackson.

He opens the door quickly, blinking rapidly as he takes in the scene. I’m standing in front of him in my favorite plum shirt, pantsless, with my jeans crumpled up in the sink.

The blood stains on my pants match the blood on my inner thighs and my underwear.

My heart is bleeding out of my chest already but looking at him trying to register what the hell is going on is only making me sob worse. He never even knew. He never had the chance to know that his baby was inside of me and now it’s over. My baby is gone.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, tenderly, but it only makes me heave a rasping breath painfully through my throat. My mouth tries to form a word but I can’t, my jaw only trembles.

“You have to tell me what to do. How can I help you?” He reaches for me but I brush his hands away.

“You- You can’t fix this.” I don’t know what is wrong with my brain. I don’t know why I’m so quick to anger when I’m emotional, but it ignites in me whenever I feel trapped.

Standing in the bathroom of his home, in the blood of my miscarriage that he fathered, I am a caged animal.

“You did this to me,” I grit out through clenched teeth. My whole body is trembling. My teeth chatter incessantly from the adrenaline, filling my head with noise.

“What?”

The pain that I’m feeling lashes out of me and I start beating on his chest with the sides of my fists manically. “You did this to me!” I scream, hitting him over and over.

He lets me for several seconds, standing like stone, not reacting. It only makes my blood hotter. “Your fault!” I blubber, borderline hyperventilating.

He finally grabs my wrists in a vice grip, keeping my enclosed fists pressed to his chest. “What the hell do you mean? What did I do?”

“I lost it,” I breathe out a sob, my voice cracking.

“Lost what?”

“Our baby.” I can’t look at him. I can’t. My heart is already shattered and I can’t see the disappointment on his face when he realizes what I did.

I betrayed him. All of his kindness. All of the trust he might have had in me is gone now. I lost his baby.

“You were pregnant?” His tone is brittle, unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him, and his whole body sinks until we’re both slumped on the floor. His arms cradle me, keeping me plastered to his body as I nod against his chest, letting my tears fall freely.

This is when he’s going to yell at me, call me a whore, or a bitch for keeping it from him. It’s all going to implode because I failed.

“You were going to have my baby…” He whispers the words atop my head and instead of pushing me away as I suspected, he pulls me impossibly closer. It only makes me cry harder.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I’m so sorry, Jackson.” My words are almost nonexistent because I’m speaking directly into his shirt but I’m not brave enough to look at him.

He doesn’t say anything for several minutes but his arms never loosen. He holds my trembling body with all of the strength in his even though I don’t deserve it. He should be mad at me, yell at me, anything other than gentle.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Is it because you thought I’d be a bad father?” His voice breaks and my head snaps up to his. The stronger-than-life man who saves everyone has his back against the door with tears in his eyes, desperately searching for my response.

I had never considered that he would be a bad father because when it came down to it, I knew he’d be the best.

“I was afraid that you wouldn’t love it because it would be mine,” I whisper, hardly able to say the words aloud.

His jaw drops and he shakes his head in silent disbelief. “I would have loved it,” he finally utters. “I would have taken care of you. Both of you.”

I bury my head into his neck, selfishly seeking comfort from the man who owes me nothing, but he wraps his arms around my back anyway, holding me to him as tightly as he was before.

“I know you would have,” I admit against his neck. I realized he would do the right thing no matter what and I decided to tell him. “I was so afraid at first and needed to come to terms with it. I went to get an ultrasound today and was going to show you tonight at dinner. But-” I sob into his neck and his arms hug me until I can hardly breathe.

“My levels were low and they couldn’t find a heartbeat.”

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