Page 55 of Your Soul to Keep

He nodded slowly. “She is, she was also never more than a friend. Dylan was not planned, and we were never a couple.”

I swallowed and nodded tightly.

Was I jealous that he’d slept with her or jealous she’d given him a child? Maybe I was jealous she was able to have a child, a child she didn’t even want to raise, while I gave my life savings only to fail?

The answers to those questions would serve no one. I gave my head a mental shake and moved on to take in the rest.

There was only one with Gabe. I picked it up and stared at it, mesmerized. It trembled in my hand.

“Oh,” I breathed. His face soft, Gabe stared down in wonder at the red, wrinkled face of the crying newborn nestled in his muscled, tattooed arms.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I pressed my lips together tightly and turned away from him, feigning interest in the other pictures even as I clung to the one in my hand while I tried to pull myself together.

Reaching over my shoulder, he plucked the picture of him holding newborn Dylan out of my hand and turned me in his arms.

“Oh no,” I choked.

“Oh yes,” he countered, pulling me tight to his wide chest.

For a second I held myself rigid.

Then I broke.

14

Ole

Heldtighttohischest, I gasped, “I’m sorry.”

With my baggage, I was too much for any man too handle. It all happened so long ago. I needed to get past it.

A fat tear rolled down my face. I purposely pulled in a slow, deep, calming, breath.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he murmured against my hair.

My fingers dug into his biceps. I swallowed the sob in my throat.

Compassion was a novelty. Much more familiar were admonitions to try again, suggestions to just relax, jokes that we weren’t doing it right, and impatience with my hormone-induced mood swings and bouts of melancholy.

It was rare that anyone offered tenderness.

But tenderness from him?

I shuddered.

Overwhelming sorrow hit me often in the first few years after giving up my dream of being a mother, but it had been a while, and I wasn’t prepared for the mental onslaught.

I turned my face away from his only for my gaze to land on the mantle, sunlight glancing off the gold frame of him with his daughter.

Bringing me right back to that place I’d dwelled for so long with so little.

Longing.

Yearning.

Despair.

“Oh no,” I gasped once more in dread as grief slammed into me. I didn’t want it. Not then. Not when I was with him. “I can’t.”

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