Page 26 of Samuel

“You don’t need to apologize. Your concerns were valid.”

“You were right, though. In just the short time you’ve been here, I’ve learned how invaluable you are. Your old boss was an idiot, but his loss is my gain.”

“Thanks for saying that. I already love it here so much. Bell Ridge feels like exactly where I want to raise my sweet girl.”

He liked hearing that way too much. If Evie was starting to feel at home in Bell Ridge, then maybe she would stick around.

“So, you decided to have a baby all on your own, and badda-bing, along came Jellybean?”

“Something like that.”

He arched his eyebrow. She was trying to hide it, but he could hear the emotion bleeding into the words she said.

“Why do I feel like that’s not the case?”

“I was pregnant before Jellybean, but I lost that baby. It was a little boy.” He watched as she played with the frayed edge of the picnic blanket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get emotional. Pregnancy hormones.”

“I’m so sorry, Evie. Did you have other family to support you through that?”

“The only other family member I had after my parentsdied was Nana, but she passed about five years ago. It is well and truly just me and Jellybean.”

“You went through your miscarriage alone?”

The thought of Evie alone, devastated from losing the one thing she wanted the most in her life, turned Sam’s stomach sour. He prayed the next words out of her mouth would be about friends who stepped up to support her. Or even fucking coworkers. Someone. Anyone.

She nodded and he wanted to knock someone on their ass. “It was still early. I hadn’t told anyone I was trying and before I could… All within a few weeks I saw his heartbeat, found out he was a little boy, and then…” Her fingers ran through the condensation dripping down the outside of her bottle. It made him want to rip the damn thing out of her hand and lace his fingers through hers. He’d had so much support since his heart gave up, he was sick of it.

But Evie had no one. No one to hold her hand through what was clearly something so fucking heartbreaking that she couldn’t look him in the eye as she talked about it.

“It was hard, and so scary, but I got through it. And now Jellybean and I have our own little guardian angel. It feels wrong that he’ll never be here with me, and I wish he was every single day, but I know if he was, I wouldn’t have Jellybean and I don’t know, something about that feels wrong too.”

“I’m glad you and Jellybean are here.” He looked down at her belly again and felt his face turning what was surely a deep shade of red. “Did you give him a name?”

Her breath caught and for a moment, he thought she was going to let the tears gathered in her eyes spill free. But that wasn’t Evie. He’d learned that after the first day of being a fucking asshole to her. “No one has ever asked me that before.”

And that fucking pissed himoff.

“God, Evie. You didn’t deserve to have no one with you through losing your son. I’d like to know his name, if you settled on one.”

“I did. I named him Bennett. It means ‘miracle’.”

“Bennett,” he repeated. “That’s a good, strong name. I’m glad you and Jellybean have Bennett to look after you.”

Eight

Sam bit into another cookie, and Evie forced herself to look away from his mouth. “Oh god, Evie. These could give Daisy’s brownies a run for her money.”

She laughed. “I don’t know about that. Those brownies have to have drugs in them. There’s no way they can be that addicting! I mean, I haven’t stopped thinking about them since she brought me some on my first day here.”

“Well, any time you want to make more of these, I’ll gladly eat them without complaint.”

“I’ll make you more, but they come at a price.”

His eyebrow raised for the fiftieth time since they sat down and started talking. She was beginning to feel like everything she said shocked Sam in some way.

“Oh, what’s that?”

“Well, I accidentally just spilled my heart out here. I’d kind of like to know some more about you. Your family. If you think I’ve earned it.”

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