Page 141 of Fierce-Hyde

“I didn’t,” she said. “And when you did, I didn’t want to listen. I got caught up in my head over what happened to me or what I’ve been going through and it’s wrong.”

“At least you can admit it,” he said.

“I’m going to apologize...again.”

“Why do we still do this?” he asked. She was standing there wringing her hands. Her eyes were red and Grant was right—she looked down.

She also looked like she’d slept about as much as he did.

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing her arms in the air. “I’m starting to think that thin line is hard for me to balance and it sucks. I have no excuse and won’t make any.”

“I’m glad you’re admitting that. I’ve worked hard to get rid of my past.”

“You can’t get rid of it,” she said, shaking her head. “I know that. You know it.”

“To move on from it,” he corrected. “I’ve accepted what has happened. I’ve been very honest with you about everything. But Hilary and I had promised we wouldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d gotten pregnant. I didn’t either. I honored that. Why she said it in front of people is beyond me.”

“She was hurting,” she said. “She saw you and me and saw something she might not get. That’s my guess.”

“Could be,” he said. “She didn’t say anything else to me after you walked away other than she was going to always hate me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t tell me any of that.”

“Because you didn’t want to listen. I have to live with this now. As if it’s not bad enough that I had one girlfriend die on me that I’m blaming myself for, now I’ve got another that is blaming me for never being able to have a child.”

He’d turned to the whiskey this weekend.

Got one drink down and told himself no more.

He wasn’t going down that road again.

He couldn’t.

He’d come too far.

With the help of Tori.

Tori started to cry when he said that. “I didn’t think of that. I’m even more ashamed of myself. You were there when I needed you and I wasn’t for you. That is wrong of me every day of the week.”

“I don’t need any more guilt on my shoulders that you’re crying either,” he said.

“Stop it,” she said. “You can’t always shoulder it, Hyde. You had no control over what happened to Shana and you know it. The same with Hilary. But she can have a child other ways. She can adopt or foster. It’s her choice to place the blame on you. Just like I had no control over what my parents did and how they reacted to each other.”

“No,” he said. “But it’s hard to convince yourself of that, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “It is. What do we do about this?”

Her hand was waving back and forth between them.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want to fix this. I want us to know that when this happens again—because I’m not naive enough to think it might not—how do we deal with it?”

He moved closer to her and pulled her into her arms. “We deal with it the same way we are. We talk it out. But maybe we don’t walk away first. If we need time, we go to opposite ends of our place and take a breather. I don’t like not having you around to talk things through. It festers and it’s not good.”

“It’s not,” she said. “I thought of calling you yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

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