Page 54 of Almost Always

Her eyes widened and it took her a minute to nod. “Okay.”

After his meeting on the second night he was in New York, Rafferty sat on the steps of the Ames brownstone and stared up at the stars. It was late, a soft buzz moved through the neighborhood and he missed her. He had lost track of how long he spent outside because at some point his father joined him and he told him everything—how he’d reconnected with Daisy, how he realized that he still had feelings for her and that he fucked it all up with callous words. His father had always been good with advice and that evening was no different. Leaving the city the next day had been easier because of that.

She slid the bag off her shoulder and settled on the bench he’d been waiting on. It wasn’t big enough for both of them, but he managed to put some space between them. Just so she would know he wasn’t trying to erase all of the things that had happened.

“Is Callahan still with Mack?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. Why?”

“I saw him at the Food Fling.”

“I just got back and wanted to see you first.” Her eyes widened and mouth formed a small O. He nodded, rubbing his hands on his thighs. “I’m so sorry for hurting you, Daze.”

“How could you even know what I’d gone through? You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Do you think you might want to tell me about it, though?”

She made a fussing sound and he smiled, tracing the profile of her face in the dull light. That nose, those lips, even her chin was attractive. He’d always been so enamored by her, back when she liked to hide in her big clothes and behind the curtain of her hair. There was something so comforting about looking at aperson who made you feel so many things without even realizing it.

“It sounds so silly now, to talk about how I wanted to be a mother for a really long time. But it’s true. I sometimes dated people depending on whether or not they might potentially be that future partner in raising kids, you know? So when I met Clarke, I thought we were on the same page. We talked about kids, how ours would be a mix of dark and light haired and everything. I thought they wanted the same thing.”

She tipped her head back and he followed her gaze to take in the smattering of stars before looking back at her.

“But things started to fall apart. I was convinced they were cheating on me and they never said otherwise. It spiraled from there to how I wasn’t giving enough and…and then…and then they told me that they never wanted kids. That this dream of mine was so unreachable and being a parent was not on their list of things to do. I was shattered. We’d been together for six years and everything felt like a lie.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, knowing that it wasn’t enough to express his disappointment and frustration with her ex.

She shook her head, quickly wiping at her face. “In Greenville, I was diagnosed with PCOD. That’s…uh, Polycystic Ovarian Disease. Sounds scarier than it is, but the doctors also told me that it might have been triggered by the bulimia.” She scoffed and leaned back before saying, “My doctor advised me to freeze my eggs soon after the divorce. But it doesn’t really matter, because the risks are so high. I might not actually be able to carry that baby to term, it might break me. Fun fact, if a woman above the age of thirty-five is pregnant, they call it advanced maternal age. Which is definitely better than what it used to be called—geriatricpregnancy.”

“They what?” He frowned.

She sighed loudly. “Right? Anyway, it took me years to come to terms with all of these things. Every now and then, I think about what it would be like to be a mother. But the reality of the situation is, I can’t afford to make that happen. So when you made that comment, it hit too close to home. There was a time when I thought you and I would end up together. Ride off into the sunset, build a home and a family.

“When we moved, you and I lost touch, I accepted that it was a teenage dream,” she said softly, finally looking at him and he nodded.

“I wanted that too,” he confessed and she stared at him. “After you left, I wrote you letters.”

“I never got them.”

He chuckled drily. “I never sent them. I put them into envelopes, wrote the address and everything. I realized that they were pretty intense, confessional almost.”

“Raff.” Her hand landed on his thigh and he swallowed hard.

“Became a journal, like I was telling you everything happening in my life.”

“Do you still have them?”

He shook his head, wondering what happened to the letters. He’d put them into a shoebox he hid under his bed, because he didn’t want his grandmother finding them.

“I stopped a year or two after I met Zara. It didn’t seem fair to keep writing to the girl I loved when I was with someone new.”

It was only at the strangled sound that he realized what he’d said. Blowing out a breath, he stared at her yellow tipped nails against his dark jeans. It was insane to think that back then they had feelings for each other and did nothing about it.

“I’m really sorry that you couldn’t have the dream you wanted with your ex and that the universe has taken that choice away from you,” he said softly, covering her hand with his. “I might not have planned for Cal, but I want you to know that Ihave no regrets. I didn’t mean to seem so glib when we spoke the last time. I am so terribly sorry for making you feel that way and I hope you can forgive me.”

“Rafferty.Of courseI forgive you.”

“I lost you once, Daze, I don’t think I could do it again.”

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