Page 110 of My Favorite Mistake

She sank back in the chair, dazed. Ophelia set down the water, and Liza reached for it, her hand shaking so violently she had to support the base of the glass with her opposite palm. She took a sip, and the inside of her mouth soaked up the moisture like a dry sponge.

“I saw that all of it happened that same January,” Connor went on. “And I’ll admit I know basically nothing about how things like that work in terms of timing, but I knew there was a possibility that pregnancy was…I mean, it was from…”

“Us. It was fromus,” she finished for him. “Yes. It wasours. It was our baby, andyes. I lost it.” Liza was suddenly so angry again that the kitchen felt like the surface of the sun. She picked up the water again and sipped, eyeing him over the rim.

Connor chewed his thumbnail as he stared at the table. Ophelia smoothed the lace tablecloth, and Sunny handed Liza another napkin. Emotions roiled in Liza like the hurricane she knew had once battered this very house. She hadn’t thought it was possible to be simultaneously livid and unspeakably anguished, and want to wring a man’s neck while also wanting to hold him so close to her heart that they melded into a single person.

“And the injuries,” Connor started. He laced his fingers together and clenched his hands so hard his knuckles turned white. “Who—” He hastily clamped his hand over his mouth and closed his eyes as a vein raised at the center of his forehead. He released his mouth to reveal a white imprint of his hand on his lips. “I mean, what happened? And was that the reason you…I mean, is that how—”

“Yes, that’show. And I know what you’re thinking, and that's not what the injuries were from,” Liza found herself saying, as if her mouth opted to speak on its own accord. “Nobody hurt me, Connor. I wrecked my car.” That would suffice. It was the truth, and anything extra was unnecessary.

He squinted at her. “And?”

“And what?”

“And there’s something else.”

“No, there’s not.”

“There is, Liza. It may as well be written all over your face.”

Goddamnit.

Her stupid fucking face that couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.

She turned her palms over and shrugged as she very carefully chose her words. “I was driving, and it was raining, and I wasn’t paying attention to the road. That’s how car accidents happen.”

All the color instantly drained from his face, and her stomach curdled. They had both clearly connected the dots at the same time. He’d heard the entire conversation before he stepped in the room, and she just told Ophelia and Sunny that she wasdrivingin therainwhenhehad called her.

“You weren’t paying attention to the road because you were on the phone with me,” Connor said through a voice void of any kind of emotion.

Liza attempted to meet his gaze, but he appeared to be staring at the space in front of his eyes. He was so white that he looked like he’d lost about half his blood volume; like someone had sliced all his arteries and dripped him dry.

“No,” she asserted. It technically wasn’t accurate, and she was grasping at straws because he was imploding right before her very eyes, and she had to save him from himself. “It was after we got off the phone.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hands. “You did not cause that wreck. The rain caused that wreck. The ridiculous interchange in Houston caused that—”

“I told you I had left you for someone else and then hung up on you.” His voice was deadpan. “I destroyed everything we had while you were on a freeway.”

“Connor…” She rubbed her thumbs over the backs of his hands. “No matter what you said or did, you didn’t cause that wreck. I know what you’re trying to convince yourself of right now, and it’s not—”

“Tell me about the wreck.”

She gathered her brows. “What? What do you mean? It was raining, and I wrecked. There’s nothing else to tell.”

“I should’vebeen there.” The words exploded out of his mouth, and his voice gave with a slight, adolescent crack. He jerked his hands out of hers. “I caused it. I want to know exactly what happened.”

Liza swallowed and shook her head, blinking back more tears. “You want ammunition to unleash on yourself. You want ugly details so you can punish yourself for this, and I’m not giving them to you.”

Connor slammed his fist on the table. “Tell me!”

The three women jumped in their chairs.

Liza stared into his red-rimmed, brimming eyes, and she couldn’t do this to him.

She couldn’t tell him that after he hung up on her, she was so numb that it all felt like it was happening to someone else. That when there was an explosion of metal crunching and glass shattering, she hadn’t felt a thing and simply let herself fall asleep. She couldn’t tell him that it was only later that she found out she hadn’t fallen asleep, rather had been knocked out of her own body. And truthfully, she couldn’t tell him all the details he so desperately wanted right then for the purpose of self-torture, because she didn’t even remember them herself.

“Liza.” His voice was softer now, but still holding that slight crack. “Please.”

“You saw my medical history.” Her own voice had a small quaver in the back of her throat. “That’s what happened. I don’t remember all the details.”

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