Page 82 of When the Storm Breaks
I pulled back to look at him. “I thought you agreed with me. There’s nothing I can do about it. What’s done is done. And I’d love nothing more than to spend time with her, for her to know I’m her birth mother. But I can’t take the risk that the media will get hold of it and spread the news all over the tabloids. I don’t want that for her. I don’t want to mess up her life, you know?”
“I know that. But don’t you thinkshehas the right to know you?”
“What good would that do, Brody? She’s only six. Too young to understand. How would you feel if Noah had been adopted and his birth mother showed up at your door unannounced?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.
“Because it’s not something you can imagine. You would have never given up your son, just turned him over to some random nurse in a hospital without even knowing his fate, and neither would Lila.”
“We were in a different place in our lives. We were in our twenties, making decent money and we had family to help out. But even with all those resources, it was hard. Raising a kid is a full-time job and babies are expensive. You have to change your whole life to accommodate one tiny little baby. Unlike animals, human babies are helpless, completely relying on their parents to take care of all their needs.”
“And that’s my point. Dale and Meredith did all that for her. They raised her, took care of her when she was sick, they were there for her every step of the way. I forfeited my right to call myself a mother... and Brody?”
“What?”
I was going to admit my worst sin of all. Like he was the priest, and I was the sinner sitting in the confessional, trying to ease my guilty conscience. “While I was driving, I realized that I really wasn’t ready to be a mother. Not then and not now. I feel like that old woman was right. Raising a daughter wasn’t part of the greater plan for my life. God knew that better than I did.”
“You believe in God?” He sounded surprised.
Not the question I’d expected after my confession. “Yes. Don’t you?”
“Nope.”
“Do you believe in anything?”
“I believe in a lot of things.”
“But not God?”
“Not God, no. I believe in reincarnation.”
“Maybe we’ve come back in this life to find each other. Maybe we knew each other in a former life.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
Oh Brody. My heart felt like it might burst. Sometimes he said the sweetest, most unexpected things.
“Is this what you were doing today... is that why you took off on your own?”
I nodded. “I was trying to work through all my mixed-up feelings and when I hit that deer, I lost it. It was like...” I took a shuddering breath, remembering the horror when I’d discovered that deer was dead. Brody was going to think I was crazy for what I was about to say but I’d come this far, and he hadn’t judged me once, so I might as well finish what I’d started. “It felt really symbolic, in the most horrific way imaginable. Like I’d killed off that fawn’s mother...”
“And killed off the part of you that was bound to Hayley.”
I sat back and stared at him. “How did you get that?”
He laughed and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Shit. I think I’ve been hanging out with you for too long. I’m starting to say all kinds of messed up shit. Maybe I really can read your mind.”
“Well, that would be scary.”
“Doesn’t scare me. Not even a little bit. I love your mind and your crazy ideas, and I love the way you speak your truth even when it’s not pretty. I love all that about you, Shi-loh.”
And I loved him. I was in love with him and I think I’d known it from the start. That I would fall for him. That he’d get under my skin and into my heart and I’d hear his voice in my head and conjure up the image of him no matter how far away I traveled or how long we were apart. I would always carry him with me.
But I didn’t say the words and neither did he. I was free to go now, I’d done what I set out to do. I’d made my peace with what I’d done at eighteen. I could close this chapter of my life now. And if it weren’t for Brody, I would leave tomorrow and return to L.A. But we still had four more days together and I didn’t want to waste a single moment of the precious time I had left with him.
“Four more days,” he said, reading my mind.
“Four more days,” I echoed. “No regrets.”
