Page 36 of Hiding Rose
He held me out by my shoulders and shook me slightly. “Yes, you do, Rose. Don’t you see? No one deserves to go through what you’ve gone through. People end relationships all the time and the other party doesn’t pull a gun and start shooting. What happened to you is on Jarrett. You tried to do what was right when he was half the reason you were standing in his living room. He could have walked away. He could have agreed to your terms, thanked you, and sent you on your way. There were any number of things he could have done that didn’t involve maiming you. This is not your fault!” he exclaimed, his hands tight on my shoulders. I flinched and felt his grip loosen immediately. “I’m sorry. I’m trying with everything in me not to cry right now. This is breaking my heart. To see the damage he did to your body, heart, and mind is making me angry.” His hand went to the necklace still dangling from my neck. He captured the angel in his hand. “What happened to your baby?”
I shook my head, my lower lip trembling when I tried to speak. “His first punch to my stomach caused a miscarriage. It was an astute nurse who realized all the blood wasn’t coming from my leg once they got me into surgery. They had to call in a OB to make sure the uterus wasn’t ruptured. He did a procedure to make sure the miscarriage was complete and to keep me from hemorrhaging to death.” He turned the pendant over and read the words on the back, his eyes going closed. “Kate gave me the necklace…um,” I cleared my throat to get some strength back in my voice. “Last Friday was my due date. She understood how hard it was for me to live with the secret of grieving for a child no one knew existed. The birthstone is January’s, the month he would have been born.”
“He,” he asked, glancing up at me. “You know it was a boy?”
I shook my head and bit my trembling lip. “No, I wasn’t far enough along yet. My heart tells me it was a boy, so it’s how I think of him. If it hadn’t been for Jarrett’s temper I’d be holding my baby in my arms.”
He wrapped his arms around me again and rocked me, allowing me to grieve for my child for the first time without judgement. I never cried in front of Kate if I could help it. She’s a sensitive person and I was afraid to upset her with her bad heart. I gripped his shirt and buried my face in it, working to get a grip on my emotions before he thought I was a total crack pot he needed to run from.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my face with the cloth he handed me. “I usually try to reserve falling apart for when I’m alone. I don’t like to burden anyone with my pain.”
His arms tightened around me. “Don’t apologize and don’t hide your emotions from me. For the first time, I feel like I’m finally getting to know the real you, not the person you pretend to be when you walk through these halls. Now I understand why you work in the daycare center. It eases the ache from losing your own child by being around kids.”
I nodded against his chest. “When Kate and Gideon told me they were opening a center I jumped at the chance even though I had to take classes to get certified.”
He kissed my temple. “It’s understandable. Whatever helps you get past this time in your life is the right thing to do. You’ll never forget, but maybe someday the pain will lessen to the point you can smile rather than cry when you think about your baby.”
I shrugged. “Maybe someday.”
“Can you still have children?” he asked cautiously. “Or did the bullet do too much damage?”
I grasped his hand and twined my fingers in his. “The bullet didn’t cause the miscarriage, his fist did. The last time I was in for my six-month check the doctor told me I was completely healed. He said there’s no reason I can’t have a child in the future.”
He brought our hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “Good. At least he didn’t steal that from you too,” he said, his body shaking.
“Why are you shaking?” I asked, searching around for a blanket. “Are you cold?”
He laughed and I heard many emotions in the one sound. “No, I’m angry, Rose. Angry he thought he had the right to brutalize a woman, much less a woman carrying his child. He’s a pig and deserved to die. I wish you had actually killed him. He shouldn’t be walking this earth.”
I ran my hand down his shoulder to calm him. “He is a pig, but I’m glad I didn’t kill him, even if he’s after me now. I couldn’t live with knowing I’d taken another life, even if he tried to take mine. I’m not wired to take lives. The guilt would be crippling.”
“I have no qualms about killing him. If he shows up here and I run into him, he’s a dead man.”
I held his chin and stared up at him. “Don’t, please. You don’t even know what he looks like, so unless he’s got me in a death grip, let the cops deal with him.”
“Okay, death grip I can kill him with my bare hands, otherwise I leave him to the cops. Got it,” he said, tongue in cheek.
“I honestly thought he would forget about me if I came here. Today’s flower tells me otherwise. He knows where I am and I’m scared to death.”
He held me tightly and pulled a blanket up around us. “Niko is working to trace it back to the source. He’s a good guy to have on your team.”
I nodded sleepily. “Everyone has been nothing but kind and accommodating since I arrived. Someday I have to pay them back for their willingness to take care of me,” I said, yawning wide. “Someday…”
The new rooms were a mess. The construction team had been in yesterday and put in the new door to the bathroom. Now I had to clean up their mess, and then get to work deciding on new carpet and paint before the workers came back and built the dividing walls for the rooms. After an hour of cleaning up plaster and tile I was tired and sat my butt on the table. It had been two days since I woke up in Sawyer’s arms. We had fallen asleep on my bed; the exhaustion of telling him my story overwhelmed me and I fell into a fitful sleep. When I woke up at one a.m. with a muscle spasm, he found the meds I hadn’t taken before bed and an icepack to use on my hip. Once the medication started to work I drifted back to sleep in his arms and didn’t wake until morning. When I awoke he was gone, but there was a note on my bedside table from him. He had an early morning delivery to accept, but would be around later, he promised. He showed up in my office later in the morning to check on me and offer a hug. I honestly felt better already because he knew the truth, and I wasn’t keeping any secrets, but I took the hug anyway.
Sleeping in his arms was healing my heart, too. It was natural and I wasn’t uncomfortable allowing him to see me in the state I was in or what I was wearing. His eyes never seemed to stray far from mine. They held a sense of sadness, but understanding for what I’ve been through. The last few nights I’ve been alone and it has given me plenty of time to think. My conclusion? I have a gigantic crush on Sawyer, not exactly a mystery to me or anyone else around here. Chances were high this was more than a crush, but I hadn’t defined how much more, yet.
There was a knock on the door and I swiveled toward it. Niko, Gideon, and Kate strolled in while Sawyer brought up the rear. He shut the door behind him and strode to me, laying his hand at the small of my back.
“What?” I asked, giving them all equal attention. “Did I miss something?” Butterflies flitted around by the hundreds in my belly. “Did something happen?”
Niko rested his hip on a table. “No, nothing happened. I found some information about the rose you got the other day.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, watching their faces for clues.
“We have a lot of information, but it doesn’t tell us much,” Niko explained.
“But we’re still working on it,” Gideon jumped in.
