Page 99 of Suck This

I looked down at my feet.

“I loved that baby,” I told him. “I wanted the baby so bad. But I knew that I couldn’t provide the kind of life that she would need. So I chose adoption.”

He wrapped his arms around me.

“I lost the baby during her birth. A baby that I didn’t plan to keep. It was for the best, giving her up for adoption, yet I still feel it like a hollowed-out hole in my heart.”

He squeezed me tighter.

“I love you,” he told me softly.

My eyes closed tightly.

“I love you, too,” I replied back just as softly.

“And I would’ve loved your child, too,” he murmured. “Just because neither one of our children are here any longer, doesn’t mean that we can’t still love them as if they were.”

And with that, I fell just a little bit more in love with him.

“Let’s go figure out what else there is to find out.”

I didn’t like talking about losing my baby. It’d been a stupid one-night stand after I’d tried everything in my power to screw my life up after my father had died, and a baby had ensued from that one night.

But the symbol of life had come at a time when I’d been missing my dad more than ever. Been missing the life I used to have. And pairing the death with the fact that I was at a low point in my life had been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Knowing that Con understood me, and didn’t think I was weird or stupid for loving a baby I didn’t even really have the chance to know meant the world to me. He meant the world to me.

I just had to prove to him that I could be a great person to have on his side.

Not just a woman that was good to pass the time with.

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