Nothing But This (Broken Pieces 2)

The baby hadn’t even crossed his mind. He felt sick with horror at that realization now. What a selfish bastard he had been. What a hateful fucking asshole. She could have lost Clara, and he hadn’t given the awful possibility a moment’s consideration.

He had gone back to see her hours later, once he’d had his emotions under strict control. And she had been so fucking happy to see him. He clearly remembered the words she had spoken when he’d walked into that hospital room. That radiant, relieved smile and those words: Greyson, I’ve been so worried about you.

She had been worried about him.

He felt a sob rise up and lodge in his throat and stumbled backward. Martine was still talking, quietly, fiercely . . . so damned magnificent in her defense of her friend.

So many words . . . so much he had deliberately missed out on. Decorating the nursery, buying toys and clothes, and speculating about the baby’s personality. Martine had been there for that. Harris had too. Olivia’s parents . . . his parents. Everybody but him.

And then after Clara had been born, her first milestones. The time she had cried nonstop all night and Olivia had panicked. She and Martine had rushed to the hospital with Clara, who had had an ear infection.

And then he heard about all the times Olivia had cried and tried to hide it from her friend . . .

Greyson was sitting down. He didn’t know when his knees had given way, but he was staring up at Martine mutely.

There was no defending himself from this.

Saying Libby was livid when she heard from Harris that Tina had accosted Greyson and dragged him off to the office would be an understatement. She was so furious she couldn’t see straight.

How dare she? Just when Libby was striving to feel a little more understanding and sympathetic toward Tina, she went and did something like this. On Saturday there had been all of that oddness over Clara, and now she was intruding in Libby’s marriage? It was completely out of bounds.

She was so angry she could barely focus on her conversation with Harris. He had persuaded her to sit down at the table with him, and she had done so because she needed to get her temper under control before confronting Tina. But Harris’s words were starting to penetrate.

And she resented him for being so damned sensible.

“Answer me this,” Harris continued, his voice quiet. “How many friends do you have?”

What the hell kind of question was that? Libby shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know . . . a few.”

“And since coming here? Have you made any new ones?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Of course,” he repeated with a gentle smile. “It’s easy for you—you’re sweet and warm and genuine, and people are drawn to you.”

She shrugged again, not sure where this was going. “Maybe.”

“Tina has one friend, Libby. You,” he was saying quietly, and the words made her feel defensive, guilty, and resentful. It wasn’t Libby’s fault Tina had no friends. The other woman isolated herself from people. She didn’t make any effort to be sociable.

“Well, that’s her own fault,” she said defensively. “She could have more if she wasn’t so distrustful of everybody she met.”

Libby felt small and mean and petty as soon as the words left her lips. It didn’t help that Harris—who had a historically terrible relationship with Tina—looked disappointed in her. Tina had been bullied horribly when they were younger. More so than Libby. Libby was tougher; she could handle the mean kids, but Tina had taken every slight about her weight to heart. And the kids in their school had said terrible things about Tina and her body, often to her face.

“People haven’t given her much reason to trust them in the past, Bug. You know that.” Why did Harris have to be so damned reasonable?

“I’ve been through the same experiences,” she said stubbornly. “I overcame them.”

“Your experiences haven’t been the same,” Harris said. “You had supportive parents; you had me. You had Tina. And once you went to university, you had so many new experiences, made new friends. Tina only ever had you.”

“You don’t even like Tina. I don’t understand why you’re talking like this,” she reminded Harris. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she swiped at them self-consciously. Because he was right: Tina had been lonely. Libby had known that, but she had been preoccupied with her own life and goals. And then later with Greyson and Clara.

Her friendship with Tina had been one sided. She knew that. Always skewed toward what was going on with Libby, and that had been selfish. But it had been so easy to overlook anything going on in Tina’s life because she had been so secretive and closed off since returning from her gap year. Libby had noticed, but she had never really asked Tina about it because she wasn’t sure she would have received a straight answer from the woman. It had been easier to pretend things were still the same and hope that Tina would find her own way out of her funk. Clearly that had been the exact worst thing she could have done, because now Libby wondered how far back she would have to go to find out why Tina was the way she was. Something had gone tragically wrong in her friend’s life, and Libby had been too damned preoccupied with her own concerns to recognize that fact.