Until the Last Breath

“Well, it’s perfect. You did a great job.”

“I knew you’d love it.” His eyes lock with mine, warm and soft. I look away, down at the flickering candle in the lantern on the table.

Max doesn’t move for a long time which causes me to worry, so I look up, only to find him already watching me. He reaches across the table with his long arms, the backs of his fingers hitting my cheek and rubbing downward.

“Max.” I shake my head, pulling back. “Don’t.”

“All this time I’ve spent with you, Shannon,” he murmurs, “I just don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“How I was foolish enough to let you go.”

My heart thumps hard in my chest. I don’t blink or speak.

He pulls his hand away, looking down at the dark tabletop. “What’s crazy about all of this is that you’d think I would be happy, you know?” He folds his fingers on top of the table. “I mean, I’m running my own club in Wilmington. I have a nice home and nice cars and I eat well. There is never a day where I go hungry, never a day when I can’t provide for myself…but even with all of that, it feels like something is missing.” He studies my eyes. “At the end of a long day, I realize that I’m alone. And when I’m alone, I end up thinking about you and even when I try my hardest, I can’t stop.”

I pull my eyes away and look out of the window. He can’t do this. Not right now.

He huffs. “I know you don’t want to hear it, Shakes. Trust me, I know.”

I side-eye him.

“Can I confess something?”

“What?” I ask, turning my head a little more to look at him.

“I was afraid to come back to Charlotte and see you.”

“Why?” I whisper, and my guard has lowered all over again.

“Because I didn’t know how I would handle it. With my parents gone and then knowing that one day you might be gone…it was a lot to digest and I didn’t know if I was ready. You deserve better than what you’re going through right now.”

“This is my life, Max. It’s okay. This is happening and I’ve accepted it.”

He blinks through a pained expression. “I know you have.” Sitting against the back of his seat, he looks from me to the window. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what I said to you—what I led you to do.”

“You didn’t lead me to do anything,” I state quickly. “I made the decision. It was my choice.” My throat thickens.

“But it was because of me that you did it, Shannon. I pushed you away during my grief instead of bringing you closer to me and opening up to you about my pain. I was fucking stupid and I regret it so much. If I could do it all over again, I would.” He leans forward and I swallow hard, shaking my head. I can’t listen to this right now. Why is he doing this now? “Don’t you ever think,” he murmurs, “about where we could’ve been if you’d kept the baby?”

I close my eyes, but it doesn’t stop a tear from escaping me. “I think about it every day.”

“I know you regret it. I can tell you regretted it when you’d told me you’d done it. I should’ve been there for you. I should’ve just manned the fuck up and been there for you. You didn’t deserve to go through that alone.”

“Don’t say that,” I murmur. “Don’t. You can’t beat yourself up because of your grief. You needed that time to yourself to try and heal.”

“But that time to myself is what made me lose you.”

“You never lost me, Max.”

He blinks slowly.

I go on. “Now that I’m sick and will probably never carry a child, I do wish that I’d kept the baby. I wish that I never would have gone to that stupid clinic and let them take that baby away from me. I wonder every day if it would have been a boy or girl, what I would have named him or her.” The tears are thicker and hotter now. “Trust me, I wish I could go back to that day and do it all over again too, but I can’t, and neither can you. It’s just something that I have to live with now. Just like this disease, I have to accept it.”

He nods, dropping his head and twisting his lips. “Did you and John try for kids?”

“Not really,” I breathe, shaking my head. “I found out I was sick during our honeymoon. My disease came and went, but either way we made sure to stay safe. Now that all of this has happened, I realize it would have been bad to try and create a baby through all of that. Too much stress.”