Instead, I walked out with a new feeling in my chest.
It was a different kind of love than what I’d felt for Gage.
This was peppered with hope and sprinkled with a fierce need to protect.
I wanted that baby more than I wanted anything other than to be Gage’s wife.
Just a few weeks later, in a hospital uptown, my dream to be a mom ended after I started bleeding.
Fear has kept me from telling anyone, until today.
“You were pregnant?” Gage’s gaze drops to the front of my dress. “When?”
“I found out after I moved here.” I glance down at the floor. “The doctor said that sometimes the pill doesn’t work if you’re sick. I had caught a cold.”
“After we went for that walk in the rain.”
I nod. “I took some cold medicine. It did something to my birth control.”
He turns his head, staring out the front windows of the boutique. “A baby. Our baby.”
“The doctor said it was best to wait to tell anyone until I was three months along.” I push the words out in haste, trying to crowd everything that I’ve wanted to say into a few short sentences. “I didn’t tell anyone. No one knew.”
His head snaps back. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
I was mindful of what the doctor said, but it was a secret that I cherished.
I would spend hours in my apartment thinking about baby names, and where I’d put the crib in my bedroom.
I window shopped at a baby store two blocks from here.
I’d stand in front of the display every day, cataloging in my mind everything I needed and wanted for my baby.
“I was almost twelve weeks when…” I hold back a sob. “I tried my best to take care of him. I wanted to take care of him forever.”
His control breaks right in front of me. I see it. “It was a boy?”
I slide my fingers over my cheeks to push away my tears. “It was too early for a sonogram, but I knew. I just knew it was a boy.”
“Our boy.” He closes his eyes. “Our little boy.”
“Something happened one morning.”
I’ve relived that moment in my mind every day since. It was raining. I was wearing heels. I was hurrying. I ran into a woman on the sidewalk.
I stumbled but didn’t fall.
Later that day at work, I saw blood in my panties.
The doctor in the emergency room told me that there wasn’t a heartbeat. She tried to comfort me by explaining it wasn’t my fault and that bumping into a stranger’s shoulder wasn’t what caused my baby to die.
“What happened?” Concern knits his brow.
“The doctor said that sometimes a baby’s heart just stops beating. I almost fell that morning. I thought that was why.”
“No.” His hands jump to my face. “Jesus, Katie, no. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I would have traded my life for the baby’s life.” I can’t hold in a sob.