He glanced away, looking vaguely ashamed of himself.
“You did,” she said huskily. It made so much sense now. Everything. Rill’s anger at Everett, his deep depression up here on this hill, his dislike of the world . . . his willingness to sacrifice everything.
“Nothing made sense to you after she died . . . after you found out she’d been unfaithful, did it?”
“I guess not,” he said after a moment.
“You stopped believing in yourself when you realized you couldn’t believe in Eden anymore. She meant that much to you,” she said quietly.
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t speak.
“I know how much you put her on a pedestal. I’m sorry, Rill.” She saw him swallow thickly. “She didn’t deserve to be idolized,” Katie burst out heatedly. She flushed when Rill glanced at her sharply, but her flash of fury at Eden was difficult to withhold. It was anger at what Eden had done to Rill, true, but she also experienced a sense of betrayal over the fact that Eden had never confessed this secret part of her life to her—Katie. “She didn’t deserve it. Not if she was screwing around on you.”
He gave her a wry glance. “Shit happens, Katie. People fall out of love all the time. I obviously wasn’t making her very happy. She must have thought my work was more important to me than her. I’m not so sure she was wrong, if my actions were any indication of how I felt.”
Katie made a disgusted sound under her breath. Eden should have been talking to Rill if she was that upset with him . . . suggested they go to therapy . . . or asked for a divorce, if she was that unhappy. She shouldn’t have been off fucking some other
guy behind his back.
“Who was it?” Katie asked irrepressibly. “The guy she was having an affair with, I mean.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Truth? It used to consume me, that question. I don’t think about it that much anymore.”
“No?” Katie asked him in a hushed, shaking voice. “Not . . . not even after you saw that pregnancy test last night and I told you that you were the one responsible for it? How could you not have thought of Eden being pregnant with another man’s child when I told you that last night?”
The air seemed to thicken in the silence that followed. Rill pinned her steadily with his stare, his eyes shining with something she strongly suspected was pity. For some reason, she knew what he was going to say next. She fought the rising dread like she would her worst enemy.
“I’m not leaving, Rill,” she blurted out of a constricting throat.
“I am, Katie,” he said quietly. “Not for long,” he added when a tear fell down her cheek. “I’ll be back in a week or two. I promise. There’s somewhere I have to go.”
Katie didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. He was leaving for good. She just knew it. This was the day she’d been dreading since she first came to Vulture’s Canyon.
“Katie,” he said firmly. She forced herself to look at him. “I’ve made an appointment for you with an ob-gyn clinic in Carbondale. I called around and got several references for the best doctor. I wrote down the date and time on a notepad in the kitchen. I called Olive Fanatoon and she says she’ll go with you to the appointment.”
She swallowed and just stared at him, unseeing. It was the same when he reached out and cupped her jaw. She was too numb to really feel it.
“Katie?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to be here for you during your pregnancy. I promise you that. I’m not abandoning you. I just . . . just have to go somewhere. I need to figure something out, and when I have, I’ll be back. I’ll be back,” he repeated with emphasis.
“Okay,” she said through leaden lips.
She sensed him studying her in the silence that followed. “You’ll go for the appointment? With Olive?”
Katie nodded. There was a buzzing in her ears. Everything had gone fuzzy . . . surreal.
“Are you okay, Katie?” he asked, his forehead creasing with anxiety.
“I’m fine.” She tried to smile.
Rill’d disappeared into these woods in a bout of hurt and confusion nineteen months ago. The shock of Katie telling him she was pregnant and accusing him of being the father when he couldn’t even recall the deed would likely send him off on another anguished escape.
Hell, given what he’d just told her about Eden, she could hardly blame him for coming up short in the trust department.
Of all the fucking bad timing. Only something this unlikely could happen to her.