From Ex to Eternity (Newlywed Games 1)

The cleansing meant everything to her.

* * *

Keith held Cara for as long as she let him and when she pulled away, it seemed as good a time as any to switch to scotch. Because he sorely needed something stout to blunt the seething mess in his stomach.

When he’d convinced her to stay, he’d envisioned a slow, languorous dive into the kind of lovemaking they’d thus far been unable to indulge in due to Cara’s vanishing acts. That was the “more” he’d hoped for, not gut-wrenching emotional knots he had no idea how to untie.

The small bar in the corner of his suite provided a good cover for his shaking hands. Cara hadn’t pulled many punches, that was for sure. On the second try, he clunked ice into the highball and splashed amber liquor over it, then took a healthy swallow.

Fortified, he turned back to Cara and leaned a hip against the bar, hoping it didn’t look as if he was holding himself up.

He’d started this descent the moment he spied Cara across the room at the Dragonfly back in Houston. Now he had to see it through with no map and a broad field of quicksand in all directions.

“I don’t know how to do this part either,” he confessed.

Mostly because he had no idea what he was trying to hit. There were no goals, no tangible checklists or a specific solution to a particular problem. He had no skill set for relationships or any training, which was one of the many reasons he tried to avoid them.

Cara, as always, had turned that upside down. No matter what kind of parameters he put around their island fling, the emotional depths had been set up long ago and couldn’t be sidestepped.

Besides, he owed her for messing up two years ago, owed her for jumping into this rekindled affair willingly and without censor, and most of all, he owed her for her unconditional forgiveness.

“I’m not sitting over here with a scorecard,” she said. “I’d be the last person to tell you if you were doing it wrong.”

He poured a second glass of scotch and opted to return to the couch. Cara’s small smile bolstered him. Not a lot but enough. “I... Thank you for telling me about the miscarriage.”

“Really?” She pursed her lips in confusion. “I can’t honestly say what I was expecting your reaction to be, but that was not it.”

He couldn’t have said what his reaction should be either. But he had to man up and admit the truth. Or at least the part he could actually verbalize.

“I spent two years completely unaware you’d really been pregnant. And I’ve spent the last few days thinking about how I messed up.” And working through the guilt. “I spent zero time thinking about how the miscarriage happened, what you must have gone through. I’m sorry.”

Her strength astounded him. While he’d been admiring her business savvy and letting her cross his eyes with her new adventurous spirit, she’d actually been quietly amazing from the beginning. In his haste to escape the noose he’d created for himself, he’d missed it.

And in his haste to get her to stay tonight, he’d created an impossible internal quagmire. While processing her surprisingly calm recitation of the events, one thing had clearly risen to the surface—she’d been pregnant with a child. His child.

It had never been real before.

There in the low light of the temporary suite where he’d been staying for the duration of a temporary job, where he’d made love to a woman under the guise of a temporary affair, the baby became real—and just as temporary.

Something he could describe only as sadness filled him, hitching his lungs. For the first time in his life, he mourned the necessity of temporary.

“It’s okay.” Her hand on his thigh was warm and reassuring. “You’ve had a lot to process. And you’re here now. That means a lot to me.”

Yes, he was here. But he sensed she needed so much more than his largely mute presence. How much longer would she put up with his inability to say the right words, to reach out and express his own feelings?

This had gotten far too complicated and he had no solution.

“Cara...” I can’t do this.

The silence stretched and grew painful. He shifted uncomfortably, a little sick with the discovery that he wished he could be the man she deserved—but not only was he not, he couldn’t be. Furthermore, she didn’t trust him and he didn’t blame her. What were they really doing here but resolving her issues so she could say goodbye with a clear conscience?

“I get that this is hard for you, Keith.” Her espresso-colored eyes tracked his, carrying no condemnation, no expectation. Just understanding.