Losing Control

‘Yes, love...’ She looks at me, guilty now. ‘Because every time he came up that look would come over you and...’

Her eyes fall briefly to where my hand stil

l presses against my abdomen and I know what look she means. I know then that she’s been protecting me. That while I’ve been trying to look out for her, she’s been doing the same right back. And so the guilt returns.

‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ she finishes.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise.’

‘You shouldn’t feel like you can’t talk about your son to me.’

She shakes her head. ‘You’ve had enough pain, that’s all.’

‘And you haven’t?’ I raise my brows.

Her smile is soft, wistful. ‘I love you like a daughter—you know that—and I just want you to be happy. I want both of you to be happy.’

My heart squeezes tight in my chest. Happy. I just can’t imagine it. Not with Cain back in my life as a constant reminder of what I’ve lost, of what we’ve lost—only he doesn’t know it.

Our daughter, our little Rose, is a burden I carry alone. Yes, I had his family, all of whom suffered her loss with me. But they hadn’t felt the pain of a mother, of a parent.

Liam would have loved her. He would have brought her up as his own. And, no matter how twisted, how messed-up that would have been, it had been our plan. To give her everything I’d lacked growing up: a stable, loving home, a mother and a father...grandparents.

I swallow as the brandy rises in my throat, the rolling of my belly meeting the pain in my heart. Would Cain feel it like this? This sickness? This empty hole inside? The skin-prickling grief that you don’t want to believe it has happened to you, to your precious little bundle?

‘Have you said anything to him?’

My voice is distant as I ask the question, my head still filled with images of being in that hospital bed, her frail body unmoving in my arms, my body in a weird state of post-labour numbness.

‘No—good heavens, no.’ Marie’s eyes are wide with her insistence. ‘It’s not my place. Don’t get me wrong, I hate keeping it from him—especially knowing how much the past haunts him. But—’

I scoff. I can’t help it.

‘It does, Alexa, and you know that deep down.’

I’m quiet. I can hardly deny it.

I wrap an arm across my stomach and lean forward, staring into my brandy as if the amber liquid will have all the answers. ‘What if he can’t forgive me?’

‘Forgive you?’ She frowns. ‘For what?’

‘For not telling him sooner.’

‘He left you no choice. None of us could reach him. And by the time we could it was in the past and you had moved on with Liam. He didn’t want to be reached. Not until he was ready.’

‘Would he ever have been ready?’ I wonder aloud, needing to speak my mind. ‘If not for the plane crash, I can’t help thinking he may never have come back at all.’

‘He would.’

She says it like she knows for sure, but I’m not convinced. It’s been seven years, for Christ’s sake—plenty of time for him to get over it and return if he was going to.

But he did come back, my conscience reminds me. He came back, saw you and Liam together, married, and he ran.

His declaration in my office comes back to me.

‘I loved you once.’