A rough chuckle left me. “Like shit.”
“I’m thinkin’ after what happened, we should be looking to the bright side and being thankful that at least you’re here to feel that way.”
There was something in it, something sweet and serious. Something tender that tightened my chest and made my heart beat harder. This boom, boom, boom that was taking to the air in the room.
I dropped my attention to the floor. “My job’s dangerous, Izzy.”
“I know,” she murmured, edging forward, “but it seems to me you went looking for trouble last night.”
Resting my forearms on my thighs, I looked over at her. Full of regret. Not having a fucking clue what to say except, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Those hazel eyes were wide and sincere.
I struggled to swallow around the rock lodged in my throat. “I have a son.”
It wasn’t so much of a question. Just a clarification. Just needing her to look at me and tell me what the fuck had happened. How I didn’t know.
“Yes.”
I forced myself to keep my gaze steady on her. “What’s his name?”
“Benjamin.” She squeezed her eyes closed when she said it while her confession nearly sent me toppling back.
My heart clutched, stalling out, grinding to a standstill. My head started to nod, pain leaking out.
Benjamin was my middle name.
“You named him after me.”
“You’re his father.” She said it like it made sense. Like my entire world hadn’t been tossed upside down.
I sucked in a staggered breath.
Izzy inhaled deeply, sitting forward, and then started to rush, “I know this is so much for you to take in, and you shouldn’t have found out the way that you did. I came here last night . . . to apologize for that. It was wrong. Wrong that I invited you over for a family dinner like you could just slide right into the table like you’d been there all along. I’m sorry that I didn’t find a way to tell you sooner.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, that hollowed out space inside of me howling like a bitch.
Unease had her shifting in the chair. “I tried. You know that I tried.”
My mind flashed to the calls I’d ignored. Close to a hundred of them. All coming in within the first six months after she’d left. Then . . . I’d received one . . . a couple months after she’d stopped calling.
My spirit sank. Was pretty sure straight to the pits of hell.
“You called me the night he was born?”
Silence bounded around the room. The pain radiating from her flesh vivid. Like fresh blood gushing from a cut to her soul that had never stopped bleeding.
“I . . . I needed you that day.” Her face pinched in agony. “He almost died. His umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck. I waited too long because I was scared to be alone and wanted to pretend I wasn’t in the position that I was. I hadn’t told my mama or my daddy . . . I’d just . . . left. Told them I needed a fresh start. That I couldn’t stay in Broadshire Rim after what you’d done to me.”
Those lips trembled in agony. “I didn’t go stumbling into the ER until I was holding my belly, screaming because he was almost there.”
Torment spun around us. Drawing us together. Pushing us apart. “All I remember was them getting me into a room and shouting at me to push, then the doctor shouting at me not to, but I couldn’t stop. He wasn’t breathing when he was born. He was . . . blue.”
Her face twisted in horror, like she was right back there, reliving the moment, the words vibrating with emotion. “Completely blue. Not moving. Not crying. They finally got him breathing and rushed him to the newborn ICU. It was the middle of the night . . . I was . . . terrified. Absolutely terrified. And the only thing I wanted was to hear your voice. For you to tell me you’d save me. Save us. The way you’d always done.”
“Izzy.” It was a sob. A shout. I didn’t fucking know. Only thing I knew was I wanted to bang my head against a wall. Make it go away. Stop it. Turn back time.
Sadness took to her features, and she was chewing at her quivering bottom lip, trying to keep herself from crying. “My mama and daddy came as soon as I called them. I wasn’t alone for long.”
“Don’t make excuses for me.”
Her shoulder lifted at one side, that tenderness that was this girl right there. “Oh, I’m not, Maxon. There’s a very big part of myself that has hated you all this time. Hated what you did to me.”
“If I could—”
She gave a harsh shake of her head. “I’m not here for you to make apologies or excuses, Maxon. I came back to Broadshire Rim because Benjamin was accepted into a study here in Charleston. A study that might be able to help him fully walk again. Have his independence. I came back for him. Not for us.”