Fat Girl (38 page)

“I’m sorry,” I say. It’s woefully inadequate.

Mick takes the empty glass, sets it on top of the coffee table, and hunkers down in front of me, his gaze fastened to my face. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He’s so wrong…so very wrong.

“Have you ever had an anxiety attack before?” he asks, his voice heavy with worry.

“Yes.”

“Do you take any medication?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I’ve had them under control for almost two years.” I’ve had most things under control for that long—or so I thought.

“They’re brought on by severe stress.”

“Um-hm.”

“Is it a coincidence that the one before this one occurred the same year I joined the Bulls and moved back to Chicago?”

When I don’t answer, he rubs his hand over his hair. “Jesus, Dee. I’m sorry to have been the cause then and again now.”

“It’s not your fault. This is all on me, so please stop apologizing and feeling responsible. I know I hurt you. I hurt my family. You should hate me.”

“No. You were scared, you were having doubts. I promised to be there for you and I wasn’t. When you saw me…” He shakes his head, as if to clear the picture. “I don’t hate you, Dee. I could never hate you.”

“Oh, God. You don’t know…you have no idea why you should hate me.”

I try to cover my face, but he takes my hands in his larger palms and holds them, gently massaging my wrists with his thumbs. “What are you talking about?” he asks softly, as if I’m fragile china that might crack with the slightest pressure. “What do you think you did that could make me hate you?”

Tears fill my eyes. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was protecting you.” In some part of my brain, I know I’m saying too much. But I’ve pushed past caution, I can’t stop. “I-I thought if I could buy more time, I could figure out what to do.”

“Do about what?”

“I was at your house that night because I was finally going to tell you. I was so scared, but I knew you’d pull me in your arms and make everything okay, the way you always did. But when I saw you…I thought you and Victor had betrayed me. I thought you didn’t love me anymore. I couldn’t tell you…I couldn’t tell my foster parents. Papa T would have expected you to marry me, and you would have done it for him. But I wasn’t going to force us into a marriage for the wrong reasons. So I ran.”

MY GUT WRENCHES. THE MISSING piece of the puzzle is right in front of me with crystal, brutal clarity. The abrupt way she cut me off, avoiding me for days. Not wanting me to touch her that night outside the library. How withdrawn and jumpy she was. Telling me she needed time to figure stuff out. She wasn’t rejecting me. She was protecting me from the news she thought I wouldn’t want to hear. Not because she didn’t love me. But because she did. And I was too damn blind and self-absorbed to see it. I turned my back on her when she needed me the most.

“You were
pregnant
.”

Even as I say the word, I hope that she’ll deny it. But Dee’s strangled cry locks the piece in place. My legs give out, and I drop to my knees. My irresponsibility in making love to her without a condom was bad enough. But now to find out that while on the way to tell me that she was pregnant, she had caught me in a compromising position with another woman.

Christ!
And that’s not even the worst of it. I look into her face, pinched with sorrow, and voice the question I’m most afraid to ask: “What happened to our baby?”

Her lips part and her lashes blink rapidly against the flow of tears. She withdraws her hands from mine and wrings them in her lap. “I was so confused,” she begins. “I didn’t know what to do. I’d found a small apartment just outside of Chicago and was working a couple of low-end jobs, waiting tables and stocking books, to afford it. I still wanted to get my degree and go to law school. I couldn’t do that with a baby. I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a child under the best of circumstances. And these were far from the best. My mother hadn’t exactly been a great role model, and with all her issues, I worried I might end up just like her. Unable to cope when I wanted so much better for my baby. I picked up the phone so many times to call Mama and Papa T. But I couldn’t face their disappointment and the questions they would ask—or the answers.”

I listen, clenching my jaw so hard the muscles throb. Images whirl through my mind of Dee living in a rundown apartment with little money. Pregnant at eighteen. Facing the most heartrending decision. All alone.

“After being given away to strangers so many times, I wasn’t sure I could have the baby and then give him or her up for adoption. I-I didn’t want to terminate my pregnancy either. But what other choice did I have?”

Gutted, I wait for my verdict, for that’s how I feel—like the guilty party about to receive his punishment. Either choice Dee made, I wouldn’t blame her for. Not when it was my crime.

“The decision weighed on me. I had anxiety attacks, daily. But through it all, I kept falling more in love.” She cradles her stomach. “There were lots of single moms out there who found a way to make it work. I was naive perhaps, but I convinced myself I could do it. Raise a child, hold down a job, and still go to college.”

“You were brave.”

“No.” She shakes her head and gulps the next words. “I-I wasn’t. I was scared. Even after I made the decision, I doubted myself every day. I really started to freak out in my fifth month. School was three weeks away…I-I had very little money. I was going to need diapers…a babysitter…medical care…the list went on and on.

“I couldn’t sleep…I was stressed all the time. One night after working a double shift, I started to have cramps…and then some spotting. I went to the hospital right away. An ultrasound confirmed there was still a…heartbeat, but they admitted me.”

I take her trembling hands in mine. “Overnight…it got worse. When the doctor checked again…there…there was no heartbeat. My… baby was gone. I lost it. I…lose everything…everything I love.”

Sobs convulse her body. I get to my feet, sit down on the couch, and scoop Dee onto my lap. Hugging her close, I absorb her grief-laden tears as if they were my own.

I not only let her down, I let down our unborn child. How would she ever forgive me for that? How would I ever forgive myself?

Tightening my arms around her, I keep my thoughts, my remorse, and my useless apologies to myself and let her cry, long and hard the way I sense she needs to. Rocking her and stroking her hair until her tears run out.

“I’ve never told that to anyone,” she says, lying spent in my arms.

“Not even Lexie and Jordyn?”

“No one.”

“That’s a heavy secret to carry for all these years.”

“Some things are too painful to share.”

How well I know that. “Talking about it helps you grieve.”

“What I’ve told you is all I can manage for now.”

There’s more?

I incline my head to see her eyes. They’re red and puffy. She looks drained. “You need some sleep.”

I rise and bring us both to our feet. Seeing Dee so wrecked and vulnerable kicks my protective response into high gear. “You take my bed and I’ll take the guest room,” I say, guiding her to the master suite and into the bathroom. She doesn’t argue.

I get an extra toothbrush and a T-shirt for Dee to sleep in. Upon my return, she’s still rooted to the same spot, looking lost and fragile, listless. I resist the urge to haul her into my arms. I’m not sure I have the right. “I’ll be out here if you need anything.”

After I close the door behind me, I pace the bedroom. I thought I was prepared to hear the truth. To handle whatever secret Dee was hiding. But nothing…absolutely nothing could have prepared me for a baby that never was or for the blood staining my hands.

I scrape them through my hair in ruthless strokes, badly craving a stiff drink. Only two things stop me from calling down for bar service. The first is Dee. She needs me to be sober and strong for her. The second is, as much as I want to anesthetize the pain, I deserve to feel this. It’s penance for all my wrongs.

At the sound of the bathroom door opening, I stop pacing. Dee emerges. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” she says in a toneless voice and tugs on the hem of the borrowed T-shirt.

I move back, allowing her room to pass. With a somnolent gait, Dee drags past the dresser. Aware that I’m still staring after her, I grab a pair of nylon jogging shorts; the closest thing I have to pajamas, and take my turn in the bathroom.

I stand at the sink, head bowed, unable to face my reflection. Operating on autopilot, I change into my shorts and brush my teeth. When I quietly reenter the bedroom, she has turned off the light, but I can still see the outline of her sable curls against my white pillow and the curve of her shoulder, the indentation of her waist, and the swell of her hip beneath the sheet. She’s facing away, lying so still I think she might already be asleep. Careful not to disturb her, I creep to the window and close the blinds against the pelting rain and city lights. The room is engulfed in darkness.

“You kept my ring.” Her quiet voice drifts to me through the gloomy shadows. “The blue velvet box was there…I recognized it…opened it…why?”

I roll my shoulders, relieving their tightness. “It was all I had left of you.”

“I’m s-sorry,” she chokes out, sounding anguished. “I was trying to do the right thing. But everything I did was wrong.”

I rush over to the bed and kneel next to her. Our tormented gazes fuse. “Shh…it’s all my fault.”

“No.” She sits up and the sheet falls, forming a milky pool at her waist. “I should have told you as soon as I found out. But I was so scared.”

“Tell me everything now.”

“I just want to forget.” She throws her arms around my neck, clinging to me. “Just for a little while, please make me forget.”

“Dee,” I say and rub her back, “you’re upset…you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I do. Please, Mick.”

Then her fingers are clutching my hair, and her soft lips are frantically covering mine.
No.
I battle my conscience. It doesn’t matter how desperate her need. Or mine.

But she’s kissing me wildly, her tongue a savage temptation plunging into my mouth in between incoherent whispers and pleas. It’s too much. Desire twists inside me like a vicious storm. I’m lost. My willpower shot to hell. I can’t stop myself from meeting her frenzied pace, from devouring her steamy mouth or sliding my hands over her, under her, touching her everywhere at once.

The warning bells clanging in my head are drowned out by the urgent moans issuing from our throats. More…craving more, I break our kiss only long enough to yank my shirt over my head and free Dee of hers. My eyes rake over her luscious silhouette before she falls back onto the bed and pulls me along with her. I make contact with her skin to skin; all those soft curves pressed against my hardness. No woman has ever felt this good, this soft, this sensual.

I gather her under me possessively, gripping her round ass and feeding her lusty kisses that are all tongue and greed. She digs her short nails into my back and arches her hips, sliding her wet heat along me, up and down, dampening the front of my shorts, burning me alive.