Before she could go any further the door to the restaurant opened and Ben appeared. He jogged over to her, wrapping her in her coat so solicitously that she batted away his hands before tears overwhelmed her.
‘Don’t, Ben, please. I don’t deserve your kindness.’
‘You’re wrong.’
His certainty only made her feel worse.
‘Please—just let me say this.’
He hesitated for a long moment before taking a reluctant step backwards, as if to give her space. Oddly, it made her feel alone. She stared down at the slush-covered cobbles, unable to meet his eye. Then, somewhere deep inside herself, she found the edge of her forgotten resolve and dragged her gaze up to his. She owed him that.
‘The night we... Our wedding night,’ she corrected hastily. ‘Oh...there’s no easy way to say this. There was a baby. Our baby.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BEN STARED AT her for several long moments.
Their baby?
His chest started to constrict acutely. Where was she...he...? Why hadn’t Thea told him before?
His head fought to catch up with the words she’d used. ‘There was a baby?’ he asked urgently.
Thea nodded, and her head bounced madly around as though it wasn’t even her own, as if it had been let loose on some kind of out-of-control spring.
‘You...terminated?’
The words made him feel nauseous, even though his head, trying frantically to keep up with his racing heart, was desperately trying to caution him. He was in no place to judge Thea, or to censure her. But why hadn’t she told him? He could have supported her, made sure she knew all her options before making that momentous decision.
‘No!’ She jerked her head up.
Everything seemed to stop for him.
No? No, what?
‘But you didn’t have it?’
He heard the catch in his voice, berated himself for it. But he was powerless against it.
The look she darted at him was evidence that Thea was frenziedly trying to work out what he was thinking. He opened his mouth but no words came out.
‘I lost it.’ She stopped abruptly. That just made it seem as if she’d been careless. She cleared her throat and met his eye again. ‘I miscarried.’
Her voice cracked but her emotion, the look in her eyes, told him all the things she couldn’t say.
‘When?’ he asked, struggling to keep his voice from betraying any emotion for fear of upsetting her further. Inside he was in turmoil. ‘How far along were you?’
‘Three months. It was ten days after the first scan. I... I started to bleed.’
‘Were you...okay?’ It wasn’t what he meant, but she seemed to understand anyway.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
‘It’s been five years, but even now, remembering that day, I can still recall exactly how I felt in that instant. Blind fear and...and...utter sorrow. There’s no way to properly articulate that.’
He should have known—should have been there for her.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,’ he whispered, but he didn’t think she was even hearing him. ‘Time heals,’ he offered helplessly, but it sounded hollow to his ears. It hadn’t healed the loss of his own mother, and it hadn’t with the loss of Dan. Or was that his own guilt?
Thea shook her head, swallowing hard.
‘I’m not so sure about that. With my parents, with Daniel, certainly the edges have dulled. Slightly. Given enough time. But the pain has never gone away completely.’
Ben nodded. He knew that feeling well.
‘But with a baby it’s different, somehow. Every year I think about what could have been. Every year, when I see a child the same age as...as ours would have been, I imagine whether it would have been crawling, walking, talking, playing, jumping, laughing.’
A sob suddenly escaped from somewhere deep inside her, tearing at Ben’s gut.
‘I can’t even say he or she. I have to say it.’ She looked up at him with an expression of pure anguish as she asked helplessly, ‘Does that make it better or worse?’
He shook his head, unable to speak. Reaching out, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her, ignoring her resistance, until she was in his arms. Rigid. Unyielding. But there, none the less.
‘It doesn’t make it anything,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It just is.’
They stood like that for a few moments, Thea still stiff in his embrace, before she pushed herself out of his hold, crossing her arms in front of her chest protectively.
He wanted to stop her...wanted to offer her more support, more relief—more. His head felt as if it was too small for his swirling emotions.
He took a step back. ‘You never called me. You should have called.’ He hadn’t intended for it to sound like an accusation.
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to keep control.
‘To say what?’ she asked flatly.
‘To tell me about it. To say you needed me, that you weren’t okay—anything.’
He practically shouted the last word and Thea winced as people in the street turned in their direction.
‘Thea, I didn’t mean that—sorry.’ He raked his hand through his hair as he turned in a circle. Then turned to face her square-on. Her eyes were filled with torment.
‘You should have called me, Thea. I would have come back in a heartbeat.’
‘What would have been the point?’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘We weren’t together. You’d walked out on me.’
‘I didn’t abandon you,’ he hissed. ‘We’ve been through this. You told me to leave.’
Why were they attacking each other? He needed to end this. Now.
‘I take that back unreservedly,’ he said immediately. ‘We’ve been through that already. But, Thea, you still should have called me.’
‘And said what? That I had been pregnant, but not to worry because I’d lost it?’
‘Thea...’ he growled in warning. ‘You should have called me before then. The moment you knew you were pregnant. You should have called me then.’
‘You were...busy,’ she muttered weakly.
He felt the brush of disgust. ‘You’re better than that, Thea.’
She glared at him, then drew in a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have called as soon as I knew. But I thought you’d walked out on me—I believed you didn’t want anything to do with me—and I didn’t see the point in involving you in something you wouldn’t want to be a part of. Or at least something I thought you wouldn’t want to be a part of.’
He stared at her in disbelief. Realisation dawned.
‘Wait. You thought I wouldn’t want it? That I’d suggest you terminate it?’
He felt physically sick.
‘I didn’t know!’ she cried, spreading her hands helplessly. Then she stopped to fix him with her direct gaze. Her voice was calmer, firm. ‘I just didn’t know, Ben. You must see that.’
He felt as if he’d just been punched in the solar plexus and was struggling to draw breath. Was that really how she felt about him?
‘I see.’
They both stood, motionless. Neither quite sure where to go or what to do.
He wanted to say more.
There was nothing left to say.
Ben turned around, looking for the sleigh. If the journey over here had been strained, the return leg was going to be excruciating. But there was nothing else for it.
His arm felt like a ten-ton weight as he signalled the driver and marched over. Thea followed behind, reluctance emanating from her with every step. As before, he offered her his hand, but unlike before she took it awkwardly, trying to maintain as little contact as possible while still accep
ting his help with cold politeness. He practically vaulted up into the sleigh behind her, watching her scoot as far away from him as possible, and tugging a blanket up around her neck, her face turned away.
Even in the moonlight her profile looked so full of misery that he was hit with remorse. This evening was supposed to have been about him opening up to her. Now his head was roiling and tumbling and he was unable to work out how he felt, let alone comfort Thea. He knew he was angry. He just didn’t know at whom or about what.
He had a feeling it was himself.
* * *
Thea stared at the ceiling. The bed was a jumbled mess from where she’d been tossing and turning for the last five hours.
Tonight had been absolute purgatory. She’d expected it would be—that was exactly why she had dreaded telling him, had put it off again and again. However, she had never once imagined that it would be such a nightmare because he would feel so hurt. She had expected panic, anger, relief. She had never considered devastation, anger, loss.
Now that she was beginning to come down from the peak of her rampaging emotions she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Turning over to her right side and then back to her left proved no more satisfactory. Sleep wasn’t to be her friend tonight. She threw off the covers and grabbed her fleece jacket, hoping that she could resurrect something of the fire from its smouldering embers, and padded out into the living room.
She saw that Ben was staring into the flames of a roaring fire the moment she walked through the door. She froze, but it was too late.
‘Can’t sleep either,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve just made coffee. Do you want one?’
‘Please.’ She matched his tone, grateful that they didn’t appear to be about to start arguing again.
She sat on the other couch, the warmth of the fire seeping into her bones and making her feel better—if only a little bit. Then Ben was back with her coffee.
‘I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you...’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted like that...’
They both spoke, and stopped, in unison.
Thea flushed. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted that way,’ Ben apologised. ‘Just the idea of you not telling me, going through it alone—whichever way it played out... Either an absentee father, or a man who leaves the woman he got pregnant to deal with everything alone—that isn’t the man I would ever have chosen to be. And then to think of what you had to go through... It just isn’t the person I want to think of myself as.’
There was no doubting the sincerity of his words, and Thea nodded awkwardly.
The silence was slightly less taut than it had been before and they sat sipping their coffee as logs crackled in the fire. Thea even unzipped her fleece quietly.
‘I have a picture,’ she said suddenly. ‘A scan.’
Ben’s head snapped up. ‘Of our baby?’
Our baby. She’d never expected to hear those words drop so easily from his lips. She nodded, ducking into her room to fish her purse out of her bag. She almost hesitated by the door, but then she drew together whatever courage she could and propelled herself forward.
Ben took the scan picture without a sound. His eyes never left the black and white image, and his finger almost imperceptibly twitched, as if to stroke the tiny peanut shape.
‘You can keep it. If you like,’ she offered tentatively. ‘I have another.’
He nodded, slipped his wallet out of his pocket and slid the image inside.
But as he went to close it Thea’s hand stayed the movement. A single photo had caught her attention.
‘May I?’
He looked as though he was going to object, then abruptly handed the wallet to her. She turned the image towards her, her heart thudding. The man in the photo was younger than he’d looked on the two occasions she’d seen him observing Ben’s recovery in the hospital, but it was definitely him—the man she’d assumed was some kind of psychiatrist or counsellor. But what would that man be doing in this old photo, with his arm around Ben, and next to them Daniel, looking proud. She peered closer at the man’s rank.
‘This is the Colonel who commanded you and Daniel?’
Ben stayed silent.
She was pretty sure the answer was obvious but she needed to hear it. ‘Ben?’ she pushed.
‘Yes, that’s the Colonel when he was younger,’ Ben said eventually. ‘And, yes, to what you’re thinking. He’s also my father.’
That wasn’t what she’d been thinking, and now the wheels were spinning in her head as she tried to catch up. So this was Ben’s father—the same man who had commanded Ben and Daniel, and of whom Daniel had always thought so highly. The father Ben had cut out of his life on any personal basis. And yet he still kept this photograph in his wallet.
‘Have you ever thought about talking to him?’ she offered tentatively. ‘About what happened? How you feel?’
Ben snorted. ‘About Dan’s death? Me getting blown up? No. He wouldn’t care. His only priority is for me to get on with my recovery and get on with the next mission.’
‘His only priority? How can he not care? You work together every day.’
‘It’s not like that. You don’t understand.’
Ben sighed, as though the whole topic of his father was too tedious for discussion.
‘When I say he’s my Commander, you think we work together in the field hospital like some cosy father-and-son duo. We don’t—we never have. I’m a trauma surgeon—one of around two hundred medics out there, with a Lieutenant Colonel as my direct Officer in Command. My father is a full Colonel—IC of the whole battalion, with up to four thousand men under his command. My unit of two hundred is a drop in the ocean. Granted, we might cross paths occasionally out there, but he would never go out of his way to talk to me. He probably wouldn’t even know if we were at the same base. The last time I saw him was about a month before my accident. He was holding a command briefing for the Lieutenant Colonels on our camp and he conducted a quick check of my field hospital with my Commanding Officer. But we barely saw each other, let alone exchanged pleasantries.’
It would seem for all the world as though he didn’t care. Only Thea knew Ben did care, deep down, whether he realised it or not.
Thea thought back to the times when she’d seen his father in the hospital when Ben had first been brought home. ‘And what about him coming back here?’
‘And leave his command to someone else? He wouldn’t consider it for a moment,’ Ben refuted flatly, then added dismissively. ‘Even if he wanted to he couldn’t.’
She wavered. Ben needed to know. He carried a photo of the man in his wallet.
She licked her lips. ‘You do know he was at the hospital, don’t you?’
Ben jerked his head up. The look of hope that flashed through his eyes, if only for a fraction of a second, was heartbreaking.
‘When?’ Ben peered at her, then shook his head. ‘No. I told you—he was in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t have returned.’
‘He did,’ Thea insisted. ‘I saw him several times outside your room when you were first flown back, consulting with your doctors. They definitely seemed to be deferring to him. The other time was in the gardens, the day you decided to take your souped-up wheelchair for a test drive into the hospital bushes.’
‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ Ben said flatly.
‘No. I haven’t.’ This was harder than she’d thought, but she couldn’t let up now. ‘He’s older now, of course, and his hair is grey, but the cut is still the same and the face is clearly his.’
Ben shook his head.
She needed one last jolt.
‘He was definitely the Colonel from the photograph in your wallet.’ She steeled herself for the next bit. ‘The one with Daniel.’
Even
then Ben refused to believe her. Drained, she had no choice but to let it go, and when he changed the subject she let him. But the very fact he’d told her who the man was gave Thea even more hope.
‘Anyway, thanks for the scan pic,’ he muttered, finally slipping his wallet into his back pocket.
‘Sure,’ she managed awkwardly, sipping her coffee again and watching the flames lick over the logs.
‘Would you have told me?’ Ben asked suddenly. ‘In the end? If you had had the baby? Earlier? I mean, say, four years ago?’
She’d often wondered about that. The answer had always been the same. ‘Probably.’
‘You think so?’
She nodded. ‘I think probably just before I was due. I couldn’t have imagined the baby being born and not giving you the chance to be there. I still... I still loved you back then. And I couldn’t have faced my child in the future and told it I hadn’t been able to put aside my own pride to give it a chance a relationship with you.’
He stared into the fire again, then said simply, ‘Thank you.’
It was odd. His entire reaction to the news of their baby had been unexpected. For the first time Thea didn’t feel quite so alone. But she still felt raw, exposed, and she knew Ben’s revelations about his father had left him feeling equally vulnerable.
Tentatively they began to make small talk, but she wasn’t really surprised when Ben suddenly leaned forward and took her face in her hands, then kissed her.
The kiss conveyed all the raw emotion that had been circling around them all evening. Tonight the flimsy veil had been lifted on the void which was always inside her, and his deep, searching, almost fervent kiss let her know he was feeling just as vulnerable and exposed.
His kiss was almost desperate, and it mirrored every fear and emotion in her gut. She responded to it on a primal level, allowing Ben to pull her to her feet so that they could get closer, and his hands moved quickly over her back, around to her front, grazing her breast through the fabric.
She wanted to let him carry on, take more from her, give her more. But she couldn’t—not yet. She stilled his hand uncertainly. As much as her body was crying out for them to make love, to give that empty feeling some relief, if only temporarily, her mind couldn’t quite let go of the last time. She didn’t want that rejection again.
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