Breathe

by Donna Alward

  “Admit it, Jace,” she continued. She had to. It had been a cloud over them all these years, and she knew their past was why he’d stayed away as much as he had. All the rest…the friendship, the so-called loyalty, it had all been for show when this truth had been simmering below the surface. Now it was time for the volcano of it to blow and be done with.

  “Admit it. Admit you didn’t want the baby or me. Admit that you came back and you were relieved.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  There was power, real force behind the words, and for a moment she got the feeling he was going to come over and shake her. But instead he twisted and strode off the deck into the darkness, his shoes making soft sounds on the grass as he walked away.

  Had she been wrong?

  She lifted trembling fingers to her lips. Had she miscalculated, then? The pain of that September came rushing back. Of losing Jace, and then losing the one thing of his she’d wanted most. Nothing had mattered. Stefano had appeared and she’d married him, as much to prove a point as to get out of the Morelli villa and the memories it held.

  And the whole time she’d told herself that Jace had gotten exactly what he’d desired. His freedom.

  Perhaps she’d been wrong. And so she went after him.

  He stood next to a maple tree, his hand braced on the trunk so that she could see the outline of his broad shoulders in the moonlight. “Jace,” she murmured, reaching out, then pulling her hand back.

  “Go away, Anna.”

  “No, not this time.”

  His laugh was bitter. “Oh sure, now you choose to stay.”

  “It strikes me as ironic, that you accuse me of running when it was you who went away.”

  “I know. But isn’t that what you did with Stefano? Use him to run away?”

  “Yes.”

  He hadn’t expected her to admit it, she was sure. Slowly, his hand came away from the tree and he faced her. He put his hands in his pockets and she faced him, determined to be truthful and quit hiding.

  “You should know, Anna, I came back from Kelowna thinking I’d been a fool. I was going to do right by you. And do you know what I saw?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  His eyes were unrelenting. Black and glittering, pinning her to the spot while the breeze ruffled her skirt around her calves.

  “You look very much like you did that night. You were in a pale dress, and there was a breeze off the hills. I caught you on the terrace. The woman who was supposedly carrying my child. Only she was celebrating her engagement to another man. I wanted to ask you then and there, but we were interrupted. Then you were gone for a few weeks, shopping for your wedding, spending time with Stefano’s family. I waited for you to come back. But when you did…”

  He suddenly stopped talking. Anna looked up at him, unsure of where he was going with it all. “When I did…” she prompted, but he had broken eye contact at last. She saw him swallow, heard his ragged breathing.

  “When I saw you again, I counted the weeks. And I realized you were as slim and beautiful as you had been in the summer when you’d told me about the baby. And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew you had severed all ties with me completely. There was no baby. You’d made sure of it.”

  Anna’s stomach dropped as the meaning of what he was saying slammed into her. That’s what he thought? That she’d deceived him in that way? “Are you accusing me of lying about being pregnant? Of trying to trap you?” Disappointment was bitter in her mouth. “That cheapens what we had together.”

  “Oh, I believe you were pregnant. I saw your paleness in the mornings, the way you nibbled on bread and crackers from the kitchen at any time of day. But when I left, you made sure there was nothing for me to come back to. Nothing. And I hated you for it. Almost as much as I hated myself.”

  It registered then what he was saying, and grief struck her, fresh and sharp, stealing her breath. That time had been so difficult, but now, now she knew exactly what Jace had thought of her. Very little. It hurt more than she thought possible.

  “You think I terminated the pregnancy?”

  “What better way to exorcise yourself of anything tying you to me? I left you so you reacted and hit me back where it hurt. I couldn’t believe you were capable of it, but the truth doesn’t lie. When I came back you were not pregnant. When you married Stefano you were not pregnant. I know.”

  Tears quivered on her lashes. Tears of pain and anger and crushing disappointment that he could think she was capable of such a thing.

  “You are wrong,” she whispered, unable to keep from crying, the words coming out disjointed. “You stupid, stupid man. I did not have an abortion. Dio mio.” In her emotion she reverted back to the Italian that her father insisted be spoken at Morelli.

  “Anna—”

  She held up her hands. She did not want him to look at her, to touch her, to speak to her.

  “No. I did not, and it kills me to think you thought I could have. No, Jace, I lost the baby, your baby, all alone, while you were out painting the town in Kelowna. While you were cruising the lake with Alex and having a great old time.”

  His gaze was dangerous in the darkness. “You are telling me you had a miscarriage?”

  “Yes.” The word came out on a gasp, almost as if the pain were as fresh as if it had been yesterday. Her fingers drifted down to her stomach. She’d wept the day it had happened, and every day for several months.

  Even on her wedding day to another. And that in itself carried a little bit of guilt.

  “I thought you—”

  “You thought I did it to what? Get back at you? To pretend that it had never happened?” It crushed her to think he’d thought so little of her.

  He swore and a soft smile formed on her lips at the choice of words, before fluttering away with the capriciousness of the breeze, leaving a gaping hole of sadness.

  “It was my fault. I left you alone and I thought you had an…an…that you got rid of it because you were ashamed.”

  Before she could reconsider, she stepped forward and cupped his jaw in her hand, making him look at her. “Never. Never ashamed. I would have had your baby anyway. I would have endured the whispers and the looks just to know that we created a miracle together. Loving you was beautiful. Making love with you was my choice. I wanted you. I wanted your love. I wanted your baby. But when I lost it…”

  Anna closed her eyes for a moment. Even though she’d been heartbroken that he had left her, she’d cherished the life growing within her. It was a product of their love. With or without Jace, she would have borne his child without question. And would have been proud.

  “When you lost the baby…”

  There was something in his voice now. Something hesitant and soft, almost a plea for her to say the right thing. She didn’t know what it was he needed, and so she knew she simply had to tell the truth so they could deal with it. She placed her other hand on his face, framing it with her fingers.

  “When I lost the baby, and you were gone, and we were over…there was no point to anything anymore. I was alone. The last time I’d been so alone was when Mama left us all. All I wanted was that piece of you that would belong to me. And…”

  She stopped again, dropping her eyes so he couldn’t see the awful pain there. She couldn’t get into the details of how it had happened. It hurt too much, still now. And what would it possibly solve? Nothing.

  “And it was gone.”

  “Yes.” She dropped her hands.

  The air in his lungs came out in a whoosh. “All this time I thought you’d hated me so much that you…that you’d been so desperate to keep us a secret that…”

  “Never,” she whispered. “It breaks my heart to know you think I would do that. Not after all we shared that summer.”

  “I was going to come back and marry you, Anna.”

  Tears for the life she could have had came hot and burning. She blinked. “Dammit.”

  “And you were with him. And I blamed
myself. I waited too long. I was a coward. I deserved that you moved on.”

  Even in the darkness she could sense the pain and self-loathing in his voice, and it broke her heart all over again. She wanted to reach out and touch him again, but there was so much pain it still kept a wall between them.

  “We both made so many mistakes,” she whispered. “Please believe me. I did not have an abortion. When I lost the baby, I felt there was nothing left for me. You were gone. What else could I think beyond you did not love me? I no longer had a reason for getting up in the morning. I felt myself withering away, and then there was Stefano.”

  She sighed. “I told myself I didn’t care about anything so marrying Stefano meant nothing. But I was young, and a part of me wanted to show you. Wanted to show you that someone wanted me. Wanted to show you what you’d walked away from. And I wanted desperately to get out of that house. I couldn’t stand to hear Father speak against you. Stefano was my ticket out, and nothing else mattered.”

  “It worked. I never got over feeling like Stefano had stolen my life. But what was worse was that I let it happen. I didn’t fight for you. I’m not proud of myself.”

  “So you stayed away.”

  “It hurt too much to see you. You looked happy. You had the children and every time I saw them I was reminded of…”

  The words went unspoken, but they both knew he had been reminded of their child who had never been born.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You have to understand. I thought that you had chosen. You had chosen to bear his children but not mine. And in a way I hated you both for it.”

  He stopped.

  “I am not a good man, Anna.”

  Her heart melted at his confession. It hurt that he’d thought she’d deliberately ended her pregnancy, but less now that she understood it was coming from a place of pain. Regret flooded her. If only they could have had this conversation then. Things would have been different.

  “You are a good man. You always have been. We were just young, and we did it wrong.”

  It was new ground, common ground, acknowledging both their mistakes and somehow managing to forgive each other for them. For the first time in over a decade, Anna felt like their bond was strong enough to withstand anything. Like a piece that had been missing was back in place.

  “How did it happen?”

  She was silent for a long moment. This would be the hardest, because explaining it meant reliving it, and there had already been so much brought to the surface today.

  “Please,” he whispered, and again she caught the tight string of hurt beneath the words. “It was my baby too.”

  She swallowed, knowing he deserved the truth but unsure of how she could possibly tell it. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she murmured, trying hard to swallow the saliva pooled in her mouth. “I can’t, Jace.”

  He reached out and held her hand. His fingers linked with hers and she took a deep breath. He did deserve to know. They had come this far. And so she squeezed his fingers in hers. Needing that link between them, strong and solid.

  “I had gone to the stream,” she said softly, closing her eyes. She couldn’t look at him while she told it, but closing her eyes was almost worse. When she closed her eyes she was right back there again, like no time had passed at all.

  “I went there a lot,” she said, forcing herself to continue. “I would sit by the bank and remember what it had been like to be held in your arms. The glory of making love to you. You, my first lover. To me, you were perfect. And even though you had left me, somehow I clung to a bit of hope that one day you would come back and find me sitting there waiting for you on the grass, and you would tell me it was all a mistake.”

  “So close…” he whispered, the words carried away with the shush of the wind in the trees. But they both knew it. It might have been that way. If only…

  “I had been feeling odd all morning. I wasn’t sleeping well, but then I wanted to sleep all the time, and I wasn’t eating right, just nibbling to try to keep away the nausea. I hadn’t told anyone about the baby. I was keeping it to myself, knowing there was a little part of you growing inside me. I wanted to hold it close inside, our secret, something private and wonderful. I was afraid to tell my father. He was already so protective of me. If he’d known about you and I…and I wasn’t ready to let it end.

  “But then the cramping started. I thought maybe it was okay and that the cool water would soothe me, so I went into the stream. It was so refreshing, and I felt so light. But the cramps got worse. Sharper, like when I had a bad period, and I got scared. I came out of the water, wet…and there was blood running down my leg.”

  When she got to the end, her voice broke. “It was gone, Jace. Just like that. I kept saying over and over, ‘don’t take my baby’, but no one heard me. And I tried to scrub away the blood and pretend it wasn’t happening, but it was and then I just knew it was gone. This baby that neither of us had planned and that was going to cause a holy uproar, and suddenly I couldn’t bear to lose it. You were gone. The baby was gone. I had nothing left. I was just…empty.”

  Her breath caught on a sob.

  And then his arms were around her, holding her close, and she was crying into his shirt, smelling the scent that was Jace—man and clean laundry and safety. He had always smelled like that. She had needed him for so long and finally he was here. Only it was too late to change anything or make anything right, and for the first time since that day, she let herself truly grieve for what she’d lost. Him. Their life together. And their child.

  “I should have been there.” The words were husky and warm through her hair. “I let you down. I’m so sorry. I should have been there for you through it all.”

  “I wanted you so much, but I knew I couldn’t call you. You said you didn’t want the baby.”

  “That’s what I thought. That’s what I told myself because I was so scared. Oh, Anna, is that why you don’t like the water anymore?”

  She nodded. “Every time I feel it on my skin, I remember.”

  He took a ragged breath. “I am so sorry you went through that alone.”

  “I wasn’t all alone. I went to your mother,” she said, taking a shuddering breath and trying to regain some bit of composure. “I couldn’t go home. I didn’t know where else to go. She took one look at me and my clothes and knew exactly what had happened. She…” Anna stopped for a moment, trying to keep in control, barely managing. “She gave me a warm bath, and a glass of wine, and a shoulder. And then she took me to a doctor for an examination.”

  He took a step back and stared down into her face, his jaw slack with surprise. “My mother knew?”

  Chapter Nine

  Jace swore under his breath. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take. My God. Their baby…his son or daughter…and he’d left Anna alone. She had cared, more than he’d thought possible. And he’d been wrong. So very wrong, and the pain of it nearly brought him to his knees.

  “Anna…”

  His breath caught at the end of her name and he struggled to keep control. He’d always been angry with her for what he thought she’d done, but he’d always tempered it with his own feelings of guilt on the matter. He’d always felt he’d driven her to it. But now, knowing the truth, he felt about as small as a man could get.

  He’d failed her. Utterly and completely. And when her life had fallen apart, she’d still trusted him enough to come to him. He didn’t deserve her and he’d endeavor to make it up to her in any way he could.

  But to know his own mother had known about the baby…and she’d never said anything. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I asked her not to.” Anna wiped her fingers under her eyes. He saw through the darkness, saw that they were red and bruised looking, and again felt the awful guilt that he’d caused it. His mother would never have broken a confidence. He knew that even if it did mean keeping a secret from her own son. They ha
d always been so close, but now there seemed to be a chasm between them. Mom had watched him with a sharp eye that summer, but in the arrogance of youth, he’d ignored her pointed looks. And she’d tried to convince him not to go with Alex. And he’d gone anyway.

  He’d failed her too.

  “I don’t know what to say, Anna. Mom should have said something. I would have been there.”

  “She tried. She suspected what was happening and tried to keep you from leaving.”

  He looked away, knowing she was right, hating it.

  “Your mama was the closest thing I had to one of my own. When I was a girl becoming a woman, she was the one who talked to me. She taught me what was right. She told me about love. She showed me how to cook and clean and do all the things most women learn to do from their mothers. She made me feel a part of a family, rather than a girl with servants. I never asked her if she knew we’d become intimate, but she certainly understood the day I lost the baby. And still she did not judge me. She held my hand. And when Matteo was born several years later, she came to see me, and I knew she was missing the grandchild she never had a chance to know.”

  He was shocked. “She said that?”

  “She didn’t have to,” Anna replied quietly. “I think your mother understood a lot of things.”

  He pictured Mom and Dad with babies. How Dad would enjoy Matteo, showing him how to ride, like he had with Jace. And now Jace had turned his back on something he’d loved, the horses, because it had been more important to beat Roberto Morelli at his own game. And sweet little Aurelia. Mom would dress Aurelia in frills and ruffles and point out the flowers in the garden…

  He blinked, desperately trying to clear his vision. His parents deserved more than he’d given them. Mom especially had taken care of Anna when it had been his responsibility.

  “My mother,” he said in wonderment.

  “She is a fine woman. And so very proud of you, Jace. She talks of how you have made life easier for her and for your father.”

  “We were poor. I just wanted to provide for them. As I wanted to provide for you. When you told me you were pregnant, I knew I couldn’t and I ran.”