by Trish Wylie
Connor’s jaw clenched hard, so that he spoke from between gritted teeth. ‘I want to know all of it. Every single bit. When did you miscarry?’
The sob came from low inside her, from the dark place where the agony still lived. ‘I didn’t miscarry.’
The pacing stopped immediately, all the colour draining from his gorgeous face.
Shannon turned her head so that she couldn’t see the torment in his eyes, her gaze focusing on the empty middle distance as she rhymed off the details with a series of shuddering breaths, sobs, and occasional wiping of her cheeks with the end of one sleeve of her sweater.
‘I did have heatstroke when I got there. I was sick for weeks one way or another. And I thought it was because I was so tired and so miserable. They kept us on the go all the time at the activity centre—swimming, hiking, trampolining, abseiling. It never once occurred to me—I mean—I just thought I’d messed up my cycle—I never thought. And then—when I knew—it was like I’d been given this amazing gift. I had a part of you inside me. I could have a family again—someone I could love without trying to hide how I felt. I rehearsed a dozen different ways of telling you—I wrote letters—’
‘I never got any letters.’
‘I didn’t send them.’
‘Why not?’
She blinked away the fat tears on her lower lashes, risking a quick glance at him while wiping her cheeks again. ‘I’d been talking to Tess and she told me you were seeing someone.’
Connor frowned hard. ‘Who was I seeing?’
‘I don’t know—Sharon someone.’
He swore again.
‘I tore the letters up. I told myself that I couldn’t tell you if you were already seeing someone else. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be like I was trapping you.’
He swore again.
And Shannon grimaced at the sound of each sharp expletive. ‘When I heard you weren’t seeing her any more I wanted to tell you then but—’
When she fought to hold back an uncontrollable bout of savage sobbing, Connor stepped in closer. ‘But?’
It took several moments before she could speak, her arms wrapped firmly round her waist as she gave up on wiping her cheeks and instead tried to hold the debilitating cramping agony inside where she had locked it all this time.
‘He stopped moving. He stopped moving and for days I didn’t think there was anything wrong. But he had stopped moving—and when I went—when I saw the doctor—he said…’
She took a massively large breath and choked out the rest. ‘He told me that it was too late. The baby, he had—well, his heart—you see, it had stopped beating. And I had to go all the way through labour knowing that I wouldn’t have a baby—our baby—at the end of it. Because he was already dead.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS TOO MUCH to watch Shannon’s pain, take it all in, and deal with his own emotions as he processed it all. Connor had promised himself that he would kill whoever it was had hurt her so badly, when all along it had been him.
He had caused her this pain because he hadn’t fought to keep her when he should have.
In the midst of the conflicted emotions he felt, he found only one question to force out.
‘He? The baby was a “he”?’
She nodded.
And Connor badly wanted to throw something. To shout and yell at the unfairness of never having been told so that he’d have had a chance to be there.
But just how much Shannon had already suffered was written all over her—in her glistening eyes; in the almost translucent paleness of her face; in the hunch of her shoulders, and the stance she had adopted hugging her arms around herself. She was trying to hold the something inside the way she had all along.
Since the day she had watched him with the kids in her group. When she must have looked at him with them and thought of the child she had lost.
The something had to be agonizing. It was hell for him and he hadn’t lived through it.
For better or for worse.
That was the decision he’d already made, wasn’t it? And this definitely fell into worse.
Connor couldn’t think of anything worse.
Enough was enough. So, with a low groan, he stepped forwards and hauled her into his arms, crushing her to him. When she struggled, he held tighter, when she finally succumbed and sobbed against his shirt, he looked to the heavens for strength to be the man she needed him to be.
She should never have had to go through it alone, ‘I should have been there.’
Her head shook back and forth against him, lifting back a little so he could hear her words. ‘I never gave you the choice. It was my fault, Connor—all of it. And if we hadn’t ended up together again I don’t know that I could ever have searched you out to tell you.
And that makes me as much of a liar as everyone else who has hurt you this last while by keeping secrets. I should never have let this happen with us again. But I couldn’t stop it.’
‘I didn’t give you a big choice this time round. It’s what I should have done the first time.
But you sneaked out in the middle of the night and I never got a chance to talk to you again. I let my pride get in the way.’
‘I couldn’t take a chance on you figuring out it was me—’
‘That didn’t go so well.’
‘I know that now. But I didn’t then.’ She sniffed, and he could hear in her voice that she was getting back some of her control—though her voice was lacking that deathly calm, emotionless edge that he had learned to hate so much lately. ‘But it wouldn’t have stopped me I don’t think—from leaving, I mean. I thought about it from so many different angles after I’d left. And it didn’t matter what had happened—you didn’t feel the way I did. I’d have told you if—I’d have let you know if—’
Connor tightened his arms around her, reassuring her that he understood without her having to say the words. ‘I wish you had told me. I won’t say that I don’t. But it was seven years ago, Shannon. It can’t be changed.’
Finally her arms reached up to circle his waist, wrapping around and holding on equally tight as he held her while she pressed her cheek against his shirt, directly above his heart.
‘I wanted you there. So much. I can’t tell you how much. After it happened, when I was alone—’
‘Stop.’ He squeezed his arms again.
‘No.’ Her head rose and she looked up at him with her large green eyes filling with tears again. ‘I want you to know everything Connor. All of it.’
And as difficult as it would be to hear, he wanted to know all of it. So that there wouldn’t be any more secrets between them. Without a doubt, as far as he was concerned, this was the beginning for them. It had to be done right. So he nodded.
After a moment, focusing on the hollow at the base of his throat, she took a breath and told him the rest. ‘When it was all over, there was a long time when I didn’t think I would ever get out of bed again. I wanted to die. But eventually I found a way to get through the day.’ She glanced upwards from below lashes still thick with the diamond bright sparkles of her tears. ‘It never goes away—the pain of it—it never does. And I don’t think I remembered what it felt like to be really happy again until I came to Galway.’
Connor saw the tiny wistful smile when she looked up at him again. ‘When you found a family inside that run-down old building.’
‘Yes.’ The smile remained. ‘I’d forgotten about the ability of the Irish to laugh and smile, no matter what life throws their way. And some of those people have had a much worse time than I had—have lost loved ones, fought through illness, had days when they had to scrape together enough money to feed their kids that night. And they still get together and laugh and tell jokes. They taught me that one person can get through more than they think they can. They’re my family—every single one of them. And in that building I had my first real home in a very long time.’
‘Until I came to take it away from you.’
A nod. �
��Until you came to take it away from me.’
Now he knew why she had fought him so hard at the beginning. It had taken him a long time to understand even half of it, but now that he had the whole story…
‘It makes sense now.’
Her hands smoothed up his back as she loosened her hold on him a little. ‘At first I felt like it was some kind of punishment. I don’t expect that you’ll understand that, but it was how it felt. And I fought that—especially when you were so—’
‘Disagreeable?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Well, yes. I just thought, no, I’ve paid for my mistakes for so long. I can’t keep paying for them.’
‘And I don’t want you to either—let’s just get that clear. You went through all that on your own—that’s more than enough punishment. But you’re not the only one who made mistakes.’
Oh, no, because Connor could see everything clearly now. Suddenly everything made sense. Like the pieces of a puzzle slotting into place. Finally.
But his words seemed to stir up more pain, her voice cracking again. ‘But it was my fault.
No matter what way you look at it—what happened to our baby was my fault. If I’d known sooner—if I’d taken better care of myself—if I’d noticed he’d stopped moving sooner—’
‘Stop.’ He hauled her in tight again. ‘Stop doing that, Shannon. I mean it. Sometimes things are just beyond our control. It’s the way it is and nothing we can do now can change it. You can’t live your whole life torturing yourself over it any more than I can change things and go back to stop you from leaving in the first place. What happened, happened. All we can do is try and make things right from here on in.’
Yes, he’d learnt a lot this last few months, hadn’t he? And most of it due to her.
Her head tilted back, green eyes wide with stark astonishment. ‘How can you say that?
How can you forgive me for keeping all this from you, especially after everything you’ve been going through this last while? What I did—by not telling you—is just as bad as the secret your mother kept from you. You were so very angry with her. And even knowing that I still allowed myself to get involved with you—because when it comes to you I just can’t seem to stop myself. It’s always been that way. Always. And the number of times when you made love to me and held me and I still couldn’t find the words to tell you…’
As her words tickled away into silence he saw how all he had said and done recently had to have added to her sense of guilt and her pain. She had been holding back from him since they’d got back together because he had given her no choice. He had walked into her life, threatened to take away the one place that meant something to her after years of being unhappy and alone, and then he had gone on and on about being lied to, his sense of betrayal, his anger at his family—no matter how much he loved them.
Yet even while he had been unwittingly making things worse, she had still fought the bit out with him to make him see sense, to yell at him about the way he was behaving, to allow him—despite what she thought—with considerable persuasion back into her life, and to then encourage him to build bridges with the people that loved him.
She had done all of that—for him. Did she think he would push her away after all that?
Didn’t she know what it had been like for him without her?
‘There’s something you need to know about that time when I was so angry at the world.
We need everything from those missing seven years out in the open. And now that you’ve bared your soul to me I want to tell you. Because I do know about that sense of being punished for something. It was how I felt when the letter came from Frank’s solicitors.’
A small vertical line appeared between her shining eyes, confusion written all over her face. ‘What did you feel you had to be punished for?’
He managed to tear his gaze from hers, looking around the large suite he had barely spent any time in for weeks now before he unwrapped his arms from her slender frame to take her hand and lead her to a sofa. ‘Over here.’
And she followed without any resistance—trusting him enough to sit down at his side, to allow her hands to be folded in his where they lay on her lap.
Damn, but he loved this woman. And all of the strength it had taken her to get where they were now.
‘When we had that big row the night of the museum do, we both threw at each other the fact that there were things that had happened when we were apart, remember?’
‘I remember. That was the sex-versus-making-love issue night.’
‘Yes.’ He smiled slowly. ‘Now that you’ve told me about your missing seven years, I’m going to do the same. And when I’m done you’ll realize that I’ve been just as miserable without you as you’ve been without me. The reason all this happened was because we weren’t honest with each other back then—that’s not going to happen this time.’
Two more silent tears dropped slowly off the end of her lashes, trickling down her cheeks, mesmerizing him. And in that moment he vowed to himself that those would be the last. Tonight would be the last time she would have to cry about anything wrapped up in their relationship. Past, present, or future.
‘I don’t think I understood what had been wrong with me until I saw you again. Being with you has made sense of it.’ He took a breath to give himself time to get it all straight.
‘I was angry for a long time before that letter even came. You left—and I spent years being angry and resentful about that. I thought you had played me. And I swore that would never happen again. I would never get sucked into something that wasn’t solely on my terms. Rory was always the responsible one—he took that kind of thing on for everyone, it was just in him. I think he flourished under it. But he also got to go away and do what he wanted to do, which left the responsibilities at home on my shoulders. And I did it. But I resented him for it. I thought that he got to breeze back and forth playing some kind of hero while I got to sit at home and keep everything ticking along in his absence. He forced a life on me I didn’t want.’
‘I thought you enjoyed running the gyms? You did such a good job of them. Tess was never done singing your praises.’
‘I did enjoy it. But I was restless. Rory was out in the Middle East doing something he believed in and I felt trapped by the responsibility he left behind. We even argued about it when he got sent home the time he was injured and met Cara. And I even felt jealous of him for that—everything seemed so easy for him. He got to join the army when he wanted to, live a well-paid adventure when he wanted to, meet someone he could spend the rest of his life with at just the right time for him to come home and settle down. And I resented the hell out of him for that. So, when the letter came and we argued—a lot of that came spilling out while I was so angry. Suffice to say—it wasn’t as easy for him as I’d always thought it was. I was wrong. I had to apologize to him for that when I saw him last night.’
Shannon turned her small hands inside his, her fingers weaving with his before she gave them a squeeze of encouragement. ‘Go on.’
He took another breath, looking up into her eyes, ‘To me, finding out I wasn’t a part of the family the way I’d thought I was was like some kind of punishment for not realizing what I had. I’d been so resentful of how restless I’d felt for so long that I needed a kick in the ass to make me think straight. And then, when I saw you, I think I knew. It just took me a while to figure it out. I guess at the end of the day I have Frank McMahon to thank, ironically. If he hadn’t left me that building I might never have met you again. And then I might never have known the truth.’
Her breath caught, her voice a whisper. ‘Which is?’
‘That I’d spent all that time missing you. I should never have let you go—I should have followed you over there and dragged you back. And now that I know what you went through without me, I’m all the more certain that that’s what I should have done. Then we could have spent those seven years together and not had to put each other through all this, this time round.�
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Untangling one hand, he lifted it to the side of her face, smiling when she leaned into his palm as his fingers threaded into her hair. ‘You were wrong about how I felt. I loved you then, Shannon, I should have told you that but I always assumed you knew. And the fact that you knew and still left killed me. I walked around for months angry at you. Then I dated Sharon for a while to try and forget you. But it was too soon. So I buried myself in the work I resented and became a serial dater for a while. But none of them were you. I never loved anyone else the same way.’
Shannon’s answer was anguished. ‘I didn’t know Connor, I swear. If I’d known I wouldn’t have left.’
‘And if I’d known then that you loved me I wouldn’t have given you a choice. We both got it wrong. And we’ve both paid a price for getting it that wrong. Now we’ve got a chance to put it right again.’
More tears fell down her cheeks, some of them into his palm where her cheek was nestled, so he brushed them away with his thumb, leaning in closer to her to continue in a low voice.
‘You still love me, Shannon Hennessey. I know you do. Because ever since I found you again you’ve done nothing but force me to think about the kind of person I’d become. To make me open my eyes and see what was really worth hanging onto. And you did that even though every day with me reminded you of what you went through on your own.
You love me. And, like you said, I’m still a work in progress, so there’s no way I’m letting you go again. I need you.’
Her answering smile was as bright as her nickname of old. ‘Yes, I still love you. I never stopped, even when loving you hurt, even when I hated you—I never stopped. All this while I’ve been convinced that when I told you everything I would lose you. And I would have understood that. But I wanted to hold onto you for as long as I could. Because I love you more now than I did then. I was young then. Now I’m all grown up and I know better how hard it is to find something like this.’
