by Jaycee Clark
He’d never told her. No matter how lost, or what his reasons were, it was all a lie. Everything. Lies.
Bands tightened around her chest and she didn’t know if she were breathing or not.
“At first I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how, then I was afraid if I did I would lose you. So I didn’t.”
Taylor couldn’t stand it; she pulled the mouthpiece away and took a deep breath.
“I told myself so many times that you deserved to know, but I just couldn’t tell you.”
“Why?” she finally asked. “Don’t you think I had a right to know?”
All those tear-filled nights, all the self-blame and recriminations, all the worries and tensions—all for naught. And all because of him, his lies, his silence. He’d stood by and watched, had known what it did to her when she hadn’t conceived, month after month, year after year.
This was unbelievable. Taylor rubbed her hands over her face. All the lies.
“I don’t know, Taylor. The years started to pass and we grew apart and I saw how different we were, and then I didn’t want to tell you.”
Her hands were shaking and she had the distinct feeling she was about to lose it and cry. Damned if she would.
Licking her lips she said, “Well, if Rhonda is pregnant, then you obviously had the problem fixed. When did all this happen?” How in the hell had she missed it all?
His sigh was heavy. “About the time Rhonda and I started seeing each other.”
Almost two years ago. My God, was she so stupid, so incredibly blind?
“It was around the time you started Ryan’s case and wanted him to come live with us.”
They had stopped sleeping together months before that momentous time. She’d written it off to the fact she couldn’t give him a child and the strain was too much on them.
“Rhonda and I had been seeing each other already for several months, which you knew about.”
She knew the history, but only because he’d confessed the time frame when she’d caught him. However, she knew he didn’t expect her to say anything. And she couldn’t think of a blessed thing even if she had wanted to.
“You and I were already having problems, and I wanted out. But then Ryan came along. You and I hadn’t slept together in months. I knew where I wanted the future to go, so I found a doctor and had the reversal procedure done. You got custody, we got divorced and Rhonda and I got married.”
Disbelief slowed her thoughts; shock kept her tongue stilled. Then she blinked.
“Well, isn’t that a tidy freaking little package. And now she’s pregnant and y’all are just one big happy, soon-to-be family.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
“I hate you. Do you have any idea . . .” Tears clogged her throat. “All the times . . .” Taylor stopped. “Thank you for calling me. At least I know it was never me. And only my coward bastard of an ex-husband that didn’t have the balls to tell the truth.”
She slammed the phone down, dropped her head in her hands and cried.
• • •
“We can get ice cream later, can’t we?” Tori asked Mrs. K.
Ryan sat in the backseat beside Tori with Mrs. K by the other door. He and Tori were going to ride in the third seat when they picked up Taylor. He hadn’t seen her all day and had so much to tell her. The museum and the music. The matinee that the Kinncaids had taken him and Tori to that afternoon was so cool. They heard a symphony practicing for a Beethoven performance. It was awesome.
“I hope your mom is ready,” Tori told him. “I’m starving.”
“She will be,” he answered.
“Doesn’t take her long to get ready, does it, champ?” Gavin asked him from the driver’s seat.
“Nope.”
“Gavin, dear, are you implying all women take hours to get ready?” Mrs. K asked.
“No, Mom.”
“Though she does,” Mr. Kinncaid grumbled from the front seat. He turned a bit to look back at them. “Are you going to tell Taylor about your day?”
“Yeah, and I was . . .” The mists rose in his mind, stealing his words, jerking his breath to a quicker pace.
He could see her crying, crying and crying. Yelling at a man . . . a man . . . Charles. A phone.
“Taylor.”
“Excuse me, son?” Mr. Kinncaid’s voice yanked him back. Everyone was looking at him.
Mrs. Kinncaid was frowning at him, as was Gavin in the mirror, and Mr. Kinncaid.
Tori leaned over. “Why’d you say Taylor?”
It was then he realized he had spoken out loud.
She was crying, he could see her crying.
“Hurry,” he told Gavin, leaning up against the seat belt. “You’ve got to hurry. She’s crying.”
“What?” Gavin asked him, looking at him in the mirror.
How to explain? He’d never told anyone. No one. No one had ever known. “You’ve got to hurry, she’s crying and it’s because of him.”
Ryan knew he wasn’t making sense, but he didn’t know how to explain.
“Who’s crying Ryan?” Gavin asked him.
Ryan leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. They needed to hurry.
“Ryan?” Gavin asked him again.
“Taylor. Hurry.”
Silence settled around them. He dared a glance up to the rearview mirror. Gavin was studying him with eyes as weighing as a judge.
• • •
“Bastard. You bastard!” she whispered as she rubbed her thumb back and forth across her phone.
God she was pathetic. Taylor grabbed her purse, the damned papers and files she needed to take with her and hurried out of the nearly empty offices. Someone called her name, but she kept going until early evening air breathed hot in her face.
Lies. Everything, all of it was lies.
All the tears and heartache and all of it . . . all of it could have been avoided.
Rage pounded hot and fast in her, so boiling, nausea greased her stomach and a headache thrummed up the back of her neck.
Damn him. Damn that selfish son of a bitch.
Taylor wiped her eyes and climbed in her car, hurrying through the early evening traffic. She needed to get home to her son.
• • •
Gavin shut the door to Taylor’s house and watched as she keyed in the code to set the system. His parents, Tori and Ryan had just left. Mom and Dad had asked if Ryan would like to stay the night at Seneca until tomorrow, when he and Taylor were driving out for the family version of his dad’s birthday. Intuitive parents that he was blessed with.
Taylor had reluctantly agreed. It seemed she wanted Ryan here, not that she said as much, but Gavin sensed it. However, when Tori started in on practicing a show for Pop’s birthday party Saturday and Ryan had smiled and helped her pick pieces to perform, Taylor had told him to go ahead and have fun.
But the boy had still been too quiet. How had he known about Taylor crying? Let alone because of a him. Who the hell was the him. When she’d driven up to the house, they’d all been sitting on her porch. It was as clear as the color of the sky the woman had been crying. But she’d only smiled and caught Ryan in a tight hug when he’d run to her. They’d talked quietly out on the lawn for several minutes and the strain on her face had lightened when Ryan laughed and said Reese. He was going to be Ryan Reese. But he still wondered how the boy knew she’d been crying in the first place. That was a question that still plagued Gavin. He’d ask Ryan about it later. Right now he was more concerned with the woman before him.
Leaning against the wall, he watched as she walked into the living room and stood staring into space.
Shaking his head, he wondered for the hundredth time that evening what was going on.
She’d been tense and quiet all through dinner, though she tried to hide it behind over-bright smiles and forced laughter. The act being for Ryan, he supposed, who tried to cheer her up the entire time they were eating. Gavin hoped it was for Ryan and not that she thou
ght he’d buy such a transparent façade.
He pushed away from the wall and walked to her, wrapping her in his arms. She stiffened and tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold until she relaxed against him.
Gently, he rocked her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Of course there’s not a thing wrong. You’re tight, tense, worried and bothered about something.” Awkwardly, he walked-rocked them to the couch. Tumbling her down onto the cushions, he turned her so that she lay under and facing him.
“Tell me.” He leaned down until his forehead touched hers. The dim lamplight allowed him to see her eyes. A light brown, they lightened in anger or passion to a deep amber color. Now their depths reminded him of a turbulent potion, pain and confusion shifting the color to a rich, slow-roasted, weakened coffee.
Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, and he caught her chin trembling. Gently, he kissed it. “Tell me.”
“I’m just being stupid and I’m still so damn pissed.”
Gavin propped up on his elbow above her. Tears trailed out of the corner of her eyes to run down into her hairline. He stopped the trickle of one with his forefinger.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m not nothing.”
Where in the hell did this come from? Grabbing her face between his hands, he glared down at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
More tears fell. “I know it’s stupid. But what is wrong with me? I’m not nothing. I had parents. I’m a person and deserve respect, not lies. God, the lies.”
Gavin was lost.
“All those nights. All the times I cried and felt ashamed because I couldn’t have a baby.” Her voice wavered and cracked as she cried, but the flow of words continued. “It was just me. I mean not that I couldn’t have kids—though I thought that was it, but because he didn’t want mine.”
Her eyes searched his for answers and as yet, he had none to give. Leaning down, he kissed her on her mouth.
“He had a vasectomy,” she whispered.
“Darling, who the hell are you talking about?”
“Charles. My ex-husband. We never had kids because he had a vasectomy, he just neglected to mention that fact when I was depressed, or buying more pregnancy tests that he knew, knew would be negative.”
He felt tremors run through her arms. Color stained her cheeks.
“I’m not following . . .” Children, they’d never had children and she had always said she hadn’t been able to conceive, she hadn’t been able to have kids.
This time he sat up and pulled her to sit beside him. “Are you telling me he never told you?”
Her look clearly told him what a dumb question that was.
“Sorry. What . . . ? Why . . . ? I’m lost.”
Taylor swiped at her eyes and tucked her leg up next to her, tilting her head to rest on her knee. “He called me today to see if I got papers and decided to inform me of his secret. He had it done when he was young, and never knew how to tell me.”
“How long were you married?”
“Eight years.”
Good God. “And never in all that time, he never hinted, never said . . .”
“No.”
Sorry sonofabitch. Gavin had no idea what to say. Looking out the window he thought about the kind of man that did such a thing, and couldn’t compute it. His stubble scraped against his finger as he rubbed his jaw before turning back to her. “What exactly happened?”
Anger and hurt lacing her words, she told him about the phone call she received after being served the legal papers. The more she talked, the angrier Gavin became. “I know it shouldn’t matter what he thought, or what he thinks, and it really doesn’t,” she told him as he wiped away another tear. She’d moved to sit closer to him and he held her against his chest. “It really doesn’t. But it still hurts. All that time and energy and emotion wasted. All because he didn’t tell me.”
Gavin thought about that. He was pissed now that he knew all of it, enraged at the self-centered prick, yet aggravated at her too. Reining in his frustrations, he quietly asked her, “What were the papers he sent you?”
A harsh chuckle escaped. “I told you he stuck with me long enough for the adoption to go through and be finalized? Well, even though we were divorced, Ryan still kept the Shepard name. That is the law in Texas.”
“I bet you didn’t like that.”
She shook her head. “No. But now, I don’t have to worry about child support or anything else as Charles no longer wants to claim Ryan as his child, not that he ever really did. He relinquished his rights to Ryan, probably as Ryan isn’t his biological child, and as he told me before, blood tells.”
Her sigh warmed his wrist as he brushed a stray tendril of copper off her forehead. For a moment he fingered the silky reddened tresses.
Her eyes stared at his chin, then at his chest as she leaned up and picked at his button.
“I don’t know if I’m more pissed at him for everything, for all the lies, for all the pointless hurt, or if I’m more mad at myself for actually letting him hurt me.” Confusion warred in the depths of her eyes.
“Personally, I think Charles is a royal ass.” He looked back into her eyes and smiled. “But that aside, have you thought how lucky you are?”
“With Ryan?” she asked. “Yes, and the fact I don’t have more little Charleses.” She gave a mock shudder. “I’m just pissed and if I get really, really upset, I just cry. Not because I’m sad, I just have never been a confrontational sort of person.”
“Really? That’s news to me.”
She lightly punched his arm.
He felt her relax against him.
“You know,” he continued, “Mom always said, the Good Lord works in mysterious ways.”
A smile played with her dimples. “I know. Thanks for listening. I just needed to let it all settle. I’m still pissed. I’ll probably always hate him for the turmoil he let me go through month after month, bastard.”
“Hmm . . .” Her face was made for portraits of art. That pale smooth forehead crinkled in the center when she concentrated really hard, like she was now. Those round dark eyes with ridiculously long lashes held the secrets of her soul. A straight freckled nose slightly notched in the center. Gavin ran his finger down the bridge of her nose, landing on her full soft lips. His fingers spread over her pale creamy cheeks, even as his thumb skimmed over her mouth.
Charles had had a vasectomy, which meant that Taylor could indeed get pregnant. Children. She could be pregnant even now. God knew they’d chanced it enough last night.
Pregnant. With his child. His.
Mine.
Surprisingly the thought didn’t fill him with panic. Earlier today he had thought to tell her all this some other time, some perfect time with some planned setting. But he was learning the best things in life were never really planned or perfect. Chaos seemed to bring blessings.
“Taylor, do you remember what I told you last night?” he asked her.
“You told me lots of things last night.” Her long pale fingers fidgeted on his shirtfront.
“Yes, I did. But do you remember what I told you I thought of you?”
The smile reached the deepest part of her eyes. “You said you thought I was beautiful. That I was wonderful. Amazing.” She pulled her hand out from under his, reaching up to cup his cheek. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” he whispered.
“How do you just know what to tell me, what I need to hear?”
This time he turned and kissed her palm, kissed the pad of her thumb, her inner wrist, feeling the blood pump faintly against his lips. “Because I know you. I know what’s in your heart.”
He would tell her tonight.
“I love you,” she whispered to him.
She loved him. Well, damn. She stole his thunder.
Trying not to shout and smile, he frowned and shook his head. “No, you don’t.”
Her smile faded.
“I was all prepared to have to persuade you to love me. I love you, too, gorgeous.” He leaned towards her, stopping a breath away from her mouth. “I was about to tell you those words and had my strategy all planned out for how to get you to say the words back to me.”
She swallowed and her eyes swept down, the gaze stopping at his mouth. Her tongue wet her lips. “Were you now?”
“Mmm . . .,” he said, watching her.
“How do you know you love me?”
This time he did smile. “That’s easy. It just is. It’s like one of those fine, soft misty rains. You hardly notice it really, but after you walk for a while in it, you realize you’re wet. Simple as can be, it simply is.” He cupped her face, grazing his thumbs from cheekbones down to her chin, skimming the corners of her mouth. “I don’t love you for where you came from, or where you didn’t. I just love you, Taylor.”
She kissed him. Their tongues met, dueled and fueled the admissions in them, the emotions and truths that became so clear here in the dim living room on a new denim couch. He turned her head to plunge deeper, blending himself with her through their breaths.
Pulling back, he looked into her eyes. “How do you know you love me?”
Her smile was soft, almost secret as she said, “You do all sorts of little things and don’t even realize it, don’t even really think about it. Because you are you. You make me laugh and feel special, make me believe and dream for what can be without feeling inhibited.”
“And here I thought you wanted my money.”
Her eyes rolled. “Of course, it’s a hard-won bet between your body and your money. You saw through my lie so easily.”
“Sass.” He pulled her into his lap. “I just love it when you’re sassy.”
Kissing her again, he stood, cradling her to him. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he made his way up her stairs to her bedroom.