by Abby Niles
A tense silence fell between them before he said, “I owe you an apology.”
His admission startled her. Yeah, he did, for a lot of things, but one, Ryan never apologized, and two, she wasn’t sure which grievance he was referring to.
“I punished you for something you couldn’t help. I just wanted a child so badly. The more we tried, the angrier and more resentful of you I got.”
She’d known that. She’d felt some of it herself toward him, especially when he’d put his foot down and said they weren’t going to try anymore.
“We had options, Ryan. If you wanted to be a dad so badly why did you refuse them?”
Silence greeted her question, then he lifted his arms. “I couldn’t handle another heartbreak.”
And yet, here he was again. Except this time, there had been a baby and not just the hope of one. That was damn sad.
“We’d already tried in-vitro twice,” he continued. “Everything was so clinical. Charting. Pills. Injections. Jacking off in a cup. It was so exhausting. The disappointment changed me. By the time we realized you couldn’t have children, I was full of so much sadness and anger the mere idea of prolonging the process filled me with bitter anxiety. Instead, I turned those emotions on you.”
She stared at her ex. This was the first time he had truly opened up about his reasoning behind not wanting to continue their infertility journey. “We could’ve adopted, Ryan.”
“And what?” he asked, piercing with his eyes. “Spend years trying to adopt only to have the mother decide she wants to keep the baby at the last minute? We take the baby home, and she decides two months later she made a mistake? I couldn’t invite more of that in my life.” He stared off into the distance. “Maybe I’m being punished now for the way I treated you the last couple of years.”
“Don’t think like that. Miscarriages happen.”
His shoulders slumped. “I was finally going to be a dad.”
“And you still can be.” She paused. “Do you love her?”
He eyed her for a doubtful moment before saying, “Yes, I do.”
“Then don’t make the same mistakes with her that you made with me. You should be with her right now.”
“She doesn’t—”
“I said the same thing, remember? But I needed you. We needed to grieve together. We didn’t. We allowed resentment and bitterness to create distance between us. She’s in pain right now. You are, too. You should be together.”
“How can you stand there and do that?” There was no censure in his voice, just a tinge of awe.
“Our marriage was over long before you cheated, Ryan. Honestly, looking back, I think it was over after the second in-vitro failed, and we had different opinions on how to proceed. You were done. I wanted to continue trying. That made you angry at me, and I was angry at you for giving up. We only stuck it out as long as we did because we didn’t know how to end it. We’d gotten so caught up in our own emotions that we allowed ourselves to just roll through the last couple of years. It wasn’t healthy.”
A small smile came to his lips, and he shook his head. “That’s the Scarlett I remember. Not the depressed, beat-down woman you became. Brody’s good for you.”
At the mention of his name, her heart skipped a beat. “How do you know about Brody?”
“I put two-and-two together when he knocked me a good one in the grill.”
Her mouth popped open. “He did? When?”
“Right after he got back from the Bahamas.”
And that was why it was finally okay for him to pursue her. He’d ended his friendship with Ryan—over her. “Unfortunately, he broke things off with me a few days ago.”
“What?” Ryan shook his head. “That’s…shocking.”
“Why?”
“I suspected he had feelings for you.”
“You did?”
“Not right away, mind you. In fact, it wasn’t until he stopped hanging around here last year that it sort of clicked for me. He wasn’t any busier than usual, but he was adamant about not hanging around here or with you.”
So that confirmed his interest in her had been the motivation behind his absence. It made sense with the way he was in the Bahamas, and his determination to keep her at arm’s length.
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
It was hard to believe she was sitting here having this conversation with her ex, but if there was anyone who would understand, he would. He’d been through it with her. “He wants children.”
“So? You do, too.”
“He wants a houseful of kids.”
“I still don’t get it, Scarlett.”
“You saw what happened to us because of my infertility. We didn’t know about it when we got married. I know now. Why would I put Brody through that?”
“Does he know the truth?”
She swallowed. “No. He thinks I don’t want kids.”
Sighing, he shook his head. “You owe him the truth.”
“Why? So he can grow to resent me, too?”
Ryan flinched from her words. “Damn. I did a number on you, didn’t I?” He rubbed his forehead. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Scarlett. Brody is not me, though.”
No. Brody wasn’t.
“I handled our infertility horribly,” he continued. “But our situation was different. Like you said, we didn’t know. We went through a lot of heartache that neither of us handled well. We didn’t know how to support each other. We grew, or I grew, resentful. I blamed you. With Brody, he’ll know from the get-go that it won’t be conventional or easy.”
She bit her lip. He had a point.
“Believe it or not, I want you to be happy, Scarlett. I went about finding my happiness the wrong way, I’ll admit that. But I have found it all the same. I feel the best I have in years.” He grimaced. “I hope being open about that doesn’t hurt you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I get what you’re saying. Brody has helped bring me back to life, too.”
“Then why would you take the coward’s way out and allow him to believe a lie? If it’s not going to work between you two, it should be because of the truth. Not lies. Trust me on that. I should’ve been honest with you, and I made everything worse because I wasn’t.” He slipped off the stool. “Anyway, I’m going to Monica.”
“Good,” she mumbled, distracted by Ryan’s speech.
He stopped at the kitchen door and looked over his shoulder. “I wish you much happiness, Scarlett.”
Their eyes meet. They had no reason to stay in contact. They’d just cleared the air. Nothing was connecting them any longer. He’d sign the divorce papers and put them back in the mail. This was good-bye. “I wish the same for you.”
Ryan nodded then left the kitchen. Crossing her arms, she stood in the house that hadn’t been a home for a very long time and felt the weight of the last few years lift. She never imagined coming face-to-face with her ex would be the final moment she needed to completely move on from the pain from the past.
But she was ready.
And if Brody was going to leave her, it would be because he knew everything.
…
Scarlett rubbed her sweaty hands together as she approached the front door. She’d tried calling and texting Brody over the last couple of days to get him to meet with her so they could talk. Her attempts went unanswered. Frustrated, she’d gone to his place last night, but her knock didn’t get her desired outcome. She finally received a text, though. One that had punched her hard in the gut.
The text had simply said, “I can’t, Scarlett.”
She’d come damn close to just telling him the truth over text, but she stopped herself from doing that. He deserved to have her look him in the face when she told him everything, though going about it this way might not have been the best option, either. She stared at Savannah’s door. It was Sunday. The Minton Family gathering day. His bike was parked out front. He was here. His entire family was here.
He couldn’t avoid her here.
&nbs
p; Maybe she should just track him down at the gym? Immediately, she shook away that thought. Doing this in front of his family was bad enough; she refused to do it in front of other men.
She knocked on the door. Fight or flight kicked in, flight winning, and she spun away from the door.
But she loved Brody. It was past time she fought to keep him. She forced herself to turn back to the door as it opened.
Tessa’s eyes widened as they latched onto Scarlett. “Whoa. Brody’s going to be shocked to see you. The entire family is.”
So they all knew. She guessed that made it easier.
“What are you doing here?” Tessa asked, crossing her arms.
She studied the younger woman who had feisty little sister written all over her. “I’d like to see Brody.”
“Just leave him alone, okay? The decision was hard enough without you having second thoughts and making it worse.”
The verbal smack down stung, causing her anger to spike. This woman had butted her nose into their business from the moment Brody had brought her to meet the family. Enough was enough. “Did Brody go all bulldog and refuse to let Nick see you?”
The woman flinched back. “I’m trying to save him from the same heartache I’m going through.” She stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be in love with someone you don’t have a future with? Do you have any idea how hard it is to look that person in the face and let them go, even with them pleading for you to stay? I do. And Brody isn’t going to. You need to leave.”
“Not until I speak to Brody.”
“Why?” Tessa raised her arms and shook them. “You don’t want children. Brody does. What more is there to talk about? Why do you want to make this harder?”
It all snapped into place for her. Tessa wasn’t just protecting her brother. She had some kind of unresolved emotions toward her ex-fiancé, and Scarlett was the perfect target for everything she was keeping bottled up.
“I’m sorry your situation with Nick has sucked, but I’m not him, and Brody is not you. This is our relationship. Not yours. You need to let me see him.”
Tessa snapped her mouth shut as her body went rigid. She fisted her hands into tight balls, then promptly burst into uncontrollable sobs. At the woman’s obvious anguish, Scarlett wrapped her arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
Tessa pressed her face into Scarlett’s shoulder, and she wondered if Brody’s sister had truly cried for her loss yet, or if she’d kept it all bottled up inside and was finally exploding.
“Brody doesn’t deserve this pain,” she wept between clenched teeth. “Don’t continue to hurt him.”
“I don’t want to hurt him. I love him.”
“You love me?”
The unexpected male voice made both women stiffen. Scarlett released Tessa and turned to find Brody standing directly behind them, an unreadable expression on his face. Scarlett swallowed. “Yes, I love you.”
He just continued to stare at her, guarded and distant. Whatever he’d been feeling toward her had not been moved by her declaration of love. If anything, she may have made things even worse.
“Just leave him alone,” Tessa cried out. “Can’t you see he’s made his decision?”
Brody’s gaze snapped to her. “Tessa, stay out of it.”
Her brother’s reprimand made the woman jerk straight as if he’d slapped her. She stared at Brody, who never relaxed his stiff posture as he held her gaze. Again bursting into tears, she shoved past him and into the house.
“I’m sorry about my sister’s display.” He worked his neck back and forth. “Nick won’t leave her alone. He’s convinced that he’ll eventually wear her down so she’ll come back to him. If he shows back up while I’m here, I’m going to fucking punch him in the face. She can’t take much more from him.”
That was sad.
“Why are you here, Scarlett? Tessa was right. I have made my decision, and I don’t see how us continuing on is good for either one of us.”
“We needed to talk.”
“I think we’ve said everything we can about the subject.”
Scarlett gnawed on her lower lip. There wasn’t a crack, no give, in his armor anywhere. He was protecting himself. He was preparing, just like Tessa had done with her ex, to turn her away, no matter what he felt for Scarlett.
Because he was putting his happiness first. She envied him for that, wished she’d done the same. Though, if she had, they might never have had this time together.
That, she’d never regret.
What she did regret was the lie she’d told to protect herself. She hadn’t done it for her happiness, she’d done it out of fear. And she was done with being afraid.
“I lied to you,” she blurted.
Brody’s arms slowly lowered to his sides, shock evident on his face. “About what?”
“I do want kids.”
Closing his eyes, he heaved a loud sigh then turned toward the house. “I can’t do this, Scarlett. You’ve already said you don’t want kids, you can’t take that back just because we’re aren’t together anymore.”
He was walking away from her, convinced this was some kind of ploy to get him back. She’d created this mess. Now she had to fix it. Stepping toward his retreating back, she held out her hands. “I can’t have kids.”
Brody froze. Not a muscle moved, nor did he speak a word.
The silence weighed heavy on her, and she swallowed. She hated being vulnerable, revealing her darkest secret. One marriage had already been ruined because of it—she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it if Brody chose not to be with her because of it.
“You can’t have kids?” he asked with his back still to her.
“Not in the biological sense, anyway.”
“So you lied to push me away?”
“I lied to protect myself,” she answered honestly. “The day of the cook-out I knew I couldn’t give you what you wanted.”
He finally faced her, his expression an impenetrable mask, giving her nothing as to where his thoughts were. Right now, she was dealing with the fighter, not the man. He wasn’t going to give her an inch until he was ready to do so.
“What I wanted was you and the possibility of a future,” he said. “But you decided that I didn’t get a say in that, and lied to me.” He sucked on his teeth, showing the first visible sign of anger. “I agonized over that decision, Scarlett. Leaving you was the hardest goddamn thing I’ve ever done, and you’re telling me it was a lie.” He shouted the last word, causing her to flinch.
“Yes.”
He shoved a hand through his hair as he paced the porch, his armor obliterated now. “Jesus. Christ. What kind of man do you think I am? Do you really believe I’d stop loving you because of something you have no control over?”
“My husband did,” she whispered.
Again Brody froze. “What did you say?”
“Our problems started four years ago when we decided we were ready to have children. One year we wasted trying to do it naturally. Then we started the testing. They couldn’t find any known reason, so we tried a couple of intrauterine cycles of fertility treatments. Those didn’t work. So we moved on to in-vitro. We did it twice. Neither batch produced any viable embryos. I never even got to do the two-week wait.”
Brody stared at her with an intense look. “Ryan stopped loving you because you’re infertile?”
“No. The emotions bled from us trying to have a baby and failing over and over again. We both changed. He just got mean. I got depressed. We grew farther and farther apart.”
He lowered into a wicker rocking chair. “And you didn’t want to repeat history.”
She sat in the chair beside his. “You want children so badly, Brody. It may never happen if you’re with me. I was terrified that you’d grow to resent me.”
He frowned at her. “I’d never resent you for something like that.”
“Brody—”
He waved at her. “This is
a lot to process, Scarlett. I’m hurt that you lied to me—thought me capable of being such a dickhead. I need to think.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes; she blinked them away and nodded. “I understand. I’ll give you space.”
She stood up and walked down the stairs, and he didn’t try to stop her. Nor did he say a word as she slipped behind the wheel of her car. As she pulled back onto the road, she let the tears fall. She’d said she loved him. Brody hadn’t returned the sentiment. He was never going to forgive her.
And she had no one to blame but herself.
…
A whirring was all Brody heard as he stepped back into the house. Scarlett had told him so much he was having a hard time processing it all.
She wanted kids, but had lied to him about it.
It changed everything, yet nothing, because she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him the truth.
He glanced upstairs. He’d been harsh to Tessa and needed to go apologize. He hurried up the steps and found her in her room, sitting in the window, knees hugged to her chest, as she stared out into the front yard.
“She left,” Tessa said. “I take it her guilt trip didn’t work?”
Tessa had been a ball of anger the last few days, snapping at everyone or anyone within an inch of her. Savannah had threatened to make her go live with their parents if she didn’t adjust her attitude.
“There wasn’t a guilt trip. She told me the truth.”
“What? That she wants kids?”
After two failed attempts at getting Tessa to change her mind about having a family, Nick had then worked the angle that he’d just been joking. He wanted kids, too. Desperation to win back the woman he loved might make him willing to go along with the kids route, but Tessa knew how he really felt now and refused to come back. It was a no-win situation for both of them.
“Not exactly. She let me know she can’t have kids. She and Ryan had tried for years. Had two failed IVF procedures.”
“What?” Her head snapped in his direction, eyes huge. As she lowered her face into her palms, she repeated, “Oh, God.”
His sister’s reaction confused the shit out of him. “What’s the matter with you?”