Her Second Chance Cowboy Billionaire Christmas Secret (Home For Christmas)

by Hanna Hart

  Walker stiffened. "Why was it too late?”

  "I lost the baby,” she said, and he could see the string lights above them illuminating the tears that spilled endlessly down her cheeks.

  He blinked. "When?”

  "Eleven weeks,” she said. “Almost three months.”

  “Three months?” he repeated incredulously. “Three months, Ava?” Three months? She’d been three months pregnant and hadn’t seen fit to tell him?

  “What happened?” he asked, wincing.

  Ava’s whole body was shaking, though whether from nerves or the cold, he couldn’t be sure.

  "They said there was nothing I could have done to prevent it,” she said vaguely. “It just stopped growing.” Then she pulled her hands up to her face, covering her eyes in shame as she cried, “They couldn’t find the heartbeat.”

  The way her fingers covered her face made him want to throw up. It was only then that it all became real to him. Ava was pregnant; then she wasn’t; then she left.

  "Ava,” he said firmly, trying to control the disappointment, the shock, and anger he felt. “You should have told me.” He frowned, pulling her hand away from her face so he could meet her eyes. “How could you not tell me that?”

  "We never talked,” she said, repeating his statement from earlier. “You said so yourself!”

  "That's not what I meant, and you know it,” he snapped.

  He didn’t want to be angry, but he couldn’t help it. He lost Ava due to something completely out of his control. Just like Leanne, she never gave him the chance to fix things or help her.

  Then it really hit him. He was almost a father.

  Knowing this hurt in a way he couldn’t describe. He’d created life, and he never even knew it. He’d lost a child and had been none the wiser all these years.

  It made him sick.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't know what to say,” Ava said.

  "So you let me think it was all me? That I did something to make you hate me? That you didn't love me?” he said, trying to control his emotions.

  Ava stopped crying then. She sucked air and her face went suddenly stoic. "I didn't love you, Walker,” she said, enunciating it as though it was supposed to make him feel better. It felt like a knife in the gut.

  “What I mean is,” she stuttered. “I didn't love myself. I didn't love anything. I felt so alone—”

  “By choice!” he yelled. "I could have been there for you. I could have helped you, Ava. Why did you take that from me?”

  "I was just a kid,” she shrugged helplessly.

  "You keep saying that! We were just kids. Oh, we were young, we didn't know anything. We were twenty-one, Ava. We weren't kids. We were partners and partners are supposed to share things, not shut each other out and lie to each other. You lied to me for months. Why? Did you not trust me? Why did you punish yourself? Punish me?”

  "I don't know,” she said, crying again. “I was scared, Walker. And then I was ashamed.”

  "Why?” he winced.

  "Because I lost the baby!” she yelled.

  Walker felt the cold air on his face, but he couldn’t comprehend it anymore. He knew his nose had gone numb, that his cheeks were red from the chill, but he couldn’t feel anything.

  He watched some of the wedding guests walk by the oval windows that lined the courtyard, looking out at the snow and the lights that hid in the pine trees like little faeries.

  Turning back to Ava, Walker snapped, "Do you know what I went through after we broke up? You pushed me away, and I tortured myself for years with it.”

  "Do you know what I went through?” she said defensively.

  "No, because you didn't let me in!”

  "I don't want to fight with you!” Ava cried. She wept hard into her hands for what felt like minutes. She stared down at the ground as she said, “I just, I didn't want to commit to anything with you until you knew the truth.”

  "Well, I gotta say,” he began, gesturing around at the peaceful wedding venue and the stunning winter night, “your timing is just perfect.”

  Ava swallowed and watched as she spun on his heel to leave. "Where are you going?” she asked in an uncharacteristically small tone.

  "I have to get out of here,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Clear my head.”

  “Are you coming back?” she asked.

  Walker couldn’t look at her. “I’ll make sure you get a ride home,” he said before walking back to the party.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ava

  It had been three days since Kendall’s wedding.

  Walker arranged for a private car to take Ava home from the reception that night. She went looking for him but couldn’t find him amidst the crowd.

  She spent the first day home wallowing in her guilt, crying and wishing she had kept everything a secret. Then she punished her past self for not confiding in Walker as soon as she found out she was pregnant.

  Ava cried over wasted time and the tiny, pulsating, chronically wrong part of her brain that caused her to make such stupid decisions.

  On day two, she texted Walker and asked if he wanted to talk.

  “Not up for it,” was his prompt, courteous response.

  She wanted to respect his feelings and his need for privacy—it’s what he’d done with her in the past—but she knew he was leaving at the end of the week and didn’t want him to go without talking to him first.

  That was what was so terrifying about being in a relationship again. There was something to lose.

  Her previous relationship had moved so slowly that she got the chance to be comfortable. Jeremy. He was sweet. He was a professional skier she’d met while working at one of the resorts in the area. He was adventurous and always knew how to make her laugh, but she couldn’t commit.

  That wasn’t to say she was unfaithful. Ava had been faithful in every relationship she’d ever been in, but she couldn’t take things as seriously as he needed her to.

  It wasn’t because he wasn’t a good guy. Jeremy was a great guy, but Jeremy wasn’t the problem. Ava was.

  Whenever Ava ran into great, funny, kind men, she started looking for reasons to bail. She could write a book on how to self-sabotage.

  She was comfortable in the chaos. Her whole life had been chaos. It was why, after she’d found the strength to date after her relationship with Walker, she’d ended up with men who were more suited to her mother’s lifestyle than her own. She wasn’t content unless she was trying to fix something.

  Until now.

  When she saw Walker at the coffee shop, she wanted to hate him. She wanted to fight against the memories and feelings his very existence brought up into her soul. But she just couldn’t.

  Walker awakened something in her that she thought was long gone—the desire for family and stability.

  The more time she spent with him, the harder it became to resist the idea that he had been perfect for her all along. It became impossible to deny how wonderful it would feel to be safe. To settle down with him. To take a chance.

  So this time, she dove in with her whole heart.

  And then it all backfired. Her desire to be good, to be honest, to be someone that Walker deserved had only proved to hurt the man she loved and break her own heart.

  Ava held her camera close to her face as she filmed some final shots of the snow-capped mountains for a new promo at the resort.

  Coming up into the atmosphere usually helped her clear her mind, but not today. That’s how she knew she needed to talk to Walker.

  She slipped into one of the single-stall restrooms at the lodge and locked the door behind her.

  Her fingers dialed Walker’s number with strange familiarity and to her surprise, he picked up immediately.

  “I don’t want to ignore you,” he said, clearly not wanting to replicate her behavior from their first breakup. “But I’m not up for talking. I told you that.”

  "I know,” she said, holding the phone close to her
ear with both hands wrapped firmly around it.

  “Okay?” Walker said, an indication that he was going to hang up.

  “I remember when you used to tell me you couldn't sleep when I wasn't around,” she said, and the words tumbled from her mouth without her consent.

  Walker didn’t respond, and she took it as a sign that she had his attention.

  "I remember when you held my hand at the hospital the first day that I met you,” she said softly, closing her eyes and seeing his face as clear as day, watching her with curiosity at the hospital and teasing her to try and make her laugh.

  “And I thought, I never, ever want to be without this guy,” she said.

  Walker let out a ‘huh’ and said, "I remember you got pregnant and you never told me. That's what I remember.”

  Her heart sank deep in her chest, like a heavy weight she hadn’t been expecting. "I remember seeing you at the coffee shop and thinking you were still so amazing. You were so kind to me, and never for a second made me feel like I was this monstrous person.”

  Walker sighed. "You don't have to try and convince me that I'm a nice guy, Ava. You don't have to try and remind me of all the great things about us. I already know all of them. That's why I don't understand why you wouldn't have told me.”

  "I was afraid,” she said honestly. “Then it was over, and I didn't want to hurt you with it.”

  "So you hurt me by ripping yourself out of my life?”

  She felt a lilt of frustration creep into her tone as she said, "I feel guilty, Walker. I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say.”

  "I'm not asking you to say anything. All I want from you is—”

  "Don't say distance,” she interrupted.

  Walker went quiet.

  "Time,” he finished.

  “That’s the same thing,” she said sadly. "I needed time once, too. And do you know what it got us? Six years apart. I don't want that for us again. I don't want to waste time with you.”

  "Neither do I, but this isn't something you just get over,” he said. “You have six years on me with this, Ava. To me, this just happened.”

  "You're right. I'm sorry,” she nodded.

  "You should have told me,” he said.

  Ava sunk to the floor of the restroom and stared down at the beige marble tiling below her feet. She wondered how much it cost. Probably more than her mother’s whole house.

  "Maybe,” she said quietly.

  "Maybe?” he repeated incredulously.

  "Maybe,” she said with a verbal shrug. “Or maybe I would have told you, and you would have hated me for it. Maybe we would have just resented each other, and we would have broken up anyway, and then we never would have the chance to come back together. We never would have had a second chance.”

  Walker sighed, and the line went quiet.

  “What was it?” he asked in a still, solemn voice. “Do you know?”

  "The gender?” she swallowed nervously, running a finger in circles across the likely dirty floor. “No. I didn't know.”

  "And you went to doctor's appointments without me?”

  Ava didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been expecting questions like this.

  "Heard a heartbeat?” Walker continued, and his questions were like mortar fire. “Got the updates?” BOOM! “And where did your doctor think I was?” CRASH! “Just another deadbeat dad, not showing up for his girlfriend?”

  "I told her I hadn't told you yet,” she said quietly, and Walker said nothing. "Hello?” she asked.

  "Yeah, I'm still here,” he said evenly. “I'm just having trouble processing this. Part of me feels numb, and then I get this sick, shooting pain.”

  "I know,” she said empathetically. She knew that feeling more than he ever could have imagined.

  "I just need time,” he repeated.

  "How much time, Walker?”

  "Time for it to stop hurting, I guess,” he said, and she wanted to tell him that such a time didn’t exist. “Time to trust you again. Time to mourn this life I almost had with you.”

  She felt a tortured sob creep up into her throat like stiff, suffocating breath and didn’t hesitate to let it out. She cried into the phone so loud that she was sure Walker must have been holding his speaker away.

  “Please, Walker,” she begged. “Please, please, don’t punish me for this.”

  “I’m not trying to be mean to you; I’m trying to process this. Just like you did,” he said, and she wanted to shout, “There!” as though she’d caught him in the act.

  Walker was patient. He was full of love. He was sweet and kind. But she didn’t for a moment think he didn’t have hard feelings about the way she pushed him away all those years ago.

  "I can't go back and undo the past, Walker,” she said, her voice trembling as she tried to control her sobs. “Don't you think I would change things if I could? But I can't! I can't go back and undo whatever stupid thing I did to lose the baby or tell you or un-say all of the things I said that hurt you.”

  “I know that,” he said quietly.

  “All we can do is choose to move forward,” she said. "If that's what you still want.”

  "I don't think this is a conversation we should be having right now. Alright?” he said.

  When they hung up, Ava threw her phone against the ground and watched a new, sharp crack slice from the top of her screen down to the push-button at the bottom.

  She let out garbled, frustrated noise, and picked it back up, hating herself for yet another bad decision.

  There was no life lesson in this. Nothing to learn and nothing to gain. There was only pain.

  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her: Walker saying he loved her one minute and that he needed space the next. She understood that this was probably some kind of cosmic, karmic comeuppance, but she was in no mood to laugh.

  The worst part was that once again, Ava had to go through this alone. She couldn’t exactly tell Tibby or her mother about the miscarriage. Not now.

  When she got home from work and caught sight of her mother on the couch, she began crying immediately.

  "What happened?" her mother asked instinctively, pulling Ava into her lap like she was five years old.

  Ava lay on her side, curled into the fetal position with her head on an uneven pillow in her mother’s lap.

  "We had a big fight at the wedding," she said. "It was bad."

  "Ah. That's why he hasn't been around?" her mother asked, and she nodded. Gloria ran a hand through Ava's hair and gave a sympathetic sigh. "What happened? Did he dance with another girl? Did he tell you he didn't like your dress?"

  "Why do you just assume we would fight about something stupid and shallow?" Ava asked with a half-hearted roll of her eyes.

  Gloria gave a lighthearted, comforting laugh and cooed, "Because you guys have nothing to fight about. You've been thick as thieves since you were eighteen.”

  “That’s not true,” Ava said.

  “Look, don't worry about it, okay? You'll make up. You're still in that newlywed phase of your relationship. Now isn't the time for fights; it's the time for—”

  Ava pressed her lips thin, wondering if she should tell her mother the whole truth. She wondered what her mother would think of her or if she would see Ava differently if she knew what had happened. She didn't want to risk this, so opted for, "I lied to him. Sort of."

  "Mm," her mother said with humor, unconvinced of the severity of their argument. "A sort of lie, you say?"

  "Back when we were together," she said, pulling in a shaky breath and sitting up to face her mother. "I lied about something pretty important.”

  Her mother nodded as if she understood and asked, "Why did you lie about it?"

  "Back then? Because I didn't want to hurt him," she said and knew she must have sounded like a cheater or something.

  "I get it," her mother breathed. "Believe me, I've been there, and I know how it feels to keep something terrible you've done to yourself. The real question is, why di
d you tell him this time around?"

  "Because I'm sick of driving people away," she said. "I know that probably doesn't make any sense, but I just wanted to be honest with him this time. I didn't want him to think that I didn't love him or that I would ever treat him that way again."

  Her mother's eyes went troubled then, and Ava knew what she was about to ask.

  "What happened?

  "Mom," she said defensively, "Please."

  "Alright, alright," Gloria said, batting her hands at her daughter. "Then what I want to know is this: would you ever treat him like that again? Saying it and meaning it are two very different things. I'm a poster-child for that, you know full well."

  "Never," she said emphatically. "I would never hurt him, intentionally, again."

  "And you love him?" Gloria asked.

  Ava flinched. She did, but she hadn't said the words out loud. Not to Walker or even to herself.

  "Come on now," her mother encouraged with a soft laugh. "I already know you do. You may as well just admit it."

  "Yes," Ava said. "I love him."

  “Then you’re going to be okay,” her mother said, inviting her back into her lap and tickling the tips of her fingers down Ava’s arm.

  “How do you know?” Ava asked.

  “Because you’re ready this time,” she said. “I can see it. I can see it in the way you’ve changed. And he’s going to see it too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Walker

  Walker looked outside his bedroom window at the blue sky outside. It was cold out with a harsh wind that was pushing the smaller trees in the yard so that they were side-swept. The clouds rushed through the sky as though they were trying to win a race.

  He sat with his laptop spread out on his messy bedroom desk doing some work at his computer.

  Walker’s eyes blurred, and he rested his hand in his chin, just staring out the window.

  Snow flew by the window in sparkling zig-zags, and he watched them with disinterest.

  "I think I want a sports car,” Rhys announced as he walked into the bedroom without a second thought, no knock, no announcement.