Chapter 13
It came so fast I had to grip the edge of a table.
Julian told her I couldn’t have children.
Not that we lost pregnancies.
Not that we grieved.
Not that he abandoned me emotionally.
I couldn’t.
It was cleaner that way.
My defect.
His tragedy.
A story with one victim and one failure.
My stomach tightened.
I closed my eyes.
The baby moved.
I pressed my hand against the curve beneath my dress.
“I know,” I whispered.
“Khloe.”
I opened my eyes.
Julian stood at the end of the corridor.
Of course he had followed me.
I straightened.
He approached slowly.
“We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“That’s a new word for you.”
His face tightened.
“I deserve that.”
“You don’t know what you deserve.”
“Maybe not.”
I stared at him.
He looked older than I remembered.
Not dramatically.
There were simply lines around his eyes I hadn’t noticed in photographs.
“I didn’t know you were seeing Lancaster.”
“My private life stopped being your business when you sent your lawyer to end our marriage.”
His jaw tightened.
“I should have handled that differently.”
“Differently?”
“I know it was cold.”
“Cold is forgetting an anniversary.”
He looked away.
“Khloe—”
“You had a lawyer call me three months after our third miscarriage.”
“I was trying to avoid another emotional explosion.”
The words were out before he could stop them.
I went still.
His eyes closed.
“Christ. That came out wrong.”
“No.”
I almost smiled.
“That came out exactly right.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is always what you mean.”
He stepped closer.
“I was drowning too.”
For a moment, I said nothing.
That, at least, I believed.
Maybe Julian had grieved.
Maybe work had been his way of running from it.
Maybe every time he looked at me, he saw the children we had lost.
But pain did not excuse what he had done with mine.
“You were allowed to drown,” I said. “You just decided to stand on my head while you did it.”
His face changed.
“That’s not fair.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you make it sound like I never loved you.”
I stared at him.
“Did you?”
He flinched.
The question surprised both of us.
He lowered his voice.
“Yes.”
Something inside me hurt.
I hated that it did.
“Yes,” he repeated. “I loved you more than anyone.”
“Then your version of love nearly destroyed me.”