JORDAN OPENED HIS MOUTH, ready to retort, but she had hit him exactly where she knew he was most vulnerable. He closed his mouth again, and before he could think of something to respond with she spoke again.
‘This is exactly what I’m talking about. Why is it so hard for you to tell me about it?’
‘For the same reasons you don’t talk to me about your childhood in foster care.’
Her head snapped back as though he had hit her, and something inside him warned him to stop. But the words kept sprinting out of his mouth.
‘It isn’t that easy to talk about when you’re on the other side, is it?’ he said steadily, and watched the emotions run over her face like a movie reel.
Eventually she replied, ‘No, it isn’t. But when you love someone you have to make a sacrifice and put your reservations aside.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t have anyone who needed me when I was growing up, Jordan. I lived with ten different families in eighteen years. It was hard.’
She blew out a shaky breath, and he felt himself shake a little, too. Was she doing what he thought she was?
‘I didn’t have anyone who needed me, and quite frankly no one wanted me. Lulu was the first person I met who cared about me—and I mean really cared—and I was sixteen years old when I met her.’
She wiped at tears he hadn’t seen, too captivated by what she was telling him to notice before—and even more so by what it meant.
‘Growing up like that made me... It made me someone I don’t want to be any more.’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t ever say what I felt or what I thought because I wanted people to like me.’
‘Even with me?’ he asked, needing to know.
She looked at him through wet lashes that made her eyes all the more piercing. ‘Even with you.’ She bit her lip, and then said, ‘I couldn’t... I thought I couldn’t tell you what I felt. There was a big part of me that felt like being married to you was a dream, and I didn’t want to wake up. It didn’t matter how I felt about our house, our cars...’
All things he had chosen for her, he thought in disgust.
‘I had you. And that was enough for me.’
She lifted a hand when he opened his mouth to speak.
‘Wait, I’m not done yet. I have to get this out before you say anything.’
Something shifted in her eyes, and panic spread through his body in response.
This is the last time she’ll do this, he thought, and his heart pounded at the thought of losing her.
‘But that also meant I didn’t know how to ask you for help when we lost our child. I was afraid that you blamed me—you’d asked me to slow down and I hadn’t. And then I fell down the stairs and I thought that you were right—I should have slowed down, enjoyed being pregnant. After that... I felt like a failure. Like every fear of mine had come true.’
Tears shone in her eyes and he took a step forward, wanting to be closer to her, to comfort her.
‘It was a confirmation of what I’d feared all along—that I wasn’t worthy of you. I always expected you to leave me, so when you did—’
‘I proved you right,’ he finished for her, stunned.
How could he have been so unaware of what his wife was going through? How had he not noticed that she hadn’t ever disagreed with him? How had he been so blind? She had it completely wrong, he thought. He was the one who wasn’t worthy of her.
‘Mila, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know...’
He trailed off as he realised that she had just told him everything he had ever wanted to know about her. And based on that information—based on the completely raw look in her eyes—he knew how much it had cost her.
‘You love me, too.’
He didn’t need her to say it because it was suddenly so painfully clear to him. It made the fact that he felt as if he was losing her so much worse. He looked at her, saw the truth in her eyes, and the past year of his life flashed through his mind.
He had always been a loner, but he hadn’t ever felt alone. As difficult as his relationship with his father had been, Jordan had always known he had somewhere to go to, someone to talk to if he needed it. But after he had left for Johannesburg he hadn’t really spoken to his father. His life had felt emptier than he’d thought possible, and he’d felt more alone than ever.
He had missed Mila with all of him, and now he knew—he knew—that his grief at losing his son, at losing his chance of a full family, would have been bearable if he had been with Mila.
It was something her words had only just made him realise, and the simple truth of it led him to say, ‘My father blamed me for my mother’s death.’
When the words were out, he couldn’t believe such a simple sentence could convey the thing that had followed him around for his entire life. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and faced the stream. He didn’t want to see her face—the compassion he knew would be there—while he told her of his childhood. Not when what he was going to tell her might change her opinion of his father, whom she’d clearly cared about.
He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering where to start, and decided on the part Mila already knew about.
‘My mom found out about her cancer when I was two.’ He took a steadying breath, then continued, ‘She refused treatment. For two years she didn’t want to get treatment, even though she was ill most of the time... She wanted to be a normal mother.’
He took another breath, shifted the weight between his feet.
‘Her mom had died of the same thing, and they’d caught it earlier. She’d had treatment and it hadn’t helped. So she refused. She thought the treatment would only make her sicker, even if only for a little while, and she didn’t want to lose any time with me. So she chose to be a mother. She chose me.’
Jordan shrugged, the movement heavy with the weight he had been carrying. With the guilt.
‘My dad hated her choice. He told me once that he’d begged her every day for those two years to get treatment, until finally he wore her down. And during that time my dad kept me at a distance. He wouldn’t sit with her when she watched me play—would only agree to family time if she was there.’
Jordan wondered how his memories of the events he was talking about could be vague, but the feelings they evoked still sharp.
‘He helped to take care of me physically—especially when my mom grew weaker, more ill—but he wouldn’t be a father to me. Not a real one. But he was the best husband, and even at my age I knew that he loved her more than anything. By the time she agreed to treatment it was too late.’
He felt her move closer to him, and welcomed the comfort her presence brought.
‘She spent her last year in agony, going through a cycle of chemo and radiation, until finally my dad brought her home and she died in her sleep a few days later.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said, in a voice thick with emotion.
‘I didn’t think so until...’
This was probably one of the worst parts, he thought, but he pushed through.
‘For years after my mom died, I felt like I was walking on eggshells. My father was testy most of the time, and I just got used to trying to make myself invisible at home. But at school, I acted out. And one day...’ He took a deep breath. ‘One day I did something I can’t even remember any more and my dad got called in to school. I remember he sat there, listening to my teacher, and I saw the tic just above his eye. I didn’t know what that meant then, but when I got home...’
He paused, then forced himself to say the words.
‘The anger that my dad had built up since my mom had died came spilling out of his mouth.’ Jordan’s jaw clenched. ‘He told me that if it hadn’t been for me my mom wouldn’t have died. He said that it was my fault, that she had foregone treatment because of me, and that it had all been for nothing since I was just a bratty, ungrateful child.’
Jordan stopped for a moment, composing himself.
‘He said some other things that night—I think most of them things he blamed himself for. He broke down immediately afterwards and apologised, over and over again. It was grief, mixed with anger and regret, but I’ve never forgotten how seeing my distant father break down felt. Or...’ he turned to her now ‘...how it affected me.’
He could see the sadness gleaming in her eyes, and he waited for resentment to boil up in him at the sight of it. But it never came, and he realised that the only thing he felt was her support.
‘I always wondered why things were so difficult between you two,’ she said after a while, and she walked over until she was next to him and took his hand.
The warmth of her gesture of comfort immediately flowed through him, and he tightened his grip. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
She let out a slight laugh. ‘It was hard not to. I always thought it was because of him.’
‘Why?’
‘He was a difficult man, Jordan. He didn’t show his emotions, didn’t say what he thought, and most of the time when he spoke it sounded like a military command.’
Floored, he looked down at her. ‘I thought you liked him?’
‘I loved him,’ she corrected. ‘He was kind to me, and in his own way he showed me he cared for me. I loved him,’ she repeated, and he could hear the grief in her voice, ‘but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see his flaws.’
He nodded, and there was a silence as they both thought about his father. As he thought about the fact that he needed to continue with his story.
‘He only became the man you’re talking about after that night. But even then he wasn’t perfect, and I spent my whole life believing that my mother’s death was my fault.’
‘Your father was angry, Jordan. He was grieving for a woman he had loved with all of him and for the life he thought he would get to live. He didn’t mean what he said, or the things he did.’
‘But she did choose me, Mila,’ he said softly.
‘Exactly. She did. You had absolutely no say over the choices she made, Jordan. Don’t keep blaming yourself for something you didn’t have any control over.’ She wrapped an arm around him. ‘It won’t help.’
Somewhere in his mind her words resonated, and he said, ‘I didn’t want to see you suffer like she did.’
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. ‘That’s why you left?’
‘I didn’t think so at first. I thought I was doing the right thing.’ He stopped, wondering how he was having all the most difficult conversations of his life within the space of an hour. ‘But I’ve realised over the last few days that that was why I left. Why I ran.’
Her arm was still around him, though he could feel it slacken.
You deserve it for being a coward, he thought, but it didn’t make the pain of her pulling away any easier.
Still he continued. If she was going to leave—if she was going to move on—it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t fought for her with all his might.
‘It was also because I was...angry. I couldn’t deal with the loss of our son.’
It was his biggest regret about his father’s death—that he hadn’t been able to tell Greg that he understood the grieving. He had been too young with his mother, but losing his son... Finally Jordan had understood how irrational grief could be.
‘I got angry at you for pushing me away, and it...it scared me. I thought I was turning into my father. Even after the anger had dulled I thought it was for the best that I didn’t come back, that I didn’t fight for us. Because I didn’t want to wake up one day and blame you for something that wasn’t your fault. I didn’t want to treat you like my father had treated me.’
He paused.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Mila,’ he said again, because he thought she needed to know. ‘The fall had nothing to do with you not slowing down. You would have had plenty of time to do that later. We both would have.’ He turned to her. ‘You need to let go of whatever’s still inside you that thinks the accident was your fault.’
With eyes full of tears, she nodded, and his heart settled at the knowledge of what they’d just shared. He had finally told her everything, and he hoped he had got her to forgive herself. If she chose to leave now, she would leave free of the weight of the past. But still he wished she wouldn’t leave, and his heart sank when she pulled away, convinced that she had given up on him.
So much so that he looked up in surprise when he saw she was in front of him.
She took both of his hands in hers. ‘I wish you’d told me about this a long time ago.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘And I wouldn’t have been in the right space to listen,’ she agreed, and then took a deep breath. ‘It makes sense now. All of it.’
‘But does it change anything?’ he asked hopefully, and a familiar expression shone in her eyes. One he hadn’t seen in almost a year.
‘I...I think that depends on you.’
The glimmer of affection in her eyes that he’d seen just before gave way to seriousness.
‘Are you still angry at me?’
‘No, not any more. I understand why you pushed me away. I understand you better, too.’
She gave him a small smile. ‘Do you still blame yourself for your mom?’
‘I...’ He took a breath. ‘I think it’ll take some time—just like I think it will for you not to blame yourself for the baby—but we’ll get there.’
She nodded, gripping his hands tightly. ‘You won’t turn into your father, Jordan, so I won’t even ask if you still believe you will.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know you. You’re strong, and when you’re not afraid...’ she squeezed his hand ‘...you’re the most considerate man I know.’ She paused, and then dropped his hands to slide her arms around his waist. ‘And because you have me, and I will make sure that you don’t turn into an angry, bitter person. Our little grape wouldn’t have wanted that for his father.’
His heart filled at her words. ‘You’re staying with me?’
‘If you want me, I’d really like to.’
‘I don’t want you, Mila. I need you.’ He pulled her in tighter and felt the part of him that had been broken heal. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you,’ she replied, and when she pulled back her eyes were gleaming with tears.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said gently, wiping her cheeks.
‘They’re happy tears,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t dare imagine this was possible when you came back, but my heart hoped it would be.’
‘Mine, too,’ he said, knowing that his heart was only full when he was with her.
‘And we’ll face everything we go through now together.’
‘I promise.’ He stopped, and then said gently, ‘I want us to have another baby.’
He watched her, saw the fear.
‘Not right now. When we’re ready—when we’ve taken the time to be ready. You’re going to be a wonderful mother, and I want a chance to be a good father. And a good husband to my pregnant wife.’
He smiled, lifted her chin. Noted that the fear had turned into longing.
‘We can be a family, Mila.’
Another tear slipped down her face. ‘It sounds perfect.’ And then she smiled. ‘How about we seal this with a kiss?’
He laughed and leaned down to kiss her, vowing that he wouldn’t spoil his second chance at love with the woman who had always owned his heart.